Three color screenprint on Frenchpaper, 19 in x 12 in. Edition of 38. The deer head is an iconic image rooted deep in the world of myth. Ecological Streams of Consciousness: Sika Deer exists both in the ecosystems of the Eurasian forests and the myths of the people who share these places with them. Deborah Simon writes, “The sculpture became an ecological stream of consciousness for me, evolving on its own, the deer dictating the other species cohabitating with it. Only after it was well on its way did I see the references to mythology, especially the Yggdrasil, the world ash tree of the Norse legends, with its gossiping squirrel, predatory birds, and stags.” The stag exists in the balance between life and death, heaven and hell, the sacred and the profane.Deborah Simon’s art focuses on humanity’s discordant relationship with animals. Pulling from her work in veterinary clinics and the Bronx Zoo Exhibition Department, her art examines how people consider, use, and disregard animals. Her sculptures and paintings of animals have been exhibited around the world, most recently a solo show, Embroidered Morphologies at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, IL, and in Lagomorph: Rabbits and Hares in Contemporary Craft at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. White Rabbit, a solo window installation, was featured at AHA Fine Art in New York City in the fall of 2023. She has received numerous fellowships, including the Chulitna Lodge Creative Summer Residency at Lake Clark, Alaska, the Vermont Studio Center, Saint Ann’s Warehouse Puppet Lab, Sculpture Space, Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, and the Cultural Space Subsidy Program in Brooklyn, NY. She has received grants from the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. She studied sculpture at the Repin Institute of Art in Leningrad, USSR, received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and then an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
