Debra Disman

Artist

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Exhibitions

Seeking Sanctuary: Installation Process 2

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Debra Disman: “Sanctuary” / Know Safe Space

November 14, 2025 – January 3, 2026
Atrium Gallery
18th Street Arts Center

“Sanctuary: Know Safe Space” expands upon Disman’s 2023 piece, “K no W Safe Place” with the addition of a hanging roof surrounded by an inverted “forest” of knotted colored cords added to and developing over time, hung from the ceiling in various arrangements allowing pathways to the suspended black sanctuary space. The installation grew  and changed over time with the addition of these hanging elements, to be shared in further PROCESS posts.

This installation draws upon Disman’s ongoing study of the groundbreaking practices of artists Charlotte Salomon and Eva Hesse using artmaking to transcend trauma; research into sanctuary movements and spaces and the use of textiles within these; exploration of the“quipu/khipu”, a record-keeping device made of knotted cords of assorted colors used in various cultures in the central Andes of South America; and investigation into the work of artists who have used fiber-based materials to create environments, structures and shelters including Do Ho Suh, Chiharu Shiota and Tracey Emin, as well as drawing inspiration from artists Maria Lai and Liza Lou.

Disman also engaged in dialogue with others inside the Sanctuary space, informally videotaping participants’ response to the installation and their immersion in it, as well as offering “interviewees’ the opportunity to share about their own practices, projects and practices, especially as they relate to 18th Street Arts Center. These short-form videos serve as an informal archive of our present moment, the role of the creative process in it, and the support and sanctuary 18th Street Arts Center is offering to the community by allowing us to Know Safe Space.

Informal documentation of the process of creating “Sanctuary: Know Safe Space” at 18th Street Arts Center, November 2025 – January 2026.


SANCTUARY: Know Safe Space facing into open space


Walls behind and on both sides


Walk inside
and stay awhile

 

Collaboration, Call and Response, Shoebox Arts and the Start Up Art Fair: Process 1

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CALL AND RESPONSE COMES TO STARTUP ART FAIR!

I am 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
The Kinney Venice Beach | 737 Washington Blvd, Venice, CA 90292 | Room 202

After five years of digital exchanges connecting artists across six continents, Call and Response is going 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, we have approximately 90 unique collaborative works—oracle decks, teabag weavings, painted photographs, sculptural volumes, accordion books, visual puzzles.

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 have conceived 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.
A project of @shoeboxarts.la
Exhibition: @callandresponseart

The intimate hotel suite setting allows visitors to interact closely with each work—books displayed throughout the space on beds, tables, and dressers. This is a selling exhibition with works split equally between the two collaborating artists and Shoebox Arts.
Hours:

  • Friday, February 27: VIP Early Access 5-7pm | All Access 7-10pm

  • Saturday, February 28: 12pm – 9pm

  • Sunday, March 1: 12pm – 7pm

To attend this fun and wild event:
Get Tickets: www.startup-art.com/los-angeles

Here is part 1 of the process of my collaboration with artist Michelle Robinson:
Creating the Structure:


Five sections of archival book board are attached with acid-free watercolor paper folded accordion “corner” strips. Michelle will provide three printed images to be mounted on the back and sides of the “box” structure, and two sections will comprise the front “doors”.
The piece is completely resurfaced with strips of mulberry paper, which conjure up the texture of tree bark, reflecting the trees and dark woods depicted in her images.


The piece is then placed upright assuming is rectangular box form.


The folds are held in place by clips. The doors open and close, and the accordion-folded corners expand.


The texture is beautiful in white, but will transform with layers of black acrylic paint.


The structure will adapt to its standing form and the resilient mulberry and watercolor paper become ready to absorb the paint and transform to black.
In the next post….PROCESS 2…Transform to BLACK

Collaboration, Call and Response, Shoebox Arts and the Start Up Art Fair!!

By

CALL AND RESPONSE COMES TO STARTUP ART FAIR!

I am 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
The Kinney Venice Beach | 737 Washington Blvd, Venice, CA 90292 | Room 202

After five years of digital exchanges connecting artists across six continents, Call and Response is going physical for the first time.

In October 2025, Shoebox Arts helmed by the extraordinary Kristine Schomocker  randomly paired 190 artists to create collaborative books together. Four months later, we have approximately 90 unique collaborative works—oracle decks, teabag weavings, painted photographs, sculptural volumes, accordion books, visual puzzles.

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 have conceived 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.
A project of @shoeboxarts.la
Exhibition: @callandresponseart

The intimate hotel suite setting allows visitors to interact closely with each work—books displayed throughout the space on beds, tables, and dressers. This is a selling exhibition with works split equally between the two collaborating artists and Shoebox Arts.
Hours:

  • Friday, February 27: VIP Early Access 5-7pm | All Access 7-10pm

  • Saturday, February 28: 12pm – 9pm

  • Sunday, March 1: 12pm – 7pm

To attend this fun and wild event:
Get Tickets: www.startup-art.com/los-angeles

In the next post I will share about my collaboration with artist Michelle Robinson!

 

 

Seeking Sanctuary: Installation Process 1

By

Debra Disman: “Sanctuary” / Know Safe Space

November 14, 2025 – January 3, 2026
Atrium Gallery
18th Street Arts Center

“Sanctuary: Know Safe Space” expands upon Disman’s 2023 piece, “K no W Safe Place” with the addition of a hanging roof surrounded by an inverted “forest” of knotted colored cords added to and developing over time, hung from the ceiling in various arrangements allowing pathways to the suspended black sanctuary space. The installation grew  and changed over time with the addition of these hanging elements.

This installation draws upon Disman’s ongoing study of the groundbreaking practices of artists Charlotte Salomon and Eva Hesse using artmaking to transcend trauma; research into sanctuary movements and spaces and the use of textiles within these; exploration of the“quipu/khipu”, a record-keeping device made of knotted cords of assorted colors used in various cultures in the central Andes of South America; and investigation into the work of artists who have used fiber-based materials to create environments, structures and shelters including Do Ho Suh, Chiharu Shiota and Tracey Emin, as well as drawing inspiration from artists Maria Lai and Liza Lou.

Disman also engaged in dialogue with others inside the Sanctuary space, informally videotaping participants’ response to the installation and their immersion in it, as well as offering “interviewees’ the opportunity to share about their own practices, projects and practices, especially as they relate to 18th Street Arts Center. These short-form videos serve as an informal archive of our present moment, the role of the creative process in it, and the support and sanctuary 18th Street Arts Center is offering to the community by allowing us to Know Safe Space.

Informal documentation of the process of creating “Sanctuary: Know Safe Space” at 18th Street Arts Center, November 2025 – January 2026.


18th Street Operations Manager extraordinaire  Tyler Madsen surveys his installation plan thus far.


Setting up the sections.


Raising the roof.


Held up by gossamer thread (fishline).


Enter the SpeakEasy chair.


Roof details.


Ready for action.


Further along in the iteration. We’ll get there.

 

 

EXHIBITIONISTA: Shoebox Arts, Call and Response, and the Start-up Art Fair LA!

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I am thrilled to participate in the Startup Art Fair LA 2026, as part of Shoebox Arts Call and Response Collaborative Artists’ Book initiative!

Call and Response Goes Live at Startup Art Fair 

Something big is happening.

After five years of digital exchanges connecting artists across six continents, Call and Response is going physical for the first time.

Startup Art Fair LA | February 27 – March 1, 2026The Kinney Venice Beach | Room 202

THE PROJECT

In October 2025, we randomly paired 190 artists to create collaborative books together. Four months later, we have approximately 90 unique collaborative works—oracle decks, teabag weavings, painted photographs, sculptural volumes, accordion books, visual puzzles.

Each book represents a creative conversation between two strangers who had never met. From India to Iowa, Germany to the United Arab Emirates—artists navigated time zones, shipping logistics, language barriers, and completely different creative approaches to make something neither could have conceived alone.

This is Call and Response at its core: random pairing, radical trust, real collaboration.

My collaborative work in progress with artist Michelle Robinson!


THE EXHIBITION

Location: The Kinney Venice Beach, 737 Washington Blvd, Venice, CA 90292  Room: 202
Hours:

  • Friday, February 27: VIP Early Access 5-7pm | All Access 7-10pm

  • Saturday, February 28: 12pm – 9pm

  • Sunday, March 1: 12pm – 7pm

The intimate hotel suite setting allows visitors to interact closely with each work—books displayed throughout the space on beds, tables, and dressers. This is a selling exhibition with works split equally between the two collaborating artists and Shoebox Arts.

LIVE: EXQUISITE CORPSE ZINE MAKING

Throughout the weekend, fair visitors can participate in collaborative exquisite corpse zine-making sessions. Create art together with strangers, experience the Call and Response philosophy in real time.

All completed zines will be auctioned off for charity.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Call and Response started in April 2020 when everything shut down. Artists needed each other but all the structures for connection had disappeared.

What began as a pandemic response—pairing artists randomly for two-week digital exchanges—became proof that meaningful collaboration doesn’t require institutional permission. No fees. No applications. No gatekeepers. Just artists supporting artists through creative exchange.

Twenty rounds later, the model has facilitated lasting partnerships, gallery exhibitions, and creative community across cultural and geographic boundaries. Artists like Jody Zellen and Lorraine Bubar met through Call and Response and went on to exhibit at Proxy Gallery.

Others discovered new techniques, explored different media, found creative community during isolation.

This exhibition at Startup Art Fair marks the next evolution: collaboration that exists in three dimensions, works you can hold in your hands, partnerships that produced physical objects through radical trust.

FOLLOW THE PROJECT

Instagram: @callandresponseart
Facebook: Call and Response
Email: callandresponseart@gmail.com
Want to bring Call and Response to your organization? We’re developing curriculum and training for institutions interested in facilitating collaborative programs.

ABOUT SHOEBOX ARTS

Shoebox Arts connects artists to opportunities and builds creative community through programs like Call and Response and Perceive Me. Operating from the Brewery Arts Complex in Los Angeles, we eliminate barriers to meaningful artistic exchange.

Come see what happens when 190 artists trust the process across continents.
Kristine Schomaker Shoebox Arts
 

 

We made a “Storybook Theatre” at Craft Contemporary!

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On January 11, 2026, I had the great pleasure of leading a “Storybook Theater” bookmaking workshop at the Craft Contemporary Museum for their all ages Craft Lab, entitled, “Make a Storybook Theater with Debra Disman“!

Participants were encouraged to:
“Become the author of your own story and create a one-of-a-kind storybook theater book. Combine stories, books and theater with a dramatic flair using a variety of recycled paper materials.”

So. Much. Fun!

A vibrant group gathers.


The dynamic Dr. KATE ZANKOWICZ, Ph.D., Craft Contemporary’s Director of Education, introduces the program, and encourages participants.

Focus and concentration.


Cutting without a template, freehand…to create the year of the horse (hello) and the snake (bye bye).


Book within book, to explore a theme.


Care and communication, sharing ideas.

Even the stairs were used as a work surface, by choice!



Mothers and daughters,

Partners and friends, worked together.

  Hollywood was an inspiration,



As well as Zebras!

Such a beautiful group creating beautiful, thought-provoking and whimsical works.

HERE are the Step-by-step HOW-TO instructions to create the STORYBOOK THEATER:
StorybookTheaterProgram_FINAL_PowerPoint

ENJOY!