As queer partners and artists, Phyllis Famiglietti and Debra Samdperil live, love, and share a studio together. They embrace that challenge in their art-making, working with their demons both separately and in tandem. We Are Not the Stories We Tell Ourselves: Intersecting Thoughts — Parallel Play explores the influence Famiglietti and Samdperil have on each other’s work as they integrate the judgments, convictions, and sentiments that stem from long-ago traumas. What almost destroyed them individually is now essential to what inspires them creatively. Famiglietti draws from the outside material world while Samdperil works from the inside out.

Famiglietti finds magic in found objects, which contain a certain type of energy from a previous life. Homeless pieces that once belonged to something or someone, somewhere at some time, have filled her drawers and cabinets for years. Inspired by an earth inundated with the partial decomposition of what won’t easily break down—copper, metal, plastic, wires, an old rotting telephone, and cheap porcelain figurines—she assembles these items to create small 3D pieces that speak to aging, decay, and abandonment, while simultaneously revealing an optimism and ulterior beauty.

Samdperil paints abstractly as an exploration of an interrupted dialog drawn from complex layers of memory. As a painter, she becomes increasingly accessible to her full self, addressing loss, identity, gender, intimacy, anguish, and joy through layers, color, and form. Her work is implicit, not conveying a specific narrative but allowing the characters that sometimes emerge as animal, human, or other take shape. A conversation begins as the layering brings forth a new story of sorts. Not unlike Famiglietti, Samdperil paints to make peace with life’s turbulence while seeking humor within the chaos. 

Artist Bios

Phyllis Famiglietti is an award-winning video editor and collage and assemblage artist, formerly of New York and now living and working in Boston. Working with clients like photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber helped Famiglietti develop a layering style that became a signature of her video work, which she has integrated into her 2D collages and 3D assemblages. She has shown at galleries in New York and New England and will be a participating artist in next year’s Outsider Art Fair in NYC.

Debra Samdperil was fortunate to observe her mother painting and drawing frequently during her early years. Although mesmerized and admiring, she found the experience complex and at times conflicted. Samdperil chose photography as her medium and worked as a photographer and educational media producer for several years. While co-parenting, she designed and managed adult, college, and high school art programs in Boston and New York. She began focusing on painting while earning a BFA from Tufts University, SMFA, Boston and now dedicates herself full-time to her painting practice. Samdperil has exhibited across the country, from New York to Los Angeles, and has participated in numerous residencies from Montana to the Hudson Valley. Her work is in several private collections.