From photography and design to Gregorian chants—Jim MacKenzie is anything but retired
“I love doing creative collaboration,” confesses the tall lanky husband of artist/illustrator Renée Flower. Best known for more than 30 years as UCSC’s director of publications, and design maestro of the university’s alumni review magazine, UC Santa Cruz Review, Jim MacKenzie has been even more deeply engaged in music, design and photography projects in the past six years since his alleged retirement.
On a Finnish Modern table in his Westside house sit three of his recent illustrated publications. He sings Gregorian chant every Sunday morning, plays gigs with a country music trio, and is currently making atmospheric coastal photographs that will doubtless go into yet another MacKenzie-designed book. The cool, calm and laid-back MacKenzie sets an astonishing pace.
“I was down in San Diego in the late ’70s and a friend in Santa Cruz called me up and told me he had found the dream job for me,” he says. It was, indeed, and he began at UCSC in 1979, the same year he met his wife. A former architecture major, MacKenzie easily navigates the visual world. “A lot can be communicated by art direction,” he says, “by the size and choice of images, placement of text, design of the page. In the context of my university work, I had to be a visual artist, I tried to communicate stories visually, by what I call ‘editorial photography.’” The evidence of his skill is evident in the books I pore over, books filled with MacKenzie’s words, as well as images and design.
Born in Pennsylvania, MacKenzie drove west with his parents when he was 5 years old. “It was on that cross-country trip that I heard my parents singing—in two-part harmony! That was the very first time I was aware of harmony,” he says. It was a precocious epiphany. “All through high school I joined trios and groups, played clarinet until I traded it in for a guitar.” MacKenzie sang and played popular and folk music “at school functions, clubs and at Griswald’s smorgasbord in Redlands,” he grins.
At college in Los Angeles, he began doing graphic design, including work on an Earth Day festival attended by Buckminster Fuller, before steeping himself in visual history. “I lived in the Gamble House for a summer,” he says, enjoying the envy on my face as I consider what it would mean to inhabit one of the gems of Arts & Crafts architecture. While still an art major at USC he rented the chauffeur’s quarters of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennes House for a few years. The design die was cast by the time he got out of college. Then came a stint at the LA Weekly, followed by a year in Spokane with a small graphics company he helped found. In the ’70s however, all roads led to Santa Cruz. MacKenzie’s did, too.
Three years ago, he teamed up with local singers Dan Landry and Heidi Renteria, performing country, folk and bluegrass as the Sister Brothers. And those weekly Gregorian chant sessions? “It’s partly social,” he confesses. “Channeling music dating back to the seventh century, singing it keeps that whole history alive.” The most recent collaboration between MacKenzie and his spouse is a beautifully photographed book about a highly sought-after group of guitar makers—luthiers—in our area, published in 2014. Designed around an “Art of Guitar” exhibition, From These Woods is the result of a half year spent meeting and photographing the craftsmen and their exquisite instruments. “We went nuts in their shops,” MacKenzie recalls. During the two-month run of the exhibit, the creators sold out all but a few dozen books. [See the “From These Woods” Facebook site.]
MacKenzie brushes off the shock and awe his productivity inspires. “I didn’t retire from work!” he exclaims. “Besides, I like to collaborate. I don’t need to control every aspect of a project. I think collaboration is the best way to work—but the chemistry has to be there.”
For more information on Jim MacKenzie’s photography and design, visit jimmackenzie.zenfolio.com. PHOTO: RENEE FLOWER
