Traveling Through with David Prior · Thursday, July 30, 2026
Deborah Needleman describes her month-long residency in Venice, initially intending to showcase her basketry, but realizing the need to connect her art to the local environment. She found researching Venetian basketry through art history to be a breakthrough.
“But what it really is, is a natural environment and a completely unique one. And the city is wholly dependent on the lagoon from you know, which it rises, and I think the lagoon is sort of overlooked or again as we were talking about before, seen as this sort of beautiful scenery outside of Venice.”
“And as you know, I'm obsessed with research. I love researching things, so I thought well, I'm here for a month, and Rosie said, you can use this gallery space it's empty, as a sort of residency. And so I started to research Venetian baskets and there was no information.”
“And as we'll probably talk about later, the way I really like to travel is to have a way into a place, and so this was like the perfect storm. It's just the dream where I could research basketry through art, and it gave me a way to kind of make my way through the churches and museums.”