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Debra Disman

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Art in the time of Covid

“Home Sick”, or, Sick of Home?

February 7, 2021 By Debra Disman

Home sick or sick of home? This international exhibition will present artwork that captures how the tumultuous events of 2020 have shaped personal experiences and artistic practice. Works will be shown that suggest how the phrase “Home Sick” can take on multiple meanings in today’s revolutionary climate. Home Sick will exhibit traditional and contemporary artwork across a wide array of media – painting, photography, drawing, pastels, printmaking, ceramics, textiles, wearable art, sculpture, film, artists’ books, and other new media. 

The Art Effect announces the launch of its new international juried exhibition series and pilot youth museum studies program in 2021. Home Sick will be The Art Effect’s inaugural national juried exhibition in its new 3,000-sq-ft gallery at the Poughkeepsie Trolley Barn in the heart of the City of Poughkeepsie. This exciting exhibition will be on display February 25 – April 1, 2021.

“Home Sick will serve as a core component of a pilot program to put youth in the “driver’s seat” leading exhibitions and programming at the Trolley Barn,” says Executive Director Nicole Fenichel-Hewitt. Youth at The Art Effect developed the exhibition theme to invite artists to capture how the concept of being “home sick” can take on multiple meanings in light of a tumultuous year such as 2020.

Curator Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, will work closely with The Art Effect youth to juror the show made up of submissions from around the world. ”We’re very excited to have youth work alongside established curators like Mary-Kay to co-create high-quality exhibitions and develop the skills needed to pursue careers in the art museum field” noted Fenichel-Hewitt.

I am thrilled to show “BedTime Story” in this innovative show, and support the young jurrors and experienced curator in their combined efforts.
“BedTime Story” 2018, 12 x 28 x 8.5″, mixed media/artists’ book: book board, repurposed textiles, cloth and fabric, hemp cord, ceramics with beads created by Judy Disman.

Filed Under: ARTISTS, Artists' Books, Exhibitions, Work Tagged With: "Home Sick", Art in the time of Covid, Exhibitions, Groups Shows, Home\Theme-Home, Mary-Kay Lombino, The Art Effect, The Art Effect at the Trolly Barn Gallery, Youth Jurors

Exhibitionista: “Home Sick”

January 17, 2021 By Debra Disman

Feel the Art Effect with a new show: Home Sick

“Home sick or sick of home? This exhibition shares work that captures how the tumultuous events of 2020 have shaped personal experiences and artistic practice and explores how the phrase “Home Sick” can take on multiple meanings in today’s revolutionary climate.”

I am excited to take part in this innovative exhibition at The Art Effect at the Trolly Barn Gallery, showing:
BedTime Story. This work features faces created from clay and gifted to me by my Mom, the ceramicist Judy Disman. Thus this exhbition theme, and concept of “home”, and “home sick” holds a very deep resonance.

The Art Effect announces the launch of its new international juried exhibition series and pilot youth museum studies program in 2021. Home Sick is The Art Effect’s inaugural national juried exhibition in its new 3,000-sq-ft gallery at the Poughkeepsie Trolley Barn in the heart of the City of Poughkeepsie. This exciting exhibition will be on display February 25 – April 1, 2021.

“Home Sick will serve as a core component of a pilot program to put youth in the “driver’s seat” leading exhibitions and programming at the Trolley Barn,” says Executive Director Nicole Fenichel-Hewitt. Youth at the Trolly Barn Gallery

The exhibition theme invitese artists to capture how the concept of being “home sick” can take on multiple meanings in light of a tumultuous year such as 2020. 

Curator Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, has worked closely with The Art Effect youth to juror the show made up of submissions from around the world. ”We’re very excited to have youth work alongside established curators like Mary-Kay to co-create high-quality exhibitions and develop the skills needed to pursue careers in the art museum field” noted Fenichel-Hewitt.

See the HOME Sick opening!

 

Tagged With: "Home Sick", Art in the time of Covid, Exhibitions, Groups Shows, Home\Theme-Home, Mary-Kay Lombino, The Art Effect, The Art Effect at the Trolly Barn Gallery, Youth Jurors

“Building Networks of Empathy”

October 23, 2020 By Debra Disman

I am honored to participate in:

“Building Networks of Empathy”

at the Airport Gallery of 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA

October 26  – December 15, 2020 

The exhibition Building Networks of Empathy is the second of a two-part show that asks us to consider the ways in which art empowers not only the artist, but its viewers to transform their most difficult experiences into enlightened outcomes. The first part of the show is an ongoing online-only exhibition entitled Facing Darkness, which encouraged artists in our community to reflect internally on our current moment of pandemic, isolation, and structural inequity laid bare.

For this second part, which will be physically installed in 18th Street Arts Center’s spacious Airport campus hangar galleries, artists were asked to respond to how they have changed as a result of their inner reflections on darkness, and to imagine new futures and societal structures as we see our way out of crisis. Each artist grapples as well with the role that art can play in social reflection, expression, and cultural paradigm shifts as a result of a deeper understanding of each other, and the empathy that follows. The exhibition sees empathy not only as a way to share and understand what others are going through, but also as a natural and endless resource that we can all rely on when crisis and emergency hit, with hopes that we can turn this moment of collective fear into a sublime experience.

Debra Disman, Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020. File cards, pencils, crayons, thread. Installation. 76 x 90 inches. Photo by Debra Disman. Courtesy of the artist.
Debra Disman, Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020. File cards, pencils, crayons, thread. Installation. 76 x 90 inches.
Photo by Debra Disman. Courtesy of the artist.

“I was commissioned to create an interactive book for Craft Contemporary’s 2017 exhibition, Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California, which opened shortly after the 2016 presidential election. Visitors could choose file cards in an array of colors, draw and write on them, and insert them into the pocketed pages of the book. A range of feelings, responses, and concerns were expressed through the cards, which the Museum Staff saved and gave to me at the end of the show. I stitched them together grouped loosely by theme, to express the network of empathy they depicted, held together by golden thread.”

This exhibition may be viewed by appointment only. Please visit here to sign up to visit the exhibition!

Participating artists include: Alexandra Dillon, Deborah Lynn Irmas, Luigia Gio Martelloni, Rebecca Setareh, M Susan Broussard, Julia Michelle Dawson, Lionel Popkin, Ameeta Nanji, Siru Wen, Elham Sagharchi, Debra Disman, Luciana Abait, Sheila Karbassian, Daniela Schweitzer, Joan Wulf, Loren Harris-Heller, Nung-Hsin Hu, and Susie McKay Krieser.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a live Zoom panel featuring Alma Ruiz and Karen Sherman, moderated by Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, on November 12, 2020 at 12pm. For this panel discussion, curators, artists, activists, advocates, and scholars are invited to meet virtually  to reflect on the public opening of Facing Darkness, and consider how the show renders a public crisis and artists’ circumstances evident and knowable. Moderated by artist-scholar Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, with talks by curator Alma Ruiz and dancemaker Karen Sherman, (Inter)facing Darkness will frame a dialogue on how artists are operating as second responders, as thought leaders, and resource gatherers at this time. Participants will be invited to speak on their experience of the show at this moment. Register here.

Filed Under: ARTISTS, Exhibitions, New Work, Presentations, Work Tagged With: "Building Networks of Empathy", 18th Street Airport Gallery, 18th Street Arts Center, Alexandra Dillon, Alma Ruiz, Ameeta Nanji, and Susie McKay Krieser., Art and Empathy, Art in the time of Covid, Artists, Artists Respond, Artists Respond to Pandemic, Daniela Schweitzer, Deborah Lynn Irmas, Debra Disman, Elham Sagharchi, Frida Cano, Group Show, Joan Wulf, Julia Michelle Dawson, Karen Sherman, Lionel Popkin, Loren Harris-Heller, Luciana Abait, Luigia Gio Martelloni, M Susan Broussard, Nung-Hsin Hu, Online Exhibition, Paul Bonon-Rodriguez, Rebecca Setareh, Response to Pandemic, Sheila Karbassian, Siru Wen

“Building Networks of Empathy”

October 10, 2020 By Debra Disman

The exhibition Building Networks of Empathy is the second of a two-part show that asks us to consider the ways in which art empowers not only the artist, but its viewers to transform their most difficult experiences into enlightened outcomes. The first part of the show is an ongoing online-only exhibition entitled Facing Darkness, which encouraged artists in our community to reflect internally on our current moment of pandemic, isolation, and structural inequity laid bare.

For this second part, which will be physically installed in 18th Street Arts Center’s spacious Airport campus hangar galleries, artists were asked to respond to how they have changed as a result of their inner reflections on darkness, and to imagine new futures and societal structures as we see our way out of crisis. Each artist grapples as well with the role that art can play in social reflection, expression, and cultural paradigm shifts as a result of a deeper understanding of each other, and the empathy that follows. The exhibition sees empathy not only as a way to share and understand what others are going through, but also as a natural and endless resource that we can all rely on when crisis and emergency hit, with hopes that we can turn this moment of collective fear into a sublime experience.

Debra Disman, Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020. File cards, pencils, crayons, thread. Installation. 76 x 90 inches. Photo by Debra Disman. Courtesy of the artist.
Debra Disman, Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020. File cards, pencils, crayons, thread. Installation. 76 x 90 inches.
Photo by Debra Disman. Courtesy of the artist.

“I was commissioned to create an interactive book for Craft Contemporary’s 2017 exhibition, Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California, which opened shortly after the 2016 presidential election. Visitors could choose file cards in an array of colors, draw and write on them, and insert them into the pocketed pages of the book. A range of feelings, responses, and concerns were expressed through the cards, which the Museum Staff saved and gave to me at the end of the show. I stitched them together grouped loosely by theme, to express the network of empathy they depicted, held together by golden thread.”

This exhibition may be viewed by appointment only. Please visit here to sign up to visit the exhibition!

Participating artists include: Alexandra Dillon, Deborah Lynn Irmas, Luigia Gio Martelloni, Rebecca Setareh, M Susan Broussard, Julia Michelle Dawson, Lionel Popkin, Ameeta Nanji, Siru Wen, Elham Sagharchi, Debra Disman, Luciana Abait, Sheila Karbassian, Daniela Schweitzer, Joan Wulf, Loren Harris-Heller, Nung-Hsin Hu, and Susie McKay Krieser.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a live Zoom panel featuring Alma Ruiz and Karen Sherman, moderated by Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, on November 12, 2020 at 12pm. For this panel discussion, curators, artists, activists, advocates, and scholars are invited to meet virtually  to reflect on the public opening of Facing Darkness, and consider how the show renders a public crisis and artists’ circumstances evident and knowable. Moderated by artist-scholar Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, with talks by curator Alma Ruiz and dancemaker Karen Sherman, (Inter)facing Darkness will frame a dialogue on how artists are operating as second responders, as thought leaders, and resource gatherers at this time. Participants will be invited to speak on their experience of the show at this moment. Register here.

Tagged With: "Building Networks of Empathy", 18th Street Airport Gallery, 18th Street Arts Center, Art, Art in the time of Covid, Artists, Artists Respond to Pandemic, Group Show, Online Exhibition, Response to Pandemic

Linkage: See the Shows, Hear the Artists!

August 17, 2020 By Debra Disman

It has been a joy to participate in a number of exhibitions and artist talks over the past several months.

Partially due to the current pandemic, shows, panels, artist talks and more are being put online, and made accessible to the public  at no cost to the viewer/listener.

We hope that these offerings support energy, spirit, imagination and creativity, as well as health and resilience, during this unprecedented era.

Click, and enjoy.

To Your Health.

“The Artful Book“:  The Long Beach Museum of Art
Tour the exhibition!

“Drawing Connections“: 18th Street Art Center Airport Campus Gallery , Santa Monica, CA
Tour the Exhibition with Curator Frida Cano!

“Material Identity” : Loveland Center for Contemporary Art, Loveland, CO
Tour the Exhibition! 
Listen to participating artists talk with Executive Director Sarah LaBarre and Curator Jessica Kooiman Parker

“Facing Darkness” 18th Street Art Center online
Tour the Exhibition!
Explore the Show By Theme/Explore the concept of the COLLECTIVE

Filed Under: ARTISTS, Artists' Books, BOOKS, Exhibitions, New Work, Work Tagged With: 18th Street Arts Center, Art in the age of Social Distancing, Art in the time of Covid, ARTWORKS Center For COntemporary Art, Drawing Connections, Facing Darkness, Frida Cano, Jessica Kooiman Parker, Material Identity, Online Art Offerings, Online Artist Talks, Online Exhibitions, Online Tours of Art Exhbitions, Sarah LaBarre, The Artful Book, The Long Beach Museum of Art, The Loveland Artists Collective

FACING DARKNESS in the time of pandemic

July 25, 2020 By Debra Disman

I am honored to participate in the exhibition: FACING DARKNESS in the company of fellow 18th Street Art Center makers: Deborah Lynn Irmas, Beth Davila Waldman, Elham Sagharchi, Gwen Samuels, Rachel Chu, Debra Disman, M Susan Broussard, Lionel Popkin, Leo Garcia, Alexandra Dillon, Gregg A Chadwick, Ameeta Nanji, Yrneh Gabon, Claudia Concha, Luciana Abait, Rebecca Youssef, Crystal Michaelson, Susie McKay Krieser, Melinda Smith Altshuler, David McDonald, Julia Michelle Dawson, Daniela Schweitzer, Luigia Gio Martelloni, Sheila Karbassian, and Joan Wulf.

ONLINE from July 27, 2020 to June 30, 2021

”In our darkest hours, it is natural and human to seek connection with others, to face the darkness together so that we can imagine a brighter path forward. In our current pandemic-time of crisis and isolation, this instinct can feel thwarted, and lead us to even darker places. Art is one of the ways that communities can find resilience in isolation, a method of aesthetic communication that empowers both the artist and the viewer to transform the most difficult and paradigm-breaking experiences into new visions for the future. Even as the arts and cultural infrastructure in the US is in deep crisis, the work of artists reflecting on this time and its socio-cultural reverberations is even more necessary for binding us together and rebuilding our world. As Californians for the Arts director Julie Baker quipped “A first responder comes in and saves a life. A second responder comes in and helps rebuild a life.”

Artists are second responders, and this exhibition of 25 varied artists from 18th Street’s artist community present multivalent ways that artworks that address the human capacity to overcome hardships on both global and personal scales. From meditations on memory, investigations into the warped passage of time, working through fraught familial relationships, and grappling with fear and longing in a time of public health crises and inequities laid bare, the artists in this show address our current moment both obliquely and directly, with humor, melancholy, and uncomfortable propositions. Creation during this time feels nothing like luxury; rather it is deeply necessary in navigating the darkness ahead.” 

Collective – “The only way out is through”

“Hopes and Fears and…”, 2020, 24.5 x 16.25, mixed media

18th Street will host related online events over the course of the exhibition.

Join Us HERE and now….

Filed Under: ARTISTS, Exhibitions, New Work, Work Tagged With: "Hopes and Fears and...", 18th Street Arts Center, Art, Art in the time of Covid, Artists, Artists Respond to Pandemic, Facinbg Darkness, Group Show, Online Exhibition, Online Shows, Response to Pandemic

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