Debra Disman

Artist

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Artists' Books

ALL SHE MAKES : first look

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I am thrilled to be featured in all SHE makes Magazineand the all She makes Artist Directory!

 Sviltana Martynjuk, founder of All SHE Makes champions Women Artists through this publication and organization/venture she has spearheaded.

The incredible Christina Massey of  WoArt and creator of the amazing and beloved WoArt Blog, also promoting and celebrating women artists, and an artist in her own right, curated the selection of artists featured in this WINTER Issue IV of ALL SHE MAKES.

Thank you for this opportunity to be featured alongside so many outstanding women artists!

(Another post with more images from the magazine to follow).

The Center for Contemporary Art 2022 International Juried Show

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I am thrilled to participate in the Center for Contemporary Art’s 

International Juried Exhibition

showing “Maximum Security”
made of Book Board, Wood, Mulberry Paper, Paint, Canvas, Watercolor Paper, Hemp Cord

EXHIBITION DATES: January 14, 2022 – February 26, 2022
Opening: Friday, January 14, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. via Zoom

JUROR: Erin Jenoa Gilbert
Erin Jenoa Gilbert is a New York based curator and art advisor, specializing in Modern and Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora. Exploring the relationship between art, power and politics, her curatorial practice examines the physical and psychological connection to land, the trauma of displacement and the Black female body as contested terrain. Gilbert’s intersectional critical analysis exposes the fault lines in the aesthetic regimes that dominate visual culture, specifically by presenting artists whose contributions to the canon have been overlooked, particularly women artists from the “Deep South” and the “Global South”. Most recently the Curator of African American Manuscripts at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, she has also held positions at The Art Institute of Chicago and The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Over the course of her career she has addressed audiences at The Studio Museum in Harlem, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Howard University, Fashion Institute of Technology and Swann Auction House. Figure and Force, a conversation she moderated between Barbara Chase Riboud and Ilyasah Shabbaz for Solange’s Saint Heron, exemplifies her commitment to expanding the audience for modern and contemporary art.

In July 2021, Gilbert curated A Force For Change, an exhibition presenting 26 contemporary women artists of African descent in New York benefiting UN Women. She is the co-curator of Mary Lovelace O’Neal: Whales Fucking which will open at MoAD in San Francisco, California in November 2022. Since 2015 she has curated several museum and gallery exhibitions in the US and UK including Zohra Opoku: Draped Histories/Beyond Visage, Sienna Shields: Invisible Woman and In The Eye of the Beholder.

Gilbert holds a BA in Political Science and a BA in African and African American Studies from the University of Michigan, and a MA in Contemporary Art from the University of Manchester.  She has published catalog essays on several prominent artists, including Deborah Roberts (Spelman University, 2018); Alma Thomas (Mnuchin Gallery, 2019); Chakaia Booker (ICA Miami, 2021) and Mary Lovelace O’Neal (MoAD, 2022).

Click Here to Read Erin Jenoa Gilbert’s Juror Statement

I am honored to be in the company of wonderful EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Joan Appel, Claude Beller, Bill Brookover, Monica J. Brown, Lionel Carre, Arden Cone, Steven Daiber, Tracy DiTolla, Marvin Eans, Steven Epstein, Tracy Finn, Sandy Furst, Anita Gladstone, Gregory Hennen, Valerie Huhn, Pat Kelly, Karen L. Kirshner, Jack Knight, Shawn Marshall, Monica Mendes, Edward Mills, Myra Joyce Nowlin, David Z. Orban, Clare Parry, Sandi Pfeifer, Robert Reid, Lilly Saywitz, Alireza Vaziri Rahimi, Mark Vogel, Chrissy Wallace

Click Here for Exhibition Price List

ENJOY THE SHOW HERE!

 

 

Visioning the New Year with the Panorama Branch Library

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In December, 2021, we completed our  2021-22 Artist Residency in bookmaking  at the the Panorama City Branch Library, supported by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

I say “we” rather than “I”, as this was a team effort with the Library Staff, and of course, the DCA, always supportive!

During our residency “CULMINATION EVENT” participants created “Vision Journals” to welcome the New Year, and help them set intentions and goals for 2022.

Our online event was well-attended, fun and inspiring.
A wonderful way to complete the Residency, the year, and gather our strength, resiliency, hope, imagination and creativity to move into 2022!

MOON BOOK: Bookmaking for the Winter Solstice!

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Moon, Luna, Lunar
It was an honor to lead a special bookmaking workshop through my Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs artist residency at the West Valley Regional Branch Library to welcome and celebrate the Winter Solstice on December 21st, 2021!
We focused on the MOON.

Our participants of assorted ages, cultural backgrounds and experience levels created “Moon Books”, exploring the meaning, metaphor and movement (or phases) of the Moon, inspired by this rich theme, their materials, and the fun and  comfort of creating in community!

The results were inspiring too, investigating, celebrating and exploring the moon in (her) many facets through science/astronomy, story and the elements and materials of visual art: line, shape, color; collaged together into (folded and glued) book form.

 

An inspiring time had by all, including the participating Library staff and myself, teaching and supporting this program! We are always inspired by our participating makers, learners and sharers!

NEW WORK in 2021: “Forest Through The Trees”

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I was happy to finally be able to have Elon Schoenholz Photography in to photograph works completed during 2021… fast away the old year passes…

Here I share “Forest through The Trees“, 15 x 42 x 12”, made of book board, canvas, hemp cord, ribbon, typewriter ribbon, acrylic paint, wood.
It is part of a monochrome series in black, through the colors of “black” are infinite, and change with light, material, juxtaposition, and how the viewer engages with the piece.

Comprised of two accordion-folded “spines”, the “book”, becomes a “box”, with a “door” that opens, expandable “walls”, and  painted canvas “pages” held up precariously with wooden dowels. The piece can be presented and contemplated in numerous ways, and begs a tactile connection, through all of us working in book, and perhaps sculptural forms in general grapple with how to do this.  How to have viewers engage with the work, participate in it, without having it worn away over time in the process…

We are seekers.
The Journey continues.

Happy New Year.

(exterior, closed)

(exterior, ajar)

(interior/exterior, open)

Unfolding Possibilities: Something to Ponder for the New Year

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What do we seek, yearn for, want, crave, need, are motivated to strive for, for this New Year coming up?

What is Possible?
And

How do we Achieve it?

What are the Possibilities, and how do we Realize them, in this day and age, in this present moment, under our current circumstances, confronted by challenges seemingly too numerous to count, much less take in?


Unfolding Possibilities, (front cover) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book

We have to somehow move forward in a positive way, keep on truckin’, keep on trying, keep at it, continue, keep on keeping on.
We have to try, each in our own way. Hopefully, something will line up.


Unfolding Possibilities, (closed) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book

An initiative of the Los Angeles Count Department of Mental Health, Why We Rise LA took place in May 2021, supporting hundreds of Community Arts & Culture Projects which took place across all Los Angeles County neighborhoods, in partnership with more than 100 community groups, artists, grassroots leaders, healers and other LA County Departments. These projects and collaborations included mural making, ancestral healing workshops, a Countywide public literary art project, a Countywide chalk art program and more to celebrate the remarkable resources and communities in LA County and used arts-based strategies for healing and wellbeing.

I was honored to teach a workshop as part of Why We Rise LA 2021 in coordination with 18th Street Art Center’sArts Learning Lab @ Home: called: Bookmaking with Self-Compassion.
See the workshop HERE!
Nearly 70 online participants learned to create the “Flower Fold” book structure, then added embellishment, images, and words expressing their experience of the pandemic, where they are at now, what they learned, what they wanted to share, their hopes, wishes, dreams, cares , fears, realizations, trauma, expressing the full gamut of human emotions.

The range of words submitted was wide-ranging, thought-provoking and evocative….including opposite emotions and experiences and bits of truth-telling, realizations and wisdom participants seemed eager to pass on to others in other words, humanness in its multiplicity.

I took the words generated by this workshop, and requested from the community at large, and stitched them into an Artists’ Book I made as a community collaboration, entitled, “Unfolding Possibilities“.  (“Unfolding Possibilities – Possibilities Unfolding”).  Videographer Jeny Amaya created a video of the project which was screened during the 18th Street Art Center event, “Left/Right/Here“

Unfolding Possibilities, Possibilities Unfolding: the making of above.

Unfolding Possibilities, (interior) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book
Unfolding Possibilities, (interior detail) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book

When confronted with what seems like overwhelming odds, and not in your/our, favor, try making something, try creating. Here is a workshop to show you how to do it, just one of countless, infinite ways you can make something (out of almost nothing-), create something, experience working with your hands and heart and imagination, craft something, fashion something, and perhaps share this with others. Relax your heart and soul and play. Just see, if you do not emerge, like the butterfly, stronger for the effort. Enjoy. See what happens.

Wishing You the absolute best, healthiest, most creative, most supportive, safest, and imaginative, New Year, now and ever.

Here. We . Go.