Lennie Mace

Lennie Mace レニー・メイス
Arriving at his PEN PAL exhibition, 2012
Born	1965 (age 51–52) New York, NY
Nationality	American
Education	Self-taught; School of Visual Arts (New York)
Known for	Fine art, illustration, design
Movement	Ballpoint pen artwork; PENting, Media Graffiti
Awards	Scholastic Art Achievement Award, USA; SPC Graphic Design International Grand Prix, Japan
Website	www.lenniemace.com

Lennie Mace (レニー・メイス, Renī Meisu, born 1965) is an American contemporary artist, born in New York City. Mace is predominantly known for his drawings in ballpoint pen, using them to create fine artwork. He is considered a pioneer of the medium. His imagination has also served commercial purposes, appearing in print as illustrations and comic art. Art reviewers have referred to Mace as the da Vinci of doodlers and the ballpoint Picasso.

Lennie Mace has resided in Japan since 1994. A hair salon in central Tokyo, belonging to a Japanese patron, doubles as the Lennie Mace VIEWseum, displaying a collection of original artwork housed within an interior hand-crafted by the artist. He remains active in art communities of both America and Japan.

As a teenager, Mace was the Gold Key winner of a Scholastic Art Achievement Award. He passed the entry exam for New York’s High School of Art and Design but did not attend. He briefly attended New York's School of Visual Arts in the early 1980s.

Lennie Mace’s first professional art-related work began appearing in New York City during the mid-1980s, from which time he gained recognition as an illustrator. From the start of his career, his illustrations and artwork have been rendered solely using ballpoint pens, whether as simple black line drawings or as shaded halftones using a range of available ballpoint pen colors. Imagery depicted in his artwork touches upon aspects of so-called high-brow and low-brow aesthetics, even during the late 1980s when there was a greater divide between both art worlds. His artwork would go on to decorate the pages of a diverse range of publications, from High Times magazine to The New York Times newspaper.

Mace was among a circle of emerging artists of the late 1980s whose talents were encouraged by New York-based entities providing work and exposure. His earliest illustration credits appear in High Times magazine in 1987. Notable contributions to the magazine include two cover illustrations; the first published in the November 1988 issue, and another published in 1992. Both dealt with the subject of growing marijuana in outer space. The choice of Mace's artwork for use on the cover of the magazine was a point of contention among the editorial staff at the time — a democratic process outlined in a 1992 High Times Greatest Hits anthology — and incited hate-mail from the magazine's readership. Mace's Pot on the Moon illustration was chosen over High Times' characteristic marijuana photography, a nude photograph of Allen Ginsberg and other designs.