Artist Highlight: Mackbecks
Our new Artist Highlight series will introduce you to the minds behind our city’s thriving art scene: read on for inspiration!
Photos courtest of Mackenzie Becker
Mackenzie Becker’s work is the sort of art that stops you in your tracks each time. The innovation, the color, the sheer creativity of it all– it inspires nothing short of awe. Constantly drawing inspiration from her surroundings, Mackbecks is the product of an artist who truly turns a unique eye to the world. Read on to learn more about her process, the stories behind new collections, and what’s next from Mackenzie!
When did you start making jewelry, and how did you get started?
I started making jewelry at my coffee table in 2017, the night before quitting my first and only “corporate” job post undergrad. I was a 22 y/o beginning what I thought to be my career in art therapy with an emphasis on senior care. I was currently in charge of managing all the daily activities of 125 independent living seniors. Though I had a lot of experience with seniors and art, I quickly realized six months in this career was not for me. Working in this particular environment encouraged a specific wardrobe and aesthetic that didn’t feel like ‘me.’ So, the night before my last day, I grabbed a light pink pleather skirt that was catching dust at the back of my closet and cut it up into my first pair of earrings that I wore on my last day.
At the time, I really didn’t think I would be getting into jewelry. I was just working on integrating my art practice back into my life after six months off and wanted to affordably accessorize during this career shift. I took a low-key barista position and decided to go all in on making art again.
I experimented a lot with different materials, tools, and processes which led me to really taking a liking to jewelry making. I began to share my tiny creations on my instagram @mackbecks and had friends who wanted to support what I was making, which was actually the true start of my business, MackBecks.
After a few months of selling on Instagram and having a lot of fun creating again, I made a plan that I would apply for my first handmade fair and artist studio space. That handmade fair was a total success and I put my application in that same weekend for a local studio space and would use the money from that show to invest in metal smithing supplies and my new studio space.
In 2018, I joined the Cherry Pit Collective and taught myself to metalsmith from a very small school desk that I was either gifted or thrifted! My years at Cherry Pit were the most formative for my business. I was surrounded by incredibly creative, kind, and powerful women who were so driven within their craft. It was the perfect place to become an emerging artist and I spent most of my time there for the following two years developing my metalsmithing practice, hosting workshops, and even running a cute shop across the street during the holidays with the other collective members.
Your process has changed so much over the years, and you now offer many new kinds of products– can you tell us a bit about the evolution of the Mackbecks brand?
At one of the workshops I hosted at CPC, a very talented KCAI Fiber student, Paulina Otero, attended and over the years we became fast friends and collaborators. Paulina and I connected a couple years later during the pandemic and became studio mates at CPC. Being well-versed in the world of industrial design, Paulina offered to test some of my illustrations out on the laser. This opened up a whole new world for me and it was time for me to jump into the world of digital and industrial design! Together, Paulina and I released a collection of wearables to invest in our own laser cutter and this was the start of a project that has now become the basis of my current work. I am very thankful to Paulina for opening up this world for my art and showing me what she knew to help develop this facet of my art practice. I wouldn’t have arrived at this place in my business and art practice without her.
Flash forward a few years and two moves cross country, I have focused heavily on manipulating acrylic aesthetics to make jewelry and home decor. I now focus primarily on small batch collections that I can intensely push the design details to continue to learn more about my niche and medium. Custom work has emerged as a favorite component of my practice over the last year. It has been truly a dream to work with clients over something that brings us all immense joy, our pets. Over the last year and some change, I have handmade over 200 one-of-a-kind Custom Pet Portrait Jewelry and Home Decor pieces for clients. It has taught me so much about what I want in my business, the direction I want to take MackBecks, and helped me to evolve my style and knowledge of the medium.
Where do you find inspiration for your designs?
I am very inspired by texture, bright colors, versatility, and functionality. I keep all of these elements in mind while designing for the intention of amplifying the persona of the wearer. I usually start out with a really complex design idea in my head and imagine how I can recreate it in a variety of techniques to achieve my desired outcome. I tend to lean toward designs where I feel heavily challenged and usually come out of the designing process learning more about my craft than I knew before I started. I noticed that my clients are bold and multifaceted individuals and always keep them in mind during the design process. I also poll my audience on Instagram to involve them in many phases of the design process as well. I have been doing this for years and I think it is a really helpful and interesting way to engage my patrons with my work.
You've taken a couple of artist retreats/trips around the world, and translated those experiences into specific collections- how did you arrive at that process? How do you see it changing your work?
Taking my first solo international trip came with a lot of inspiration in many unexpected ways. Everytime I travel, it is almost like I get handed a key to a part of myself and it opens up a new facet of my creative practice. I arrived at this process after attending Residenza Lago Scuro, an artist residency on a Northern Italian Cascina in Cremona. It was a saturated twelve days of creativity, impactful relationships, and community over the best food and wine you could ever imagine. For one of my project concepts, I was really interested in the idea of creating a ‘time capsule’ to leave for the next residency and to fill it with inspiration and memories. This wasn’t a project I was able to fulfill on the farm, so I brought it into my art as a way to encapsulate my experience in Italy. I now call these ‘Capsule Collections!’ I like to use these collections as opportunities to explore different styles and to tell a story of my travels through specific motifs. Since, I have created two Capsule Collections, one dedicated to my summer in Cremona and one dedicated to a summer in Greece.
Do you have any advice for folks looking for inspiration in the world around them to fuel their art?
I think it is really important when looking for inspiration to be very open to being in a liminal state/head space and I think this is what traveling does for me. A liminal space is a place where you are in between where you’ve come from and where you’re going - a crossing, or threshold - and the space can be physical, mental, emotional, metaphorical, and sometimes even all of these things at once. It gives you a new place to examine where you want to go creatively without your usual day-to-day obligations and helps you to reevaluate your relationship with your artistic practice and I think from that comes a lot of inspiration and perspective.
What's next for MackBecks?
The next step for MackBecks is definitely to take my work BIGGER. I have been really inspired to make my work bigger for the last two years and after showing in Munich Jewellery Week this March, I know this is the direction of where my work is headed. Over the last two months, I have been using my new Home Decor Collections as a way to sample my ideas slightly larger, while also keeping them functional and sellable. I anticipate to grow these collections, but also to dive deeper into Fine Art. I would also definitely say that 3D Design is on the table for my next venture within my art price.
I am also currently working towards developing an Artist Residency in Greece on the Island of Skiathos with a group of friends. I will be spending most of this Summer developing the programming and hope to hold our first ‘friends of friends’ residency in the fall of 2024. This project has been in the making for almost two years and I have been eager to share the details, so stay tuned on my social media!
Any advice for artists marketing themselves in the social media space? You do such an awesome job embracing technology, it seems!
Oh gosh, that’s nice of you to say that! My journey with social media has been an interesting roller coaster, which I imagine, is a similar story for many creatives reflecting their lives on the internet. The goal for my content is to always feel like ‘me.’ It is important for me to engage authentically with my audience and to be very bright and joyful in my posts. I also think it is important to make content that you are actually excited about making and to limit the amount of time you spend on making content. I have a more streamlined system now, where I only dedicate 30 minutes max a day to making and editing videos/commenting, engaging, and replying to my audience. I also have reached a point in content creation where I am okay with growing my audience at a pace that works for me vs. making a lot of content to go viral and then burn myself out. Recently, I decided that I was going to figure out what Instagram was looking for from my creative account and decided to look backwards into content that performed well and try to recreate those concepts with new work. It actually worked out very well and my new content feels like a good routine that I kind of switch up the subject, while also delivering content that my audience and the algorithm enjoy.
