“I think sometimes I am not a woman,
but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground.
I am the seasons, I think sometimes,
January, May, November;
the mud, the mist, the dawn.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

STUDIO NOTES

I had the wonderful opportunity to create cameraless images in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Darkroom as part of the Man Ray Studio Workshop. Here’s my favorite experiment: a salted paper photogram. I feel really inspired to keep exploring salted paper images made without a camera, a reminder that I don’t need to worry so much about inspiration; it always shows up once I begin and enter the flow.

I think it’s important to remind ourselves of how far we have come, how much we have accomplished, and not get so caught up in the pressure to constantly produce. We’re all creative in so many ways beyond the making, in how we move through life, even in the mundane. Every moment is an opportunity to uniquely express who we are.

Here are a few monotypes from my archive—I don’t want to forget the versions of myself that made them.

“I don't believe I've made it—
I believe that I'm making it.
I believe that I've found my past
so that I can live in the present;
it's the most important thing to me.”
— Lemn Sissay

“Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you
for everything.”
— Mary Oliver, A Settlement

INFLUENCES

Factory Smoke, Edgar Degas
Degas is best known for his ballet dancers and racehorses, but I’m inspired by his monotypes, especially Factory Smoke (1877–79). Printed in black ink on paper from a drawing directly onto a metal plate, this mysterious image feels like breath, soot, and fog— industry dissolving into atmosphere. The haunted impression looks abstract and experimental, and the medium itself becomes a language.

Milky Way, Janet Sobel
Janet Sobel (1893–1968) was a self-taught, Ukrainian-born artist and mother of five who didn’t start painting until her forties, after her son encouraged her to try. She painted on the floor of her Brighton Beach, Brooklyn apartment, followed feeling, used whatever she had, and was painting for the pure joy of it. She arrived at this wild, all-over drip language years before Jackson Pollock. Milky Way (1945) is often cited as one of the first true all-over drip paintings. Pollock saw her work and admitted it made an impression on him, but Sobel was never fully acknowledged. Critics dismissed her as a “housewife” and “primitive” while celebrating Pollock, and her influence was largely overlooked.

REFLECTIONS

Making art is an otherworldly experience. It arrives from somewhere else, connecting me to something larger. It’s always been hard for me to make sense of how this fits into the physical world — the systems around it, the competition, the marketing, the way we’re told to package ourselves: artist statements, elevator pitches, calls for entry.

Art isn’t meant to be measured or ranked, and as an empathetic person, it’s hard to celebrate wins without feeling someone else’s loss. That kind of sensitivity doesn’t fit neatly into this system either. Art-making isn’t a commodity; it’s devotion, a ritual that transforms both the artist and the work itself, and hopefully the viewer. The challenge is keeping that devotion alive in a world that keeps trying to quantify everything sacred.

One way I try to keep it alive is by remembering how it felt to make things as a child: creating from curiosity, from the pure instinct to see what happens, without audience, outcome, or approval. So much of what we’re searching for still lives there.

Reflection/Journal Prompt: “What did you do as a child that created timelessness, that made you forget time? There lies the myth to live by.” — Joseph Campbell

Reading
Alice Walker Living By The Word: Essays
"I started to wonder if the old planet into which I had been born, and on which I had toddled so delightedly as a baby, and explored so appreciatively as a child—the planet of enormous trees and mellow suns; the planet of weeklong days—still existed. If it did exist, then I wanted to be reconnected with it more than I wanted anything else in life. I wanted to tell it how much I loved it, before it was too late."

Listening
Bob Dylan Blood On The Tracks
Jóhann Jóhannsson Orphée
The Sundays Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

Seeing
Charisse Pearlina Weston: mis-/mé- (squeeze) at Jack Shainman
Ana Mendieta: Back to the Source at Marian Goodman
Valerie Hammond: Waking Dreams at Plant House Gallery

Until next month… Protect your inner life and let the kindness you extend to others be your measure.

In presence and wonder,

Debora