Interview by Katie Aiken Ritter
“Wherever you are is at the center of everywhere that you are not.”
It’s pretty cold in Penn Eastburn’s studio; not quite freezing yet, but he’ll be working through the night, and it’s going to get a lot colder.
Through the open barn door, a field and naked misty winter trees backed by a sky of the softest pink. Inside, works in progress: grays, blacks, whites and shades of silver connect with old fabric, with paper, with long-ago photographs and random openings.
Penn studied film and media at college in Utah, then held art-adjacent positions: custom frame shop worker, artist’s assistant in Brooklyn, arts center employee in Jersey City, and art handler in New York.
What’s an art handler? Someone who transports artworks and hangs contemporary art in galleries, museums, and collectors’ homes. This career progression led to an MFA program at the Hoffberger School of Painting at MICA.
Penn works with found materials: screen door mesh, fabric samples. Spray paint, house paint, oil paint, acrylics. Cut-up reproductions of vintage photographs from the late 1800s–early 1900s. Gelatin silver and platinum prints found in public domain archives, printed at large scale at FedEx.
Key themes include double-meaning titles like “Nothing is Enough” or “Nothing (actually) IS Enough.” Work with space, emptiness, and openings. Expected and unexpected voids in large-scale vintage photographs.
“Wherever you are is at the center of everywhere that you are not. Wherever you are, right now, is at the center of every single possibility of past, present, and future.”
This quote titles the exhibition: “AT THE CENTER OF EVERY DIRECTION.”
“I like to give things time to unfold at their own pace. I’d like to show more, but I’m not really in a rush to blow up or anything.”
Exhibition dates: February 4 to February 26 at Manor Mill.
Penn Eastburn is an abstract artist who creates complex mixed-media works using found materials, vintage photographs, and various painting techniques.
He studied film and media in Utah, worked in art-adjacent roles in Brooklyn and Jersey City, and earned an MFA from MICA’s Hoffberger School of Painting.
His practice emphasizes openness, spatial relationships, and the integration of cut-up public-domain photographs from the late 1800s–early 1900s with contemporary materials like spray paint, acrylics, and fabric samples.
