Paul Swenbeck

Paul Swenbeck grew up in Salem, MA, a town synonymous with the witch trial hysteria of Colonial America. His work combines sculpture, painting, and photography to create installations that filter craft and occult and spiritual themes through his own idiosyncratic perspective. He frequently collaborates with his partner Joy Feasley. The duo were Arts/Industry Foundry residents in 2017. This was followed by their first solo museum exhibition, Out, Out, Phosphene Candle, in 2018 at the John Michael Arts Center. They returned to the Kohler Co. factory in 2019 to work in the Pottery and Foundry on their artist-designed washrooms, Listen, the Snow is Falling, for the Art Preserve. Components of Out, Out, Phosphene Candle will be a part of Feasley and Swenbeck’s 2021 exhibition Will-o’-the-wisp at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.

In 2018 Swenbeck was awarded the independent creative production grant by Sachs Program for Arts Innovation that will support a publication for Out, Out, Phosphene Candle. He was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 2013 and has shown his work extensively including at the Institute of Contemporary Art (PA), the Walker Art Center, and the Institute of Contemporary Art (PA). Swenbeck’s work can be found in the West Collection (PA) and the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NY). Swenbeck graduated with a degree in ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art in 1991.