ARTIST INFO

ELEANOR ANNAND
Weaverville, NC

PRINT | Paper sculpture, print

Penland Affiliation | Penland Resident Artist (2017-2020), Penland Core Fellow (2010-2012)

Artist Information | Studio artist; education: BFA North Carolina State University College of Design; professional experience: Co-founder of 7 Ton Letterpress Collective (NC), graphic designer, Earthfare (NC), freelance graphic designer, Penland School of Craft (NC); exhibitions: Penland Gallery Focus Exhibition (NC), Blue Spiral One Gallery (NC), Enamel Books (UK), Bookopolis (NC), The Nature of Design (CO)

Artist Statement | In my work, I bring a sensitivity to materials, form, and composition as a means for exploring the human condition. Seeking to create a sense of tension and equilibrium, I use intuitive and analytical processes that push and pull off of one another. Paintings become frenetic histories of raw emotions, sculptures capture and suspend moments in time, modular compositions are constructed and deconstructed to mimic our constant state of flux. There is a meditation to all of it.

Unbound to one medium, I shift ideas from painting and printmaking into sculpture, installation, and video. This approach allows me to respond to form and material from multiple vantage points and encourages me to work energetically and untethered to expectation.
Capturing and releasing time is a central theme in my work. I am interested in what happens when the intention of an object is not for it to last, but for it to evolve and shift over time. By exploring craft and therefore materials in this non-traditional way I find unexpected creative paths. In my studio, paper scraps and rejected prints are collected and find new purpose in cast paper sculptures. My cardboard sculptures are modular and can be reconfigured endlessly until ultimately they are sent to be recycled. In thinking about the ways I can repurpose and reuse materials in my shop I have inevitably started to think about how the materials are produced and distributed before arriving at my studio. I feel a sense of responsibility and reverence for the resources that are transformed into materials and then again transformed by my hands. This cycle connects me to time and place and is the guiding force in my life.