I was thrilled to participate in Shoebox Arts Call and Response Collaborative Book initiative to be presented at the Start Up LA Art Fair February 27 – March 1, 2026, presenting my collaborative book created with artist Michelle Robinson, as part of Kristine Schomaker‘s CALL AND RESPONSE initiative, through her organization, Shoebox Arts!
“After five years of digital exchanges connecting artists across six continents, Call and Response went physical for the first time.
In October 2025, Shoebox Arts helmed by the extraordinary Kristine Schomocker paired 190 artists to create collaborative books together. Four months later, approximately 90 unique collaborative works have been created: oracle decks, teabag weavings, painted photographs, sculptural volumes, accordion books, visual puzzles and more.
Each book represents a creative conversation between two artists/humans/makers. Participating artists have navigated time zones, shipping logistics, language barriers, and completely different creative approaches to make something neither could create alone”
“This is Call and Response at its core: connection, radical trust, real collaboration.
This is collaboration without permission. Connection without barriers. Artists proving quality work doesn’t require institutional blessing—just willingness to make something with another.” — Kristine Shoemaker
A project of @shoeboxarts.la
Exhibition: @callandresponseart
“When we embarked on this project together, it felt like a fortuitous pairing. We first met on social media several years ago and shared studio visits in the past, during which we discussed the formal similarities in our work, as well as our commitment to a deeply material practice and content that helps reframe human experience and perception. After a couple of Zoom discussions, our instinct was to combine Debra’s sculptural book forms with Michelle’s photographic collage images, creating a three-dimensional space that both tells a story and challenges our understanding of what a book can be. The viewer is invited to travel “In the Woods” of their own psyche, paradoxically reaching for enlightenment through traversing darkness.” — Debra Disman and Michelle Robinson, Co-creators of “In the Woods”
Michelle did a beautiful job of photographing our work, “In the Woods“, for our own documentation, and to be able to submit and show it in different venues. Due its folds, many surfaces, three-dimensionality, black/dark colors and textures, this work is challenging to capture in still photography. Brava Michelle, and Thank You!
IN THE WOODS, Debra Disman and Michelle Robinson, 2026, 12 x 20 x 20″, Artists’ Book”: Book board, mulberry paper, acrylic paint, bookbinding cloth, archival adhesive, hemp cord, watercolor paper, book repair tape, book hinging tape, archival pigment prints on Moab Entrada rag paper
IN THE WOODS, front view
IN THE WOODS, partially open view
IN THE WOODS, side view
IN THE WOODS, open view
