“Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someone’s life. Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance.”
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”
— bell hooks, All About Love

“The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”
— James Baldwin, Nothing Personal

STUDIO NOTES

I have been working on a new series, In the End; our Beginning, aging and transforming silver gelatin paper through the Patina process. I’m thinking about how time reshapes all things in the natural world and within us, embracing Patina as both a visual language and a meditation on mortality.

Disappointment: As I experimented, I made many attempts but was not satisfied with the results — a reminder to stay with the work until your vision is fulfilled, while also trusting when to stop.

Perseverance: I stayed with the process, adding new chemical interactions. What emerged was not imposed but invited — a collaboration with the unknown, still unruly, still evolving.

Revelation: And finally, a piece that felt like a small miracle, arriving whole in ways I could never have planned.

I don’t believe in failure — only lessons, motivations, source material, and eventual gifts. When I’m not satisfied with a piece, I put it away, sometimes for years in my flat files. Then I feel a pull and rediscover something; it’s as if the work has been waiting for me to catch up. Maybe our art knows something we don’t — about what we are living through or what is still to come — and it arrives at the right time to offer solace and meaning, a testament to the mystical that moves through all creative work.

Here’s a Mordançage photogram from 2020, discarded from my series More Than Love.

I’ve had fourteen rejection letters recently — but the sting of rejection can strengthen our communal bond. What matters is our collective courage to step into the arena, to share with vulnerability and authenticity, and above all, to keep working.

"I wrote another play, and nobody liked it. And then another. But still, I thought. These people are crazy. I'm going to devote my entire life to theatre."
— Wallace Shawn, Paris Review: The Art of Theater No. 17

"One doesn't need a lot to be able to live. The great thing is to be free in your work. Of course it's important to print or exhibit, but if that's not possible you are still left with the most important thing of all — being able to work without asking anybody's permission."
— Andrei Tarkovsky, Journal 1970-1986

"There are plenty of artists who don’t have exhibitions. There’s plenty of art that’s never seen. There is this great, powerful desire to just create something. Making work that does not have a destination has its loneliness and its sadness about it. And many artists endure that for their entire lives, and it’s heroic."
— Phyllida Barlow, Art21

SUSTENANCE

Influences
Sven Nykvist, cinematographer and longtime collaborator of Ingmar Bergman, whose imagery is singular in composition, feeling, and soul.
“Every time I start a picture, on the first day it seems as if I am starting all over again. I love it. You can always learn something new. Sometimes it is about manipulating light. Other times it is about finding another angle into the human soul.”

Itchiku Kubota’s kimonos, Itchiku Kubota’s kimonos, large-scale artworks where multiple, life-size kimonos (each over six feet tall) are often displayed side by side to create a single panoramic landscape. Created using his “Itchiku Tsujigahana” technique, a complex process of dyeing, painting, and embroidery. The work overtakes you in a way I cannot explain.

The Young Martyr, Paul Delaroche, I have no words to describe how it feels to stand before this painting — just awe and inspiration.

Reading
Art Work: On the Creative Life, Sally Mann
“Do the work of your earnest heart, with all your body and soul, for as long as you breathe and with as much craft and creativity as you can wring from your every filament, and you will have made art. Your art.”

Stoner, John Williams
“Day by day the layers of reserve that protected them dropped away, so that at last they were like many who are extraordinarily shy, each open to the other, unprotected, perfectly and unselfconsciously at ease.”

Consolations, David Whyte
“The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”

Listening
Apollo, Brian Eno
Among My Swan, Mazzy Star
Mid Air, Paul Buchanan

Seeing
Man Ray: When Objects Dream at The Met
Andra Ursuța: Retina Turner at David Zwirner
Downtown/Uptown: New York in the Eighties at Lévy Gorvy Dayan

REFLECTIONS

As the season turns toward fall, I find myself working with limitations and trying not to get lost. At times, I feel devastated by the gap between what I want to make and what I can create because of limited resources. I know the answer is in returning to the present and just being instead of trying so hard to become, and the noise quiets.

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”

— Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Reflection/Journal Prompt: What helps you surrender to the present moment — to simply be here, without rushing to become?

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

In presence and wonder,

Debora