Episode #152 | Brooke Einbender

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A neighbor’s hot pink door in Santa Fe, New Mexico, studded with tin milagros, was one of the first thresholds that shaped Brooke Einbender’s path. Born in San Francisco and raised in Marin before moving across Santa Fe, North Carolina, and New York City, Einbender learned early on that changing environments can alter perspective. Over time, that relationship with physical space, movement, and geography evolved into a full-scale exploration of physical and digital portals.

Working under the artist moniker Mindbender, Einbender’s career spans oil painting, virtual reality, projection mapping, and public art installations. Her practice began in traditional oil painting, but while living in Telluride, Colorado, she sought ways to step directly inside her canvases. A grant allowed her to translate 2D oil paintings into 3D virtual reality models using Google Tilt Brush. Wanting to free her work from the confines of a VR headset, she turned to projection mapping, using VR-created video art to transform historic buildings, mountain faces, and ice skating rinks into cosmic, immersive canvases.

In spring 2020, weeks after lockdown shut down her first solo exhibition, her practice took a turn following a severe concussion. During months of quiet recovery, she stepped away from her gallery job to pursue art full-time. During that period of isolation, she began collecting reclaimed doors gifted by her community—transforming them into mixed-media “portals” embellished with paint, hardware, and beads. This collection grew into The Unknown Zone, a project that placed portal installations inside a mining mill and along Telluride forest nature trails, inviting adventurers to reflect.

That interest in interactive, public thresholds eventually led to Gaiascope, six-foot immersive kaleidoscope sculptures built from steel, mirrors, LEDs, and site-specific video art. Originally debuting at Canal Convergence in Scottsdale, Arizona, the City of San José commissioned Gaiascope as a public installation for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Suspended in public space, the installation features interactive pedestals that allow viewers to manipulate the lighting, speed, and patterns of the internal mirrored projections—turning static observation into a collaborative, urban experience.

In this conversation, Einbender talks about expanding beyond the VR headset to projection-mapped mountainsides, retreating to an Alaskan yurt to protect her creative process, and the engineering required to take six-foot interactive kaleidoscopes from her mind to the city streets.

Website: mindbender-art.com

Instagram: mindbender.art | mindbender.studio

Artwork images provided by Brooke Einbender