Artist's Bio

	Brendon O'Brien

Brendon O’Brien minored in Fine Arts and has a degree in Theater Arts from the State University of New York in Albany. The artist’s love of ancient Maya art began when he spent four years living among the modern Maya people in Mexico (Yucatan and Chiapas). While visiting the Maya ruins Brendon discovered, and developed a love for, the amazingly elegant and intricate art of the ancient Maya. With a desire to facilitate worldwide access to these beautiful images, he worked in collaboration with archeologists and limestone carvers to create a way to accurately reproduce them.

Because of weathering over the past 1300 years, many of the details contained in the original temple carvings have eroded away. This rendered the images and glyphs only partially decipherable by eye. Fortunately, world renowned archeologist Linda Schele rescued the meaning of these priceless treasures from obscurity. She used sophisticated cameras and rubbings of the hard-to-see details of these unique, monumental works. With the perfectly scaled line drawings Linda was able to render, and with the aid of computers to accurately scale them down to a smaller size, it was now possible to carve extremely accurate limestone reproductions of any size.

Brendon makes molds of these carvings and pours them in extra strong hydrocal plaster. He utilizes a four part process to bring contrast to the details. The artist’s entire process is accomplished by hand – with the exception of the computer drawings - without the aid of any electricity or machines.

The artist’s reproductions have been featured in galleries in the southwest including New Mexico’s Tropic of Cancer Garden Center in Santa Fe, the Heart of the Lotus in Santa Fe and the Yale Art Center in Albuquerque.