Debra Disman

Artist

Teaching Artist

Up the Down Road of Surrealism with Dali!

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In our “Making Art Inspired by Great Artists” CREST Enrichment class,
students are inspired by the Surealist Artist Salvador Dalí!

Students in grades TK- 5th learned about Surrealism, and how to use perspective, scale,
horizon lines and vanishing points to show space and distance, then developed their compositions into surrealistic scenes adding images from magazines to create focal points and a sense of layering.

Creativity abounds with these kindergarteners through fifth-graders!
Each travelled their own road through the project, as they will continue to do in Life.

         

Keeping the Faith…Making Art Inspired by Great Artist Faith Ringgold

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I am thrilled to be teaching MAKING ART INSPIRED BY GREAT ARTISTS  at Franklin and Roosevelt Schools in the Santa Monica Public School System through the CREST Enrichment program.

After a span of two years, teaching live and in-person is exciting and energizing. The students are enthusiastic, helpful and creative and IMAGINATIVE and the parents and staff supportive and engaged.

Everyone is working together to make in-person teaching a safe and rewarding experience. Despite the challenges and great energy required, what fun to see these young artists exercise their imaginations, play, learn and create!

Students responded positively to our “Story Quilt” project, inspired by the Great Artist, Faith Ringgold.
Put cloth in their hands, and away they go!
Students draw an idea for their fabric “story, then begin working on felt with cloth pieces that are glued into place.


Imaginative use of the materials is the intuitive order of the day.


The stories begin to emerge.


Joyous play and exploration of fabrics, cloth scrap and tactile textiles!

 

Teaching Artistry Live and In-Person!

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Even in these times, it is wonderful to get back to live, in-person teaching!

Teaching classes outside at Santa Monica Public Schools, through the CREST Enrichment program, after a span of two years, is exciting and energizing. The students are enthusiastic, helpful and creative, the parents and staff supportive and engaged.

Everyone is working together to make in-person teaching a safe and rewarding experience.

I am teaching MAKING ART INSPIRED BY GREAT Artists at Franklin and Roosevelt Schools in the afternoon, and MAKE YOUR OWN BOOKS! at ROOSEVELT SCHOOL first thing in the morning. Despite the challenges and great energy required, what fun to see these young artists exercise their imaginations, play, learn and create!


Students work outdoors to create personal frames for their  Frida Kahlo-inspired self-portrait projects.


How they design the frames may communicate as much about them as their self-portraits inside them will.


Even the backpacks are works of art!

In our MAKE YOUR OWN BOOKS! class students learn the accordion fold book structure,

and begin developing their books with visual art and writing right away!

It is fantastic, watching the masterpieces unfold!

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!

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.