My first solo show in Los Angeles is now open. Please stop by to see it in person before May 6th. Below are shots of the full installation. It is made up of Ink on Paper Drawings, Photography, and Sculpture made from a well traveled shipping container. Here is a link to Cordesa Fine Art for more info
I’m honored to be asked to speak about my art and sea experience at the San Francisco Maritime Museum on March 25th at 1pm. I was invited by (and will be speaking with) Lauren Hartman, a talented artist and professor at Cal Maritime Academy. Please stop in if you can and check out the line up of speakers for the rest of the spring/summer.
I’ll be opening up a two person show title “Beyond The Horizon” this week in San Francisco at the Museo Italo Americano. I’m paired up with a talented LA based artist named Jen Celio. Located in Fort Mason, the museum is free and open to the public, it will be up from Jan 27th- April 30th. Click here for more info
Edition 7: Martin Machado from John McNeil Studio on Vimeo.
I recently completed this huge 38 piece installation at John McNeil Studio in Berkeley, CA. While I was preparing the work some nice folks from JMS came by for a studio visit and wrote up a little recap here. Check it out.
I was honored to have the kind folks involved with the Teatro Container in Chile, bring my work to Brest, France for their Maritime Festival. (Click here for images and a French article on the event). A large installation was set up showcasing some of my ink on paper pieces alongside the large-scale painting of French artist Paul Boas. Teatro Container also created information booths to highlight some environmental issues such as the Chiloe Island incidents in order to discuss the devastating results of farmed salmon in Chile and elsewhere.
I’m looking forward to a solo show opening up this friday May 27th at Seeing Things Gallery in San Jose. I will have a big group of silver gelatin photographs that I have been working hard in the darkroom to develop. The photos span my work on a handful of containerships since 2009. In addition I’m showing a bunch of letterpress prints of my ongoing series of ink on paper paintings. Opening is from 7-10 pm and it should be up for a month or so. Here is a link to Seeing Things for more info
I recently returned from a few weeks down in Valparaiso, Chile. I was lucky enough to be invited down by an Arts and Theater organization called Teatro Container, which was putting on their 5th Festival showcasing visual and performance art all centered around shipping containers. Some of their previous festivals have been in other areas of South America and as far out as Rapa Nui (Easter Island). This one was scattered all over the port city of Valparaiso, where they are based.
For those unfamiliar, Valparaiso is a beautiful city on the sea about an hours drive from Santiago, Chile. It was a major port for about 300 years before the Panama Canal was put it, where most ships going around Cape Horn would stop to stock up. In 1914 when the canal went in, Valparaiso resembled a cutting edge European city with a lot of the technological advancements of the era, including several “ascensor’s” or funicular’s as they are called in Europe. They say that sailors used to called it “little San Francisco” and it is easy to see the connection between these two distant Pacific ports.
Colorful houses line the “cerros” or hills that make up the city.
I was brought down to create an art installation involving shipping containers, that I tried to design to resemble my images. In addition I set up a gallery in one of the containers, and filled it with large prints of my recent body of work. 
Plaza Sotomayor is a large space downtown where the installation was located. It was a fitting spot, flanked by the buildings of the National Consulate of Arts and Culture as well as the Chilean Armada. The festival had a team of welders and talented craftsmen to transform the containers into all sorts.
(part of the Origami production in the foreground)
I spent part of the first week working to construct the supports for the prints
the amazing hillside workshop of Myra, part of the festival’s team, who helped me sew the prints to hold the wood supports.
The containers were set in place and a little cement debris brought in for effect.
Installation in place, open to the public
Opening night got a little crazy.
I got to spend the rest of my time wandering the city with my wife/baby and seeing the sights, its a beautiful place filled with graffiti, murals, and lots of wandering dogs. 
There were a ton of great plays and projects that were part of the festival, unfortunately I didn’t do the best job documenting the others so please check out the festival’s website (here) for more info if interested. They had several community based projects, such as the Cocina Publica which is a container they turned into a mobile kitchen that they can drop anywhere and start cooking up delicious meals with community members. Anyways, I hope I can get back there again someday soon, truly amazing place and people!
I’m real excited to have some of my work featured with the New York Times Magazine. Click here for the link to see the article and slideshow
Ever since I got the chance to flip through some early editions of Captain Cook’s “Voyages Of Discovery” books at the special collections floor of the San Francisco Public Library, I have wanted to create a book of my own. After years of planning with the guys at The Prototype Press, I am very proud of this beautiful thing we created. 
the title Page from the book, all handset type
The book is 40 pages in length and has 20 plates of my paintings. The press was especially excited about a typeface they had called Caslon, which was used in the original Capt. Cook books, so they encouraged me to write some passages for this book. So over my three months at sea last spring on the Pacific, between China, the mainland US, and Hawaii, I worked on these writings as well as some small paintings that made their way into this book. The results are a series of short stories about shipping life and poems that mirror the fragmented subject matter and style of my images.
Images pressed into the pages using polymer as well as magnesium plates and an ancient letterpress machine
11×15″ Hardbound all by hand, with a black cloth cover and copper foil stamp, an edition of 15. For interest in purchase and more info please check out the Prototype Press Website here
If you would like to flip through the book in person you can check it out at K. Imperial at 49 Geary in San Francisco as well. We will likely do an official book release gathering at the gallery on Thursday Dec 10th, please check back for times. Thanks
