Passersby who stop to peer into Deb Koffman’s gallery at 137 Front Street in Housatonic can’t help but smile at the bright and animated messages of hope that stand in stark contrast to the otherwise drab sidestreet. It is December and, as the shortest day of the year arrives, so does the anticipation of a return to light, symbolism not lost on an artist who has been transformed through her time living and creating in the small hamlet of Great Barrington. Koffman, who came to the Berkshires during a period of great inner darkness, arrived feeling hopeless and depressed, only to find “a community of
healers” here. By magic, she connected with the Kripalu community where she found mindfulness and spirituality, hallmarks of a journey that landed her where she is today: sharing her experiences and offering what Koffman calls “soul support” for herself and others, literal “tools that [she] can go back to again and again when [she feels] stuck, overwhelmed, [and] panicked.”
Koffman espouses a central philosophy that makes her tick: emotions, people, experiences, projects; they all need processing. This basic principle was not so inherent when she arrived in the Berkshires at the age of 31, post-divorce and depressed. Koffman, who studied both interior and industrial design, had been creating window displays for Bloomingdales and Jordan Marsh, in New York and Boston; she recalls brushing her hair and wearing pretty clothes to mask the depth of her emotional pain. She describes being tormented by the expectation that she would follow a conventional path that included marriage, babies, and life in the suburbs. When she fell off this trajectory one year into her marriage, Koffman found herself at a crossroads. She remembers being “completely inarticulate” and realized she needed to find a way of being in a world that did not make sense to her. The first step? She began drawing cartoons, “just because.” Her mother loved them and recognized that “something was coming through” that was palpable. The elder Koffman encouraged and appreciated her daughter’s efforts, noting how simple yet insightful they were, and at the urging of a friend encouraged Deb to seek solace in Western Massachusetts. “I wasn’t an artist,” recalls Deb Koffman. “I came [to the Berkshires] to figure out my life one summer and just stayed.”
Koffman’s exposure to the Berkshires was a gateway to a world full of Buddhist teachings, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and therapeutic modalities, all of which helped her to confront the emotions and feelings that everyone has despite being expressed in different ways. She found these ideas “so incredibly interesting [when] nothing had ever interested [her] before.” In a way, they transformed her entire life. Koffman remembers wanting to die since she was six years old. Richard Clark, a Zen teacher and NLP guide, was a catalyst for getting Koffman on a new path through his posing of one simple question: “People who want to die think they are going to get something if they are dead. What do you want, Deb?” Her response became the bulk of her work, her journey, in arriving where she is today.
“I had no choice…I had to make a new life,” recalls Koffman. She painted toy boxes and furniture and called herself an artist. She confronted the fact that her desires, either to leave or to die, meant she was not being present. Koffman, who found feeling hard to bear, continued to draw and ultimately found “language for how to express [what her feelings look] like visually.”
Her artwork, in retrospect, she describes as symbolic; it contains “messages for me so I would remember” she says. “I made everything so in case I come back I will have [the messages].”
A sutra in yoga, she explains, is a simple, pithy observation of a larger message; for Koffman, her own meditations came from a deep, essential knowing inside. What are the words? What do they mean? These ostensibly rhetorical questions have propelled her creativity, and allowed her to answer another essential self-posed question: “What am I here for, what am I doing?” For Koffman, this is something she needs to understand in her body. As a result, many of her drawings and images focus on a single body part. Perhaps her most well known is the iteration of a pair of feet –Deb’s feet — clad in red shoes, and a pair of black and white striped tights. Koffman explains, “When I draw those feet, it is about grounding, and needing to find it.” For someone who spent the first half of her life unable to look people in the eye, now that’s all Koffman does, both literally and figuratively through her artwork. And her gift to the viewer is that anyone can step into her shoes and experience that same grounding. She similarly focuses on just eyes and just hands, further espousing the fact that her messages are universal and need not depict a whole being. She has experienced a transformation from being “so insecure, so lost, so depressed — so over the edge” to using art as a means of feeling what she was desensitized to for so long.
Koffman’s material of choice – cardboard — is favored for it being easy, cheap, fast, free and raw. It is largely symbolic of the rather unconventional path she has found through cultivating the power of choice and submitting to the potential for transformation that abounds as a result. Koffman’s leap of faith in coming to the Berkshires was a choice. She realized her whole life might fall apart, but it was still a choice. Today, she stands at a new threshold that begs, “What’s my life about now?” For Koffman, the artist, it is about teaching and sharing her work. Her gallery space in Housatonic, a literal space in which she got over her own fears, has become a gift to the community. She hosts IWOW (In Words, Out Words) on the first Tuesday of each month and she teaches mindfulness drawing classes on Saturday mornings. Her first publication, The Soul Support Book, meditations on “getting unstuck in your creative projects, your relationships, and your life,” was published in 2003. It has since inspired the wildly popular Original Soul Support Cards, colorful messages of inspiration designed to help you get unstuck, expand your awareness and open your heart. Her most recent book, The Magic Lamp, was released last fall and is a story about the power of imagination.
Koffman’s current work is shaped by the belief that mindfulness practice is a life-long project. As a result, Koffman practices making art, she practices being mindful, and she practices paying attention. In this space — this mindset — she smiles, “nothing is ever finished.” For more information on the artist, her products and upcoming events, visit www.debkoffman.com.
