BIO
Deborah Benioff Friedman, a mixed-media artist, recently retired from a career in veterinary ophthalmology, was born in San Francisco. She graduated from Stanford with a degree in English, Cornell with a degree in veterinary medicine, writes poetry, studies genealogy, and currently resides with her husband in the East Bay area.
ARTIST STATEMENT
What do I want to make? Objects with a sense of history, of strata, of “wear and tear.” I enjoy following my intuition rather than a plan, keeping open to the mysteries right in front of me or hidden under the surface. Archaeology, paleontology, geology, genealogy, and the unconscious: all are big influences, as is poetry. Anything with layers, with an “underneath,” or with a vein of ore tunneling through.
In my veterinary practice, I was an eye surgeon and, therefore, am adept at microsurgery, tiny sutures under a microscope. And all of this finds its way into the colors and textures I am drawn to, the pieces I make, the way I work.
Whether it is sanding a collage to reveal another layer, kneading mulberry paper for hours to make joomchi, embroidering tea bags with black thread, or dipping rusty wire into a vat of paper pulp, the insistent, slow, and patient rhythms of life and of this earth are what move me and inspire me to get back to the studio, no matter how calamitous and fraught the era in which we live.
Photography by Lia Roozendaal
