Trace Residue: Art as Solution

Together, we can create our better world today. That's what you're doing when you bid on one of these original artworks.

Trace Residue is a living body of mixed‑media paintings I began in 2025 as part of my Personal Innovation practice. I build each piece with reclaimed cellulose fiber, acrylic, ink, and mark‑making—layer by layer. Those layers form a language of repair: binding, mending, patching, resurfacing. This is the work that has helped me keep going.

You’ll see spirals, grids, containers, and cellular forms show up again and again. They’re traces of experience and attention—how change happens over time. I’ve been painting for nearly forty years, and this work carries that history while making room for what’s next.

Process Video Clip

Designing Resilience (Internal) and what we’re building

Designing Resilience (Internal) is about the somatic and reflective practices that support healing—the practices that also inform my broader community practice, Designing Resilience. We’re launching a pilot with alumni of foster care and survivors of trafficking. They make up 60–70% of human trafficking survivors, and the risk of homelessness puts them in harm’s way. With your support, we can offer a different path.

This auction will help launch the Remixed Upcycled Fashion Initiative. The idea is simple: bring young people aging out of foster care and survivors of trafficking into a creative, collaborative practice—turning discarded textiles into reimagined garments. Reuse, remix, re‑imagine. It’s a regional response to fast fashion that centers healing, skills, and community.

Why your support matters

When you bid or give, you’re doing more than supporting the expansion of my studio practice into the community —you’re helping turn art into a tool for change. I believe in art as solution. Together, we can disrupt a predatory pipeline and replace it with opportunities to heal, learn, and lead. 100% of proceeds support EIA.

Each Trace Residue piece reflects two things I track in my work:

Flow State Activation—the deep creative presence where healing and insight happen.
Synchronicity—the meaningful connections that show up when we’re aligned with purpose.

Collecting a piece supports this research and helps move resources to those who need them. It’s one way we can build a world that works for all of us. When I succeed, I want it to lift others too.

In short: when you collect Trace Residue, you invest in transformation. Repair is art. And resilience can be designed—together.

Why this matters (to serious partners)

Cultural lineage: Early patrons safeguarded Fluxus ephemera (Gilbert & Lila Silverman → MoMA), backed Jenny Holzer’s Truisms (Barbara Gladstone), and supported Pope.L through alternative spaces and early grants (Franklin Furnace/Martha Wilson; Franklin Furnace FUND 2000; Creative Capital 2001; FCA Grants to Artists 2002).
- Acquiring Trace Residue stands in that tradition—as an artist whose work operates between personal practice and social systems.
Rarity and provenance: Unique originals; no editions. These are scarce artifacts within a practice that often lives in spaces that render it invisible.
🏛 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. EIN: 99‑3904425 | Donations are tax‑deductible as allowed by law.

What your acquisition supports
Proceeds convert directly into a 3-6 month inquiry:

Coordination and Documentation
Planning and implementation of 3–5 Resourcing Exploratory Group Salons
Planning and implementation of 5–8 Sewing Workshops and Labs for an initial cohort
Planning begins for the Designing Resilience Roundtable (quarterly event)
Planning begins for a related conference (annual event)
Dissemination of a transparent outcomes brief that includes community feedback

Who the pilot engages
Guided, low‑toxicity making sessions with partner sites, the general public, as well as foster‑exit youth (18-25) and trafficking survivors —(re)sourcing and weaving/stitching as a specific practice of repair.

For long‑term partners and collectors

Acknowledgment: All winning bidders are recognized in the transparent outcomes brief shared at the inaugural Designing Resilience Roundtable.
Provenance: Each COA notes the catalog reference and that the acquisition funded the pilot above, creating a provenance trail that links this work to program impact.

Acquire a Trace Residue original by Yvette Dubel. Stand in the lineage of visionary patrons.

Patronage for a Purpose: Use Auction Button Above to Bid Now 🏛 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. EIN: 99‑3904425 | Donations are tax‑deductible as allowed by law.