Mac Whitney, the longtime Texas artist known for his abstract metal sculptures, died this past February.
Mac Whitney. Photo courtesy of Kirk Hopper Fine Art
Mac Whitney was born on August 3, 1936, in Manhattan, Kansas. His father was a biology professor at Kansas State University, and Mr. Whitney has described his mother as being “a maker.” The Whitney family also ran a farm, where they grew wheat and raised Duroc hogs and honeybees. During high school, Mr. Whitney learned to weld. At the time, this was a practical skill so that he could repair farm equipment, though later it would play an important role in his artistic process.
Mac Whitney. Photo courtesy of Kirk Hopper Fine Art
Mr. Whitney attended the College of Emporia for a year before attending Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia (now Emporia State College). After earning a BA in 1958, he continued to work in farming, worked in a boiler factory, and built equipment and invented machinery. He also began to take graduate-level courses at the University of Kansas and the Kansas State Teachers College.
In a recent review of Mr. Whitney’s concurrent solo shows at Andrew Durham Gallery and Gallery Sonja Roesch in Houston, Susan Chadwick noted, “His early sculpture was created out of old pieces of farm equipment, remnants of horse-drawn threshers, and mowers found in Kansas fields.”
Mr. Whitney went on to earn his MFA from the University of Kansas in 1968, and taught for an academic year at Eastern Illinois University, in Charleston. In 1969, One Main Place, a Dallas gallery, offered Mr. Whitney his first solo show. He then moved to Dallas and became entrenched with George T. Green, Jack Mims, Jim Roche, and Robert (Daddy-O) Wade, a group of artists that would later be known as the Oak Cliff Four.
“Oak Cliff Line Up,” 1972. Photograph made by Robert (Daddy-O) Wade projecting five separate negatives, one at a time. Left to right: George T. Green, Jack Mims, Jim Roche, Mac Whitney, and Bob Wade
In her 2013 exhibition catalog DallasSites: A Developing Art Scene, Postwar to Present, Dr. Leigh Arnold, now Curator at the Nasher Sculpture Center, wrote about artists involved in the Oak Cliff scene in the 1970s. She explained, “Mac Whitney was never as interested in the Texas Funk or pop nature of the work that characterized the Oak Cliff Four. His large-scale abstract sculptures and preferred minimalist aesthetic set his work drastically apart from that of his artist neighbors.”
During Mr. Whitney’s early years in Dallas, he lived and worked out of a studio in Oak Cliff. On the upper floor of the two-story building, Eugene Binder, the now-renowned Marfa-based gallerist, was a tenant. Mr. Binder worked as Mr. Whitney’s assistant during the early and mid-1970s. Reflecting on that time, Mr. Binder told Glasstire, “It was a very enjoyable time in my life. Mac was a really influential person because of his determination and willpower. He was the hardest working guy one could imagine, very goal-oriented.”
Mac Whitney “Houston,” 1979
In 1979, Mr. Whitney was commissioned by the City of Houston to build a large-scale sculpture that was funded through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Department of Urban Development. The 50-foot-tall by 25-foot-wide piece, titled Houston, is installed in Stude Park in the city’s Heights Neighborhood.
Mac Whitney. Photo courtesy of Kirk Hopper Fine Art
Though his earlier works were created using cast acrylic, Mr. Whitney has become best known for his massive abstract steel sculptures. Throughout his life, he has been known to make many of his works in isolation, even in his older age. In a recent essay for Mac Whitney—Sculptures from the 1970s at Kirk Hopper Fine Art in Dallas, Susie Kalil described the artist’s work as:
“Industrial and organic, inside and outside, mechanical and sexual, passive and aggressive, functionalism and poetic license are just a few oppositions which the sculptures manage to blend in surprising ways. As a group, they recapitulate memory, audacious formal rigor and hard manual labor, while also giving viewers the artist’s sense of surface, texture, space and surprise at the perception of solid and void.”
Mr. Whitney’s iconic sculptures can be found at sites across Texas, including the campus of the University of North Texas in Denton, the Houston Airport System, Parkview Park in Addison, and the Texas Sculpture Garden in Frisco. His work is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Art Museum of South Texas, and the Nasher Sculpture Center.
Regarding Mr. Whitney’s legacy, Ms. Arnold told Glasstire, “Since landing in Texas over 50 years ago, Mac Whitney established an extensive career as a sculptor of monumental, abstract steel constructions that grace public spaces across the state. His adeptness with materials came from years of experimentation, ingenuity, fearlessness, and a certain amount of bravado. Though he’s been characterized in the past as maintaining a ‘loner mentality,’ his contributions to Texas art and the deep connections he built and maintained with people and places throughout the state, are a testament to his ability to connect with audiences across generations.”
