Jeff Mann

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Jeff was born in Southern California. As a kid he took apart the family lawn mower to build himself a go-kart. He loved the hotrod culture and grew up in a very “American Graffiti” way. He always liked drawing and started surfing around age fifteen. After high school he worked for about 18 months at Lockheed Aircraft working on C5A Delta planes. In 1968 Jeff packed all his belongings into his VW bus and shipped it all to Hawaii where he spent the next year until he ran out of money. He then sold his VW and flew back home and moved up to the Bay Area to attend art classes at the College of Marin.

From there he went to San Francisco State University and studied with the realists like Robert Bechtle. He also did some design for the theatre program and made some short animated films exploring various modes of expression. After graduation with a degree in painting and drawing he then moved up to Sausalito where he started working on boats. He helped restore and old 1910 tug boat and then worked on numerous projects with the crew he met there. He lived on a houseboat for a time and eventually wound up renting a 2000 square foot building on the Napa Street pier. He built it out to have a living quarters, an artist studio, and a boat building shop.

His friend got a 1910 Danish cargo ship. For six years Jeff and a crew worked on getting it fully sea worthy with the goal of circumnavigating the globe. They ran all kinds of shake down cruises with the boat and Jeff eventually had accumulated enough time at sea to qualify for a Coast Guard captain’s license. He had a whole career ready to go at sea, but decided that wasn’t what he really wanted to do.

In 1981 Lorne Peterson hired Jeff for a three week model building gig. He wound up working at ILM for the next 24 years. Jeff worked in numerous capacities on films like Star Trek 2, Poltergeist, ET, Return of the Jedi, Young Sherlock Holmes, to name just a few. Jeff later became a senior staff member and helped oversee the company’s massive growth and the transition to working digitally.

Today Jeff lives in Ojai, California where he maintains a studio practice, showing his work in shows and galleries. It was a great time chatting with Jeff and hearing about his amazing life and career.