Zachary True Hammack
Zac “True” Hammack is an Oklahoma City native who exhibited a strong aptitude for painting and drawing at a young age. He studied art at University of Oregon, then settled in Eugene, OR where he immersed himself in an art culture with music festivals (for which he designed posters, stickers, and other pieces) and rock and roll puppet shows (in which he played guitar, wrote songs, and sang). The artist spent years working on a farm, and journeyed through other funky experiences involving sound, color, and nature. He returned to Oklahoma to start “Marking Tree Design” with his father, Dusty Hammack, a lumber salesman by profession. This family enterprise fused Zac’s artistic background with the family business.
Marking Tree Design is a design studio and workshop focused on elemental design, sustainable woodcraft, and boldly functional furniture. The company has produced public commissions for Myriad Gardens, Downtown OKC, and Woodworks distillery. Luxiere, The Oklahoman, and other local publications have written about Zac’s work at Marking Tree Design.
Zac has cultivated an identifiable style at Marking Tree Design in recent years. He starts with unique selections of wood. Particularly felled trees with ‘burl’ patterns, tines, and other natural intricacies and idiosyncrasies that simply can’t be manufactured or mass-produced. By selectively felling large, dead trees with strange growth patterns, the artist finds himself with stacks of raw materials with similar features to feed design motifs.
Another recognizable aspect of Zac’s craft is his subtle use of dyed resin. The philosophy when pouring mold around wood pieces and dyeing that mold is one of minimalism, allowing the natural features of the wood to be the focus. Recent pieces feature a hazy charcoal gray. A relatively small amount of dye gives the resin color, while maintaining translucence. Effects like ebonizing unique pieces of wood make natural wood rings and grain pop strikingly, again, the philosophy being that man can’t make art greater than the wood nature has made.