ALTERED
BOOK
ALTERED
SELF
DETAILS
October 31, 2026
January 30, 2027
May 1, 2027
July 31, 2027
Single Day ~ $200.00
(Single day option)
All Four Days ~ $ 650.00
Early Bird Rate
(apply before
October 1, 2026)
All Four Days ~ $550. (save $100.)
Single Day ~ $175. (save $25.)
The dates I have chosen are considered cross
quarter days (closest Saturday !)
They represent a season’s midpoint ~
~ a threshold ~ a time between time,
when the veil between worlds is most thin.
LOOK BENEATH THE SURFACE OF YOUR
LIFE AND DISCOVER THE IMPULSE OF THE
SOUL. FIND THE IMAGE AT THE ROOT.
We cross thresholds all the time. Sometimes it is in the simplicity of walking through a door, moving from one space to another. Other times we are moving between significant or symbolic changes in our lives, the end of something known to what comes next and is unknown to us. We regard these occasions as they “happen to us” and other times we can invite them in.
We are all living in such times. Our country, indeed our entire planet is at a threshold. In this collective shift, what is shifting in you? How can you animate and explore your own life in the times we are now living?
WHO:
If you find yourself at a crossroads in your life, and are questioning how to best inhabit your gifts in these complex times, this workshop may provide you with a practice to assist you in this inquiry. YOU DO NOT HAVE to think of yourself as a visual artist! The beauty of utilizing a found book as the container, is that the form has already been created. The materials and images you use to create your own unique, poetic expression are infinite and can come from found images and small objects that you collect and bring with you to include, photographs you have taken and/or images you create. I will stir your imagination with a list of possibilities once you register for the course.
WHY:
Having a mechanism or practice to accompany significant life transitions is hugely helpful as we build a new base of support and a practice to return to again and again.
WHAT:
collage, techniques, materials will be shared and guided
creative prompts
examples of past altered books
poetry shared
group and individual reflection
one on one mentoring available
ABOUT WORKSHOP
ABOUT WORKSHOP
WHERE;
The workshop will take place in my home studio which is located just north of the town of Bellingham. The studio is separate from my home and surrounded by gardens and a great stand of old Douglas firs, red cedars and big leaf maples; all allies in expanding our ways of knowing. The class size will be limited to 8 students max. The address will be shared upon registration.
Participants will be sent an email with a materials and supply list to bring with you to the workshop. Some supplies I will provide in the studio setting. You will bring your own lunch and I will provide water, tea and a gluten/dairy free treat.
OUR PAST IS ALWAYS INFORMING OUR PRESENT, MUCH LIKE A PALIMPSEST; ONE LAYER INFORMING THE OTHERS, TRANSLUCENT AND MUTABLE. LET THE PAGES OF THIS BOOK BECOME LAYERS OF UNDERSTANDING AND DISCOVERY IN THE UNFOLDING.
COMMITMENT
The potency of this workshop is in your commitment to yourself and to your witnessing of those along side you. Choose to take one workshop OR take two, three or all four day-long workshops. From my own experience, I know that the longer you engage with this material as an ongoing practice, far more will be revealed to you and the development of your book will be much more illuminating and transformative.
Once you make this commitment to the workshop, you will already have crossed the first threshold and mystery will begin to accompany you as you begin to see and pay attention to things that you might have overlooked before. Open your receptivity to dreams, images and ideas, to synchronicities that come into your field. In your commitment you have invited psyche into a creative process that is more labyrinthian and not orderly or problem-solving in nature. Allow for other ways of knowing than you might be accustomed to. Trust in the fact that this container holds you.
Being a Person
Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here
make its own call.
After that sound goes away, wait.
A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.
Suddenly this dream you are having matches everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn’t be any world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.
How you stand here is important. How you
Listen for the next things to happen.
How you breathe.
William Stafford
about me
I have been a practicing visual artist for over forty years. About fifteen years ago I had a significant rupture in my life. We all experience these ruptures, some of them turning our worlds upside down and I desperately needed a way to make sense of the wisdom of this series of events.
Images and reading have long been ways for me to explore the places within myself that don’t make logical sense. Returning to graduate school for a second time in 2018, I immersed myself in the vast terrain of Jungian psychology. As its name implies, depth psychology draws one beneath the surface of things, pointing towards the impulse of the soul in which the image is rooted. It was during this intensive study that the roots of my earliest memories became conscious. Here in the intersections of the human and more-than-human worlds, symbol and metaphor were imagined and given form.
During this time of rupture I made my first altered book. I took an already published old book and re-storied it with my own found and created images; sometimes incorporating the original text of the book and my own. Now, several years later I have had another life changing, immersive experience. Again, I turned to the creation of an altered book to help me to integrate the experience as well as to seek a deeper understanding of how I might engage in the larger story of the times we are living in.
I received my MA in Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2021. My earlier education resulted in a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1988 and a BFA from the University of Iowa in 1980. I have been awarded a number of national, regional and local grants and have exhibited my work widely.
Website: debragoldmanstudio.com.
contact me
