Picture-MAKER & storIES-Teller

An artist and writer who lives between New York City and a small mountain village in Northern New Mexico with my husband and our little dog Pablo. 

You can see where my art meets my writing on my substack, Sometimes a Ghost. At the moment and what feels like always, I am working on writing and making art and books and ideas for humans of all ages that express variable ways of seeing the world and our parts in it. 

When I’m not drawing or painting I’m writing except for when I am teaching creative residencies and art and visual narrative workshops on and off-line in my rogue art school called The StoryCamp Disco (see more below). I love reading, looking at art, hiding in bookshops, poking in gardens, hiking up hills and walking along rivers. I love roads trips, movies, and well-made documentaries. I like to cook and laugh and draw in the car and to be with folks and animals I love.

A few other abouts

My second solo show, VIBRANT MATTER is up at LDBA Gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe March 22-May 19. I was chosen by Khôra Magazine to be part of their four-month curated writer program as the first writer-artist ever—my work can be seen there from May -August 2024 and looking forward to the Milkwood Peer Retreat in July of 2024 with Sophie Blackall. I was a fiction fellow working with Sabrina Orah Mark at the Under The Volcano residency in Tepoztlan, Mexico in January 2023,and in May 2023 was in residency writing and painting at The Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, MA. My artwork The Sea was chosen for Khôra Magazine’s cover and me as featured artist in the November 2023 Issue. In the Spring of 2023, my piece Ways of Dreaming My Way Home was chosen to accompany Chaya Babu’s writing in the Spring 2023 edition of the Literary Journal Rowayat.

I’ve been a writer/contributor for Poet/Journalist Michael Judge’s First Person with Letters From Ruthie in 2022 and was invited show art with Tamika Rivera’s Here Projects in 2020 and DiVerCity, the 2019 exhibition for Next Level and the 2018 design exhibition as well. In January 2017, I worked with the Women's March on Washington-NYC Chapter as Arts & Events Coordinator/Producer creating some of the first sign-making tutorials and workshops that went national. Concurrent to that I raised significant funds with the sale of my illustrations and prints for the Women's March and National Institute for Reproductive Heath. 

Contact me for any/all inquiries at: deborah.stein@me.com

See my workings here: Instagram: @deborah.j.stein

Work with me in a StoryCamp Disco workshop, retreat or residency here.

Read my writing on my new Substack, SOMETIMES A GHOST

Catch me at LDBA Studio in Santa Fe for watercolor workshops throughout the year and a new solo show of works on paper in March 2024.

The Storycamp disco story and 2024’s live retreat

I founded a workshop+residency program called StoryCamp Disco, a kind of rogue art school designed for artists, illustrators, storytellers and creative folks of all kinds to discover their voices and stories. Starting in the summer of 2020, after leading weekly IG LIVE workshops for children in the first 8 weeks of the pandemic, I began a remote residency as a “pandemic substitute” for the in-person creativity workshop for illustrators in New Mexico I had been planning, complete with live workshops and a supportive on-line community. 2023 is seeing new workshops and virtual residencies, one-night events, and story-making weekends. These programs have touched the lives of over 700 artists.I ran my first live creative retreat at the Highlights Foundation in May of 2022 and it was a joy to work with artists and storytellers in the 3rd dimension ask originally and next one happened in New Mexico in the Fall of 2023.

I am looking forward to June 7-9th 2024 when I’ll be teaching/guiding a three-day retreat for the incredible The Makerie entitled The Beautiful Things in Between. Registration for this opens December 18th and is limited to only 11 participants!