Debra Disman

Artist

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TEXTILE/FIBER

TAG: The 2025 LA OPEN

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The Artists Gallery (TAG) Presents:
The L.A. Open 2025
JOIN US:
Wednesday, January 8 through Friday, January 24
Awards Reception: Saturday, January 11th, 2025, 5 – 8 pm

TAG and the L.A. Open celebrate art and creativity in Los Angeles County!

I am thrilled to show two works in this fun and fantastic annual show!

“The Body Politic: Black and Gold“, 2024, 8.5 x 23 x 7″, book board, paint, canvas, metal leaf, lace, cord, netting, trim, beads


“Hopes and Fears and…”, 2020, 24.5 x 16.25″, textile samples, linen thread

JUROR: Genie Davis
Genie Davis is a writer who loves and writes about art as well as a wide range of other subjects as a journalist, biographer, novelist, and WGA-W screen and television writer. You can see her written work in the arts on her own www.diversionsLA.com as well as in past publications of Artillery, Art & Cake, Art Scene, Fabrik, and Riot Material.
She is the curator of 2023’s Leaving Eden, a two-person thematic exhibition at Keystone Art Space; September 2024’s Thresholds, a small group exhibition at Gallery of Hermosa; and upcoming in March 2025, the international exhibition Windswept at Wonzimer Gallery.

MORE INFO HERE!

 

The HERa Rewrites HER/OUR Story

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I am thrilled to participate in the Hera Gallery’s year long, 52-piece online show, “Rewriting her Story“

“Writer Elizabeth Lesser asks “What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her?”

Flipping through the pages of your high school history textbook, how many stories are written about women as monumental protagonists? When was the last time you watched a movie that passed the Bechdel test? When was the last time there were more women than men on the Supreme Court voting on the right to our bodies? 

As brands of “faux” feminism partnered with consumerist culture push out media representing women’s liberation through a patriarchal gaze, how can we reclaim the visual language to share more authentic stories? How can our art share the stories of women, trans women, and non-binary folks written out of the history books? How does your work give voice to the overlooked and underrepresented? 

Hera Gallery presents 52 works that rewrite this cultural consciousness for a more inclusive human history.”

I am honored to have two pieces in this salient exhibition, and to participate in a small way, in Rewriting Her/Our/Their Story.

 

Please see the SHOW in its entirety HERE.

My works in the show:
WHITE ZIP

and
INTO THE BUSH

Please see the SHOW here.

Upcoming Exhibitions 2025

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I am excited to start off the new year with two exhibitions, and appreciate the opportunity to share and commune with others, near and far.

DWELLINGS: An Exhibition of Inhabited Spaces
January 2 – February 2, 2025 at


I am thrilled to participate in the exhibition: “DWELLINGS: An Exhibition of Inhabited Spaces” at ARTLINK, at the Auer Center for Arts and Culture, Fort Wayne, Indiana. I love to get my work involved in events and shows all across the country and in areas not considered major art centers, and off the edges of the US. I find the commitment and caliber of shows, curators/jurors, artists and work to be audacious and  inspiring on all fronts. “For the exhibition DWELLINGS, juried Steve Garst, Artlink invited artists to submit works of any media that involve homes, shelters, forts, nests, burrows, or any other forms of inhabited space used by humans or non-humans. Where a creature lays its head can be a place of refuge, sustenance, and identity.  They are cauldrons of growth, filled with love, hurt, anger, learning, and memory.  Often, homes are constructed and, in turn, end up constructing the lives of those who dwell within them, for better or worse.  Artlink is excited to offer an exhibition exploring the variety of human and non-human places that serve as home, in all its numerous manifestations.” I am showing “Window Treatment”

Window Treatment, 2018, 13 x 38 x 9.25″, mixed media

VIEW THE SHOW HERE!

and close upon DWELLINGS,

The 2025 LA OPEN, at TAG Gallery in Los Angeles
January 8 – February 24, 2025

I am thrilled to show two works in this fun and fantastic annual show!

The Body Politic: Black and Gold, 2024, 8.5 x 23 x 7″, book board, paint, canvas, metal leaf, lace, cord, netting, trim, beads

Hopes and Fears and…, 2020, 24.5 x 16.25″, textile samples, linen thread

View the SHOW here!

Illustrious JUROR: Genie Davis 
Genie Davis is a writer who loves and writes about art as well as a wide range of other subjects as a journalist, biographer, novelist, and WGA-W screen and television writer. You can see her written work in the arts on her own www.diversionsLA.com as well as in past publications of Artillery, Art & Cake, Art Scene, Fabrik, and Riot Material.
She is the curator of 2023’s Leaving Eden, a two-person thematic exhibition at Keystone Art Space; September 2024’s Thresholds, a small group exhibition at Gallery of Hermosa; and upcoming in March 2025, the international exhibition Windswept at Wonzimer Gallery.

Here’s to meeting and marching into the New Year, with courage, bravery, heart and honesty, as much as we can…

 

Surface Design Association Instagram “Take-over”!

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The weekend of November 29-December 1 I had the pleasure, the honor and the fun of “taking over” (collaborating with) the Instagram account of the beloved  Surface Design Association or “SDA”, as it is commonly known.

It was so much fun, rewarding and delightful to get responses from and connections to many artists and makers I was not yet aware of, and peruse their beautiful and innovative work.

Thank you SDA, for this lovely opportunity, and for All you do for All of us.

Here are some of my posts (sans videos):
(You can see the whole collaboration, as well as continually added works on the SDA Instagram as well as my own)

Hello and a happy holiday weekend to All. I have the privilege of collaborating with the @surface_design this weekend, an organization I am thrilled to be a part of. SDA offers community, connection, education and wonderful opportunities. I have had the pleasure of participating in several SDA exhibitions, and I am honored to be in the company of other SDA artist members showing around the country! Thank you SDA, for all you do for all of us.

“LA Foret I, II and III” Adding complexity with each piece, as a stand alone, and components of a whole. They are made from hundreds of pieces of cord, glued to a raw canvas surface, painted on the reverse, and hanging at a slight remove from the wall.


(a different image of this piece is on Instagram)
“KnoW Safe Place”, 2023, 60 x 48 x 48″, canvas, hemp/nylon/cotton cord, lace, netting, lace, ribbon, acrylic paint, wood, archival adhesive.  Is there no safe place?  Do we ever know safe space?

“The Body Politic: Like White on White”, 2024, 9x16x7
book board, hemp, canvas, hemp/assorted cord, trim, acrylic paint, archival pva
Three dimensions reaching into three dimensions.


A treasured part of my practice is sharing the wealth as a teaching artist across LA County. I teach bookmaking and more in libraries, schools, museums and other venues. I value these collaborations with others such as librarians, whose expertise I respect and learn from! Thank you to the @culture_la and others for the opportunities you afford teaching artists in all disciplines.

Studio shot from the back by André Smits 
@artistintheworld713


Girrrrl powerFUL students from my “Making Art Inspired By Great Artists” class…creating their own textile hangings inspired by Faith Ringgold‘s extraordinary Story Quilts. Age range 1-5th grade, quite a range, and so talented.


It has been an honor to collaborate with the @surface_design over the past three days, and thank you, SDA for inviting me to do so. I leave you with “The Body Politic: Black and Gold“, 2024, 8.5 x 23 x 7”, made of book board, canvas, cord, netting, lace, trim, metallic leaf and beads. A book-inspired object that references the body as well as adornment and asks is what is precious; which can be presented in multiple states of open and closed; hints and glints at secrets, yet contains nothing on its pages except that which we project. Wishing all a healthy and peaceful holiday and strength for the New Year.

Hopes and Fears and…

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From 2020 to the present moment.

I HOPE this is not forever, I FEAR it might be…but I HOPE not.
HOPE springs eternal, FEAR springs infernal.




Hopes and Fears and…, 2020, 24.5 x 16.25″, textile samples, linen thread