SANDISFIELD — The first story I ever told before a proper live audience happened at Deb Koffman’s Art Space in Housatonic. It was December 2015. I was newly navigating the slog of death and divorce, when a friend invited me to IWOW. There, on the first Tuesday of the month (the last of the year!), I stood beneath glaring lights and shared my response to the evening’s theme which was ENDINGS. My five-year-old’s death, three months prior, permeated my outlook. “Endings … no matter how natural or timely, invite a discourse with loss that is often unsteadying and raw,” I read aloud in the chilly space full of strangers.
I had never met Deb Koffman before that evening. Earlier that fall, a friend gifted me a copy of her new book, “The Magic Lamp.” As I read it aloud to my young daughter before bed, the thin volume spoke to me: “Imagine how it is you would like to be. Your power lies in drawing what you truly want to see.” Inspired and smitten (with the black-and-white drawings, punctuated by red accents) I tucked the book away. Later that winter, my friend and I stumbled upon a local art opening — featuring one of the performers with whom we’d shared the stage at IWOW just weeks before — when a journalist snapped our picture.
“What’s your name?,” she inquired, pencil poised in anticipation of my response. Not yet divorced, I paused briefly before uttering my birth name — out loud and in public — for perhaps the first time in 15 years. “And what do you do for work?,” the journalist wanted to know. I must have frozen. What does a stay-at-home mom whose child has died claim for her profession? It was my friend who ultimately answered. “She’s a writer,” they interjected. And so I was.
When I was given a copy of “The Soul Support Book” (Storey Books, 2003), I was elated. Again, Deb’s words spoke to me loud and clear: Appreciate your experience … Honor every moment … Travel the road in your own way … Explore options … Anything is possible here … Acknowledge your gifts. Exactly one year after our meeting, Deb invited me to her upstairs studio on Front Street for a chat which appeared in The Edge.
We spoke at length about her serendipitous arrival in the Berkshires (“I wasn’t an artist … I came [to the Berkshires] to figure out my life one summer and just stayed”); how she saw her art (as “language for how to express [what her feelings look] like visually”); and the meaning behind the instantly recognizable feet Deb so often drew — her own, in a pair of red shoes (“When I draw those feet, it is about grounding, and needing to find it”).
This idea, like Deb’s painted cardboard creations, inherently resonated with me. Upon leaving that day, Deb gifted me another one of her books. I must have shared with her my own challenges — chief among them single parenting — because she plucked the most fitting title I could imagine from a sea of options lining the wall (she was the author of 12 books), and handed it to me. When I got home, I found that copy of “Being with a Block” inscribed as follows: “Whatever is in your way … may you FIND THE VERY BEST WAY to be with it. Many Blessings, Deb.”
I ultimately grew to call Deb Koffman a friend. In August 2019, when she invited me to her show, “Make Space For All You Need” (which I wrote about here), I remember being pleasantly surprised; its simple premise struck me as profound: “Just standing in front of a blank canvas guides us to slow down,” she told me. “My work is telling people that it’s OK to take space for all your feelings. It makes me crazy to think that people don’t have appropriate places [to express their feelings]. Many don’t even know that they have these feelings,” she continued. And so, in true Deb style, she created what was missing in her world. When I remember Deb Koffman, this is what I will remember: Long before that show went up, and long after it came down, she created space — first for herself, and then for others. She called it “exchanging presence.” I call it a priceless gift.
Just this past April, Deb illustrated a story I wrote, How to Survive Isolation When Your Body Craves Integration. Her outlook, despite a raging global pandemic, was akin to her artwork — an invigorating splash of color in the midst of an often bleak landscape. In the ensuing months, I have returned quite frequently to her cartoon’s caption, “Fill your world with fear and dread. Or fill your world with love instead.” Spending time with Deb was always uplifting. Both her creative spirit and the myriad ways she consistently strived to be the very best version of herself were palpable — every time our paths crossed.
Considering the community of creatives Deb Koffman cultivated over three decades in the Berkshires, I’m admittedly a newbie to the crowd. Still, the mark she left on me is indelible. Perhaps the greatest kernel I’ve gleaned over the past five years — since first venturing inside an obscure little gallery on Front Street in Housy — I learned from the artist herself, “The end is just the beginning of something else.” Indeed, Deb, it is. Thank you, and Godspeed.
Note: View the archive of Deb Koffman’s SOUL SUPPORT, which debuted in The Berkshire Edge in September 2016 and appeared weekly on Fridays.
