Art
THE ART OF THE BOOK at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art!
Kids Art Class: Fall Art Camp—The Art of the Book (Ages 9–12)
Create your own books using fun folding and gluing techniques! Add your own writings, drawings, photographs, and more! Sketchbook, journal, album—what will YOUR book become? Each class will teach techniques for creating fun and fantastic books, and unleash your imagination!
With artist Debra Disman.
Join on your computer or tablet wherever you have internet. A Zoom link will be sent prior to camp start. Materials are included in tuition.
Three Days: Monday–Wednesday, November 23–25
- Mon, Nov 23, Tuesday Nov 24, Wednesday Nov 25, 2020
- 10 am–12 pm PT
- Online
- Art Camp is designed for children ages 9-12; children ages 8 and under will not be admitted.
- NexGenLA Members $100; General Public $125
- Pre-registration is required for all classes
- Tuition includes materials.
- Additional fee for shipping.
- For additional art class information, please contact ArtClasses@lacma.org.
- For ticketing support, contact boxoffice@lacma.org.
- Please visit LACMA’s FAQ page for our refund policy.
“Building Networks of Empathy”
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.

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.
FACING DARKNESS in the time of pandemic
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”

18th Street will host related online events over the course of the exhibition.
Join Us HERE and now….
Exhibitionista: FACING DARKNESS
I am thrilled to be included in FACING DARKNESS, an online exhibition of works created by artists from 18th Street Art Center‘s 18th street and airport campuses.
Tour the Show!
“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”

18th Street will host related online events over the course of the exhibition.
Participating artists include: 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.