This Providence Portraitist Puts Old-Timey Twists on Pet Photos

Photograph courtesy of Wild Tea Photography.

When Chez Pascal closed during the pandemic, longtime bartender and artist Deb Hickey needed an avenue for her art. “I knew it was going to be important for me to do something creative while I was home and to connect with others,” says the Providence resident, who’s known for her colorful collages featuring Little Rhody landmarks. She started playing with pet photos she had stored on her phone, mixing them with found photographs of people from the late 1800s and early 1900s. She posted the fanciful designs on social media, and soon friends, colleagues and restaurant customers started asking for designs of their cats and dogs. She asked about the pets’ personalities, matched them up with vintage photographs and transferred the images onto wooden boards salvaged from Chez Pascal’s renovations. “Many times I don’t know who the photographer or sitter was, so even though I’m taking off their heads I feel like I’m giving life back into the found photograph,” Hickey says. Herself a proud owner of two black-and-white kitties — Pedro Martinez and Lady Jane Fancy Pants — Hickey has been so busy with pet collage commissions that she has yet to return to the restaurant scene. “I’ve made it a year without working in a restaurant,” she says — quite a change for someone who, for the past thirty years, made art during the day and worked in restaurants at night. She’d eventually like to write a book about the project, which kept her grounded during one of the most chaotic times on the planet. “I really liked connecting with people when it was important to do so,” she says. petportrait-collage.com