Collective – “The only way out is through”
"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.
IDENTITY is a display of aspects that usually remain hidden—a bittersweet and raw take on what churns inside us. We all have a certain idea of who we are through our identity, but to get there, we need to probe beneath the surface. To get a sense of ourselves, we need to explore who we are, how we are viewed by the world, and the characteristics that define us. This exhibit explores our beliefs, qualities, expressions, and personalities that collectively form our identity.
“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."
I am thrilled to be showing in The Cape Cod Museum of Art's upcoming exhbition, INSIGHT. When spoken, this word can be broadly understood as – Insight, In Sight and Incite.
Grace Hopkins, gallery director at the Berta Walker Galleries in Provincetown, and Wellfleet, MA served a s juror.
523 artworks were submitted by 272 artists from 30 states across the country for INSIGHT. Only 65 artworks have been selected from 60 artists in 16 states.
A note from the juror:
“Narrowing down the artwork for this exhibition was challenging. I first had to digest all 500+ submissions as a whole before any threads of meaning could be drawn between the works, and a final cohesive subset could be chosen. As a gallery director I am regularly confronted with an aesthetic puzzle. But, when you throw in the added thematic complexity of INSIGHT and the sheer number of works submitted, making a final selection was both a demanding and rewarding exercise in distillation. I want to thank everyone who came forward and placed their artwork into this pool. Another juror, with different values and sensibilities would have solved this very differently. Your collective vision, ability and insight moved me.”
-Grace Hopkins, Juror, Artist and Gallery Director, Berta Walker Galleries
TAG Proudly Presents
The Los Angeles Open 2021
May 11 — June 5
This year, TAG celebrates local area artists with a dedicated showcase from May 11-June 5 in our Sky Gallery in the upstairs loft at TAG.
Participating artists include:
Mariko Bird, Milan DelVecchio, L. Aviva Diamond, Debra Disman, David Emmett, Taz Essa, Pat Shafer Falkner, Tony Gangitano, Daniela Garcia, Kyoung Han, Andy Hann, Gina Herrera, Tom Lasley, Nancy Goodman Lawrence, Monica Marks, J.D. Mathes, Nelson Munares, Vojislav Radovanovic, Brian Reynolds, Emily Sunez, & Michael Usher.
I am thrilled to be showing "Torrent and Tangle: Keep your House In Order" in the:
"Turmoil and Transformation" show at the Hera Gallery and Educational Foundation, a non-profit, artist-run organization that has continued to stimulate discussion and challenge perceptions for over 40 years. This creative space has allowed countless artists a place for transformation, exploration, and community with one another which has been BRINGING CREATIVITY TO THE COMMUNITY SINCE 1974
"2020 was a year that was filled with worldwide turmoil. The Pandemic. Another reckoning with racism and police brutality. Climate Change, wildfires, hurricanes, and droughts. The undermining and politicization of science. The widening political divide. An election with voting rights, healthcare, immigration, paid sick leave, income inequality, living wages, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA rights, our environment and the future of democracy at stake.
Is this turmoil leading to transformation? And what kind of transformation is it going to be?"
"In a time of extraordinary flux, this exhibit will explore concepts of merging, verging and combining in shape, form, color, and meaning. How do artists investigate coming together—or coming apart—in their practice? The exhibit will feature artists from around the country working in a variety of media."
Vestige Concept Gallery Presents: Backroads: Art, Less Traveled. This exhibit seeks to showcase works of art that venture off the beaten path, especially with regard to travel. Artwork includes places or experiences involving hidden gems, special or unusual places, wanderings, odd travel, strange encounters, and/or "lost" and fading places.
The California Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers presents:
A workshop led by Debra Disman
Saturday, June 5, 2021
1:00 – 4:00 pm, Pacific Time
Presented live via Zoom
The “Folded Fan Book,” Debra Disman’s personal name for this fun and versatile book structure, is comprised of
an accordion spine, two covers, and full size pages which “fan out” when the book is opened.
This structure can be treated as a traditional codex or built into a sculptural form limited only by the
ingenuity, creativity, and innovation of the maker.
Denim, with all its symbols and dualities, is a common item of clothing that unites many around the globe. Dad Jeans, skinny jeans, low riders, bell bottoms, boot leg, wide leg, no leg, 501s, 504s, button fly, stretch jeans, the American dress code writ large across centuries. With so many styles available and ways to accessorize/manipulate the fabric, denim has historically allowed for a freedom of expression representing both individuality and shifts in cultural movements. Denim comes in a wide range of blues and other colors, washes, fades and textures making it a perfect, but not obvious, medium to create fine artwork. Join us now, for a re-imagining of the meaning of denim. Denim that was discarded can open up a new way of looking, a startling way of seeing past the everyday. What we have abandoned, will be presented again, re-purposed from the lives we lived, to moments we experience together “forever in blue jeans.”
Verum Ultimum Gallery tasks artists to define “Liminal” for this first edition of this exhibition.
I am thrilled to be part of this first edition of the theme: LIMINAL, at Verum Ultimum Gallery through which artists are invited to explore the theme, LIMINAL in any interpretation.
Liminal is the space between. What significance does transition (or the “space between“) have in your work or your artistic voice? Does your work reflect the liminal aspects of our pandemic-impacted world and the adaptation to a post pandemic existence? Does your work represent and or challenge the threshold to a more equitable society? Or, perhaps it reflects a vehicle for expression through pure abstraction.
As with all Verum Ultimum's calls for art, the curator never seeks to drive the work, the only hope is to unveil unique visions. All mediums and modes of expression have been welcomed from low brow, pop surrealism, realism, abstraction, and more. The term Liminal may be interpreted in many ways, and is not necessarily meant to be a literal elucidation.
