Ailuropoda melanoleuca: Evolutionary Cul-de-sac

Deborah Simon

project overview

During spring 2024, Deborah Simon worked with Digital Print Lab Associate Director and Master Printer Dennis Hrehowsik to transform one of her digital paintings into a 45″ x 65″ digital print on a primed panel. This process involved extensive experimentation to most closely match the colors of the original Photoshop layers. Deborah hand gessoed and sanded the test panels with different primers to assess compatibility, printing the same image on the Swiss Q UV printer to identify which base yielded the best color results. After trial and error, they found that Titanium white served as the best primer, most accurately mimicking the colors of the Photoshop file. Precise color proofing was crucial for this print, as too much ink muted the colors and less ink could show the traces of the hand treatments on the panel. After printing, Deborah added hand-painted elements, such as white highlights and deeper blacks in the pandas, using acrylic ink. She also glazed heart vines and painted moths and birds to complete the delicate piece.

Project Team Members (Powerhouse Arts Staff): Dennis Hrehowsik

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artist biography

Deborah Simon’s art focuses on humanity’s discordant relationship with animals. Drawing from her experience working in veterinary clinics and the Bronx Zoo Exhibition Department, her art examines how people consider, use, and disregard animals. Her animal sculptures and paintings have been exhibited internationally, including a recent solo show, Embroidered Morphologies at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, IL and in Lagomorph: Rabbits and Haresin Contemporary Craft at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. In the fall of 2023, her solo window installation, White Rabbit, a solo window installation was featured at AHA Fine Art in New York City. Deborah has been awarded 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 also received grants from the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. Deborah 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 School of Visual Arts. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.