Lumax Photography
About
Shawn HibmaCronan is a Bay Area native who grew up building things as a way to better understand material, physics, and notions of attachment. He studied Sculpture and Furniture at the California College of the Arts and has continued learning through making every day since. Utilizing a range of traditional and cutting-edge fabrication processes, he creates artworks from wood, metal, and other time-tested materials. These artworks aim to convey ideas or communicate a message through their form, ingredients, and placement. His site-specific works are conceptually tied to their locations, honoring the sites’ history, current use, or envisioned future. His mobile works are often intended to be picked up, climbed on, sat in, adjusted, or operated in order to explore their full potential. In all cases, he strives to create iconic artworks that viewers find familiar yet strikingly novel, with forms that appeal to all walks of life, providing a memorable experience or sparking new ideas for the inquisitive viewer. Ultimately, he believes that thoughtful craft is a necessity. If using time, energy, and resources to make art, it is essential to put great effort into creating lasting objects—well-made and timelessly beautiful, inside and out.
HibmaCronan has exhibited work at the San Francisco International Airport, the Oakland Museum of California Sculpture Court, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Artist Soapbox Derby, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Tokyo, Japan. Has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Autodesk Pier 9 Workshop and the Oakland Museum of California, among others. He has taught craft workshops at the Crucible school in Oakland and Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. He has been an ongoing member of the California College of the Art’s Alumni Mentorship Program and has hosted technique based apprenticeships for emerging artists in his studio on the former Naval Air Base in Alameda, California.
In 2023 HibmaCronan completed a large public art commission for a new development in Oakland and was commissioned by the United States Department of State to create 24 sculpture gifts for the member nations of APEC. He and his wife have a newborn daughter and are currently renovating a 117 year old home and art studio in Santa Rosa, California.
HibmaCronan served on the Berkeley Art Center’s Board of Directors from 2018 to 2023.