The sun seems to shine on Eric Mack.
An idyllic childhood. A stimulating education.
A burgeoning career. And now, his first studio.

     Mack, 27, surveys his space, one of the coveted studios at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, with excitement.

     "This is 600 square feet," he says, "almost the size of my apartment, and with a view of the city besides!"

    He has already moved in a group of paintings-in-progress and -- another neccesity -- his stereo setup, including a turntable for his vinyl records. ALso at the ready; hundreds of tapes from an eclectic collection dating back to middle school, that ranges from Steely Dan, one of his father's favorites, to Pizzicato Five, a postmodern Japanese group that jumps from genre to genre --retro,jazz,soul.

     But except for the sounds, the space is gloriously empty, and Mack is itching to fill it up with his distinctive abstractions. Painted on paper, wood, or loose canvas, they are mosaics of geometric forms, collaged materials and imaginative color. A magpie for sources, Mack finds his imagery in such things as electronic circuitry, signs, record album covers, blueprints and old graphic design manuals.

     "I'm all about shape, pattern and repetition of form," he explains.

     The works leaning against the studio wall make reference to his all-American Childhood, spent in Goose Neck, SC., a suburban community 30 miles outside Charleston. Mack loved to draw but the former Boy Scout was also busy playing sports, building things with his father, an electrician, doing household chores -- and cutting hair.

     "My mother is a cosmetologist, and she gave me clippers when I was 13," he says. "I learned practicing on myself. It was the days of flattop fades and cutting names and images into the hair. I got so I could hold up a mirror and write my name in cursive on the back of my head."

     The kids at school liked his style and asked him to cut their hair. He's been barbering ever since. He now co-owns a shop, Barber's Edge on Buford Highway. The income take the financial burden of being an emerging artist. (For the record, Mack, who has dreadlocks, hasn't cut his own hair in nine years.)

     But art was always what Mack liked to do best, and the protfolio he presented for admission to the Atlanta College of Art in 1994 shows the talent as a draftsman that he brought with him and maintains in what he calls a "linear edge." At ACA, the illustration major tried his hand at a variety of media, but he got more than technical instruction. One teacher, Charles Nelson, opened his eyes to the history of African-American art.

     "It hit me at the right time," Mack says. "I saw the vast variety. Man, there are so amny options out there. Up till then I had stuck with pencil and prismacolor. I was too intimidated by the brush. Once I took a chance and tried it out, I thought, 'this brush is like the clippers.' It came like i had been doing it for a long time."

     Since earning his degree in 1998, Mack has become part of the Atlanta Gallery scene. IN 2001, on his third try, Fay Gold Gallery took him into its stable. he will have a show there next season, when he plans to debut a new outlet for his tapestry of colors and shapes: computer parts. he is giving the Mack treatment to soundboards and plans to embellish computer mouses and screens as well.

     Proudly, he pulls out a few of the sound boadrs which he has transformed into gemlike reliefs.

     "The opportunities are just endless," he says.