ABOUT

Deborah Stein is an artist and writer who lives between NYC and a small mountain village in Northern New Mexico. She writes, teaches and makes art to create new worlds out of old stories or perhaps simply to translate new ways of seeing this world and where we sit and walk through it. She makes work for humans of all-ages.

Deborah’s shows at LDBA Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she also teaches art-making workshops in Summer and Fall. Her images and writing meet in her (almost) weekly substack Sometimes a Ghost. Her visual narrative and story-making workshops, salons, and creative residencies for illustrators and artists can be found through her rogue art school The Storycamp Disco. In 2025 Deborah will be teaching alongside Sophie Blackall at Milkwood in July and Margaux Kent at The Highlights Foundation in October.

And if you want to get personal, she loves: reading and looking at art and listening to music, hiding in bookshops, poking in gardens, driving on dirt roads, movies in movie theaters, talking to strangers, hiking up hills, and walking along rivers. She’s super into cooking (she almost went to cooking school but thought that would take the fun out of it). Let us not forget laughing, drawing in the car and being with humans and animals she loves. Lastly, she’s not great at small talk.

Where to See and read

Human/Nature, a collaboration with artist Sean Hudson will open August 15th, 2025 at LDBA Gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work will also be part of Sound and Vision at Hecho a Mano in Santa Fe in October 2025.

Deborah’s 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 and will also be part of Corporeal’s Writing’s Interior Rooms in the Summer 2025. 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 fundraising and 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