Deborah Phillips Chodoff

Deborah Phillips Chodoff studied printmaking at Atelier 17 in Paris, France, with Stanley William Hayter and Krishna Reddy. After returning to New York City, she worked as a printmaker and painter; she started making unique artists’ books in the early 1980’s. Through early shows at Franklin Furnace and the Ted Cronin Gallery she met many of her book arts friends and colleagues. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally and is in numerous collections, including  the Fine Art Collection at The Center for Book Arts in NYC, the MoMA library, libraries at Harvard, Yale, the University of Alberta, and Florida Atlantic University, and Hillary Clinton’s archive collection. Most recently, her work was included in the exhibition and catalogue Freed Formats, which travelled throughout NY State and Connecticut. 

Chodoff’s experience as a printmaker, painter, a digital/analog collage artist, photographer, and teacher allows her to use a rich variety of materials and methods to realize her books. Found objects, manipulated papers, and minimal texts inform the concepts and dictate the structures of her often sculptural works. She uses traditional and ad hoc binding techniques, producing either one-of-a kind artist books, or a series of unique variants. Her body of work also includes painting, digital collage, and video. 

An art educator since 1972, Chodoff has taught every age from toddlers to adults, and has incorporated book forms into her teaching at every level. For many years she served as the Art Department Chair at Wooster School in Danbury, CT, where she taught, among other things, printmaking, painting, drawing, 2D/3D, ceramics, and book arts. She has been a resident artist at many public and private schools in the tri-state area, most recently at St. Lukes’ in Greenwich, CT. She is currently the Atelierista at the Putnam Indian Field School in Greenwich, CT, where she enjoys sharing her love of process with her young students and their teachers. She lives in Katonah, N.Y.

Disciplines