Debra Disman

Artist

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ARTISTS

MEDIA page

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I have been empowered by learning how to update my Site’s MEDIA page!

This is the page in my Site where I share, through word, image and link, everything that pertains to MEDIA that I have been involved in:

Print media
Digital/online media
Film/video
including
Press/listings across platforms
Exhibition catalogues, publicity and tours
Artist talks
and more.

Thank you beloved web and graphic designer Dianna Jacobsen, for the design, the tutalage, the support and the patience …

O, and, the sense of humor!

It has been fun, and enlightening.

Check it out….

M E D I A

“Home Sick”, or, Sick of Home?

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Home sick or sick of home? This international exhibition will present artwork that captures how the tumultuous events of 2020 have shaped personal experiences and artistic practice. Works will be shown that suggest how the phrase “Home Sick” can take on multiple meanings in today’s revolutionary climate. Home Sick will exhibit traditional and contemporary artwork across a wide array of media – painting, photography, drawing, pastels, printmaking, ceramics, textiles, wearable art, sculpture, film, artists’ books, and other new media. 

The Art Effect announces the launch of its new international juried exhibition series and pilot youth museum studies program in 2021. Home Sick will be The Art Effect’s inaugural national juried exhibition in its new 3,000-sq-ft gallery at the Poughkeepsie Trolley Barn in the heart of the City of Poughkeepsie. This exciting exhibition will be on display February 25 – April 1, 2021.

“Home Sick will serve as a core component of a pilot program to put youth in the “driver’s seat” leading exhibitions and programming at the Trolley Barn,” says Executive Director Nicole Fenichel-Hewitt. Youth at The Art Effect developed the exhibition theme to invite artists to capture how the concept of being “home sick” can take on multiple meanings in light of a tumultuous year such as 2020.

Curator Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, will work closely with The Art Effect youth to juror the show made up of submissions from around the world. ”We’re very excited to have youth work alongside established curators like Mary-Kay to co-create high-quality exhibitions and develop the skills needed to pursue careers in the art museum field” noted Fenichel-Hewitt.

I am thrilled to show “BedTime Story” in this innovative show, and support the young jurrors and experienced curator in their combined efforts.
“BedTime Story” 2018, 12 x 28 x 8.5″, mixed media/artists’ book: book board, repurposed textiles, cloth and fabric, hemp cord, ceramics with beads created by Judy Disman.

RECOVERY JUSTICE: Being Well

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I am thrilled to participate in:

RECOVERY JUSTICE: Being Well

March 8, 2021 – July 16, 2021
at
18th Street Arts Center (Airport Campus)

“Being Well” is what we seek together as neighbors, and recalls one of the central guiding principles of the City of Santa Monica, the notion of “wellbeing” as key to civic health. Recovery Justice: Being Well, aims to highlight the recent circumstances that have evolved during the pandemic (racial justice demonstrations and destruction, as well as social discontent and general disconnection) into a series of self-organized artist projects that merges the exterior and interior public spaces of City of Santa Monica property. 18th Street Airport Campus at Santa Monica Municipal Airport will be the site where artists reimagine the city and beyond in the midst of complex social unrest globally. Recovery Justice will recuperate through various means the digital and physical footprints left in a city that struggles to reclaim the seemingly peaceful environment it once had. Artists will develop a palette for making and sharing artworks responding to the street experience in safe, healing and expressive modes. This porous series is a point of departure to reconcile and redefine the concept of justice.

This collage of self-organized artist projects was organized around the common theme of Recovery Justice, facilitated as part of Sara Daleiden’s artist project and ongoing conversations nurtured through a series of online conversations with 18th Street’s artist community called “Creative Roundtables” over the past 8 months. These projects will manifest in outdoor presentations on the side of the building; sculptural, photographic, painting and video work in the galleries; and a series of online and drive-in events in Spring of 2021. The artists’ presentations will also be represented online and via a 360 tour for virtual viewing.”

Participating artists include: Sara Daleiden, Nicola Goode, Susie McKay Krieser, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, M Susan Broussard, Lionel Popkin, Yrneh Gabon Brown, Lola del Fresno, Debra Disman, Melinda Smith Altshuler, Gregg Chadwick, Luciana Abait, Deborah Lynn Irmas, Rebecca Youssef, and Dan S. Wang.

Sara Daleiden’s residency and facilitation work on these projects is generously supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Bailiwik is also a supporting partner on this exhibition.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR
(such a joy working with Sara)
Sara Daleiden is a Los Angeles-based artist who facilitates civic engagement within developing landscapes, exercising arts and cultural exchange strategies. She encourages local cultures to value neighborhoods, public space, civic art, land and racial and gender equity. Sara has an expertise in working with artists and other cultural entrepreneurs for civic engagement, creative placemaking, network development and small business development.

Her project at 18th Street Arts Center grows out of the placekeeping work that 18th Street has been engaged in over the past six years through our cultural asset mapping project (culturemapping90404.org) and the Commons Lab, which involves community voices to define, center, and connect cultural practices within their own neighborhoods. Her practice investigates the influence of location, scale, market, values and other regional factors on the production of the arts and cultural identity. Through methodologies involving partnership mapping, network building, and the facilitation of self-organizing and advocacy, Sara aims to enhance the advocacy power of artists in influencing neighborhood development in the city. Her durational engagement with 18th Street will spin off land-based activations with opportunities for neighbors, artists, city staff, and the broader public to participate. Sara has been collaborating with arts workers Nicola Goode, Susannah Laramee Kidd, Dorit Cypis and Kimberli Meyer for this artist project.

Pictured is “drift”, a collaboration between myself, and esteemed 18th Street colleague and artist, Luciana Abait.

More To Come!!!

Watch AROHA Philanthropies: CREATIVE AGING in Action!

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I have been so honored to participate in AROHA Philanthropies Creative Aging initiative, and to work  with  with LA’s beloved Craft Contemporary museum, Curator of Public Engagment Andres Payan Estrada, and Museum Director, Suzanne Isken.

It has been my great joy to teach the AROHA Bookmaking classes for Seniors through Craft Contemporary. I have been so moved to hear and see our participants’ stories expressed through their book projects, and to witness their extraordinary creativity with materials, expression and craft. The opportunity for these students to come together, share about their lives, and weave their personal histories into their projects has been so meaningful, not only for the students, but for myself and the Craft Contemporary Staff. I have been continually amazed at the richness and depth of our participants’ life experiences and their hunger to share them with others.

Our spring workshop series in bookmaking was held in-person, at the Craft Contemporary. When the pandemic hit, we had to pivot to online learning and delivery, and despite the inevidable challenges, our online class community proved to be just as creative, supportive, connective and energetic as our in-person group. An incredible and indelible experience that I will carry with me moving forward.

Russ Haan, owner of After Hours Creative, directed the creation of the following videos sharing about and documenting the process of AROHA’s programming. They are inspiring, moving and energizing to watch. ENJOY!
Creative Aging: The Essentials
Creative Aging: Why Teaching Artists?
Creative Aging: Untapped Opportunity
Creative Aging: Isolation to Connection
Creative Aging: In-Person to Online 

Darkness and Empathy

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A two part exhibition at 18th Street Arts Center  explores artists’ reactions to the pandemic and document their experience of it, while offering coping mechanisims and beacons of hope. I have been honored to participate.

FACING DARKNESS
July 27, 2020 – June 30, 2021
Online

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
– James Baldwin

“Art’s role in healing trauma, restoring a sense of self, and bringing together a community has led us to realize how artists are our second responders. Artmaking is a necessary part of life, and core to processing, expressing, reckoning, and healing. In a time of worldwide heartbreak, we are recognizing our interconnectedness to one another, and creation of art is one way we deepen our empathic networks. The selected works by these artists engage with worldwide feelings of darkness and loss, using art as a path to communal processing and healing.”

Collective – “The only way out is through”


“Hopes and Fears and…”, 2020. Textile samples and linen thread. 24.5” x 16.5”. Courtesy of the artist.

“Hopes and Fears and…” describes a state where the mind obsessively repeats what it fears, cloaked in the mantle of hope. Such a process is a way of dealing with darkness. Are not hope and fear intrinsically linked as two sides of the same coin? We fear, then we hope that the realization of our fears does not manifest. All the hopes and fears stitched into this work are born of the state of our world, planet, society, and culture, and are voiced by many across the globe. This piece gives voice to those voices as well as my own.

BUILDING NETWORKS OF EMAPTHY
October 26, 2020 – December 15, 2020

The exhibition Building Networks of Empathy is the second of a two-part show that asks us to consider the ways in which art empowers not only the artist, but its viewers to transform their most difficult experiences into enlightened outcomes. The first part of the show is an ongoing online-only exhibition entitled Facing Darkness, which encouraged artists in our community to reflect internally on our current moment of pandemic, isolation, and structural inequity laid bare.

For this second part, which will be physically installed in 18th Street Arts Center’s spacious Airport campus hangar galleries, artists were asked to respond to how they have changed as a result of their inner reflections on darkness, and to imagine new futures and societal structures as we see our way out of crisis. Each artist grapples as well with the role that art can play in social reflection, expression, and cultural paradigm shifts as a result of a deeper understanding of each other, and the empathy that follows. The exhibition sees empathy not only as a way to share and understand what others are going through, but also as a natural and endless resource that we can all rely on when crisis and emergency hit, with hopes that we can turn this moment of collective fear into a sublime experience.

Visit the 360 tour of the exhibition, created by Dollhouse here

“Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread”, 2020. File cards, pencils, crayons, thread. Installation. 76 x 90 inches. Photo by Debra Disman. Courtesy of the artist.

I was commissioned to create an interactive book for Craft Contemporary’s 2017 exhibition, Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California, which opened shortly after the 2016 presidential election. Visitors could choose file cards in an array of colors, draw and write on them, and insert them into the pocketed pages of the book. A range of feelings, responses, and concerns were expressed through the cards, which the Museum Staff saved and gave to me at the end of the show. I stitched them together grouped loosely by theme, to express the network of empathy they depicted, held together by golden thread.

ILLUMINATE at Springboard Arts Chicago

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I am thrilled to be part of Springboard Arts Chicago‘s inaugural show, ILLUMINATE.

“Illuminate: Art Brings Light to the World

It would be easy to believe the world is cloaked in darkness during trying times. But in our inaugural exhibit, “Illuminate,” we invite you to join us as we illuminate the darkness through art. We believe the arts have the power to brighten our lives. Music, theatre, performance art, dance, and fine art light up our world. In our inaugural show, we are featuring 15 inspiring artists. We hope you’ll allow them to illuminate your indoor spaces this seas0n.”

Thank you Springboard Arts Chicago, for this opportunity!