Dan Mackin and M.E. Gruber: A Two-Person Exhibition

The Bailey Art Gallery  presents a two-person exhibition featuring local painter Dan Mackin, whose highly stylized work spans multiple mediums, and photographer M.E. Gruber, who documented the burgeoning surf scene in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast in the 1960s and early 70s. The exhibition opens Friday April 24, 2026 and runs through the summer. Mackin and Gruber share some commonalities. They both express their love for a life on the water, conveying it with a sense of color that is vibrant; seemingly technicolor in feel. They also both served in the US Navy – Gruber in World War II and the Korean War, Mackin in Vietnam.

Dan Mackin (born 1948, Pasadena, CA) began documenting his adventurous life through drawing and painting during a 1971 sailing trip along the west coast of Mexico and Central America. Since then, he has traveled extensively throughout the Caribbean, South Pacific, Asia, and the Amazon rainforest, where he also worked as a tour guide. A fluent Spanish speaker, Mackin earned a B.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Intercultural Education in Mexico. He spent years living on sailboats and working various jobs including advertising and teaching at Cal State Fullerton, before fully dedicating himself to art in 1989.

Mackin has developed a unique style, combining airbrush and traditional painting techniques to create vividly detailed scenes of idyllic beaches and coastal landscapes. His work evokes an immediate sense of positivity, transporting viewers into a world of tranquility and harmony with nature. This exhibition features paintings on canvas, navigation maps, surfboards, and a guitar. It also includes four of Mackin’s collaborations with legendary singer-songwriter Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, as well as serigraphs created using multiple silkscreens for each color. Several surf posters are on display, representing the many poster commissions he has completed over his career. In 2011, Mackin became a licensed Disney artist. Throughout his career, he has supported organizations such as the National Kidney Foundation, Helping People Succeed, the Boys & Girls Club, and Natives Helping Natives, among others.

M.E. Gruber (born 1924, West Palm Beach, FL), a grandson of early Florida settlers, worked for the U.S. Post Office following his service as a sonarman in the U.S. Navy. He was also a scout leader with the Gulf Stream Council of the Boy Scouts of America. In the 1960s and early 1970s—before coastal residential development, when beach access was more open—Gruber began documenting the emerging surf culture and sport along the beaches of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast. Over time, he amassed an archive of more than 5,000 Kodachrome transparencies, which were preserved by his sister, Charlotte Brown. She later donated the collection to the Palm Beach County Surfing History Project. The collection is now featured at the Surfing Florida Museum, which recently opened its new location in West Palm Beach.

Gruber also founded and sponsored the Surf Life surf team. His photographs were frequently published in surfing magazines. The Bailey is exhibiting 50 full-frame Kodachrome transparencies from this unique, mid-century modern archive, printed in 12 x 8-inch format on archival chromogenic paper. Kodachrome film was introduced by Kodak in 1935 and is famously characterized by its archival stability and vibrant, high-contrast aesthetic. Additional images can be viewed in a slideshow in our media room.

Several works in the exhibition document a popular surf break created by the Amaryllis, which ran aground on Singer Island on September 8, 1965, during Hurricane Betsy. The Amaryllis has since been cut up and towed offshore and now serves as a well-known scuba diving site. Gruber’s legendary slide shows—set to music and held in recreation halls and auditoriums—drew enthusiastic crowds of surfers eager to catch a glimpse of themselves or their friends doing what they loved most.