Picture-MAKER & storIES-Teller

Deborah Stein is an artist and writer who lives between New York City and a small mountain village in Northern New Mexico with her husband and a little dog named Pablo. 

She’s teaches visual narrative workshops and creative residencies through her rogue art school called The Storycamp Disco. She writes and makes art for humans of all ages that expresses different ways of seeing the world and our parts in it. You can see where her art meets her writing and sometimes her teaching on her substack, Sometimes a Ghost.

She loves reading, looking at art, hiding in bookshops, and poking in gardens. She love traveling and road trips, movies, and talking to strangers, hiking up hills and walking along rivers. She’s also into cooking and laughing and drawing in the car and being with folks and animals she loves.

A few other abouts

Deborah shows at LDBA Gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her fifth show there is coming summer of 2025, Human/Nature, a collaboration with artist Sean Hudson. Her work will also be part of the group show Sound and Vision at Hecho a Mano in Santa Fe in October 2025.

Her writing and art was chosen by Khôra Journal to be part of their four-month curated writer program as the first writer-artist ever in 2024—issues 32-35, April-July 2024. Her work The Sea was chosen for Khôra’s cover and was the featured artist for the November 2023 Issue.

In January 2023 Deborah was a fiction fellow at the Under The Volcano residency in Tepoztlan, Mexico working with Sabrina Orah Mark, and in May 2023 was in residency for writing and painting at The Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, MA. Her artwork Ways of Dreaming My Way Home was chosen to accompany Chaya Babu’s writing in the Spring 2023 edition of the Literary Journal Rowayat.

Deborah’s art was part of Here Projects in DiVerCity in 2019 and Next Level in 2018 curated by Tamika Rivera as part of NY Design Week. She worked with the Women's March on Washington-NYC Chapter as Arts & Events Coordinator/Producer in 2017 creating some of the first sign-making tutorials and workshops that went national. 

deborah.stein@me.com for inquiries

Instagram: @deborah.j.stein

StoryCamp Disco for on-line workshops and residencies

SOMETIMES A GHOST at Substack

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!