Following her divorce from Smith, Dehner earned a degree from Skidmore and began teaching at Barnard College, among other schools. Although an extremely busy and stressful time for Dehner, the two years following her divorce proved vital to her career for she finally felt free to pursue her artistic passions. During this time she experimented with a new medium, engraving, with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17. She made intaglio prints at Atelier 17 from 1952 until it moved to Paris in 1955, then worked at Pratt Graphics Center until 1960.