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Debra Disman

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The HERa Rewrites HER/OUR Story

January 3, 2025 By Debra Disman

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.

Filed Under: ARTISTS, Exhibitions, MEDIA, TEXTILE/FIBER, Textiles/Fiber/Cloth, Venues, Women Artists, Work Tagged With: Artist Book, authentic stories, Bechdel test, cultural consciousness, Elizabeth Lesser, Female, Feminism, Feminist, Fiber, girl, girls, Hera, Hera Educational Foundation and Gallery, Hera Gallery, Hera Gallery and Educational Foundation, inclusive human history, International Women's Day, Into the Bush, Omega Institute, Rewriting Her Story, Rewriting stories, Story, Tapestry, Textiles, White Zip, Women, Women's Month, Women's stories, women’s liberation

in a WHISPER…

July 18, 2024 By Debra Disman

Whispers resound and reverberate in the new Verum Ultimum Gallery space in Portland.

Says Owner and Curator Jennifer Gillia Cutshall:
 “…when the murmur from art echoes beyond the walls & settles somewhere secret.  And “Whisper” with an exclamation may signal contradictions or dualities.  The term carries symbolism pertinent to the momentous occasion, but it also carries mystery to be filled in by artists’ interpretations.  Verum is open to all perceptions of this theme.  Delicate expressions are presented, as are bold, and the term WHISPER may be framed in many ways, not necessarily meant to be a literal elucidation. All mediums and modes of expression were welcomed..  Verum Ultimum Gallery tasks artists to define this inaugural exhibition to herald in Verum’s new space in Southeast Portland this summer of 2024!”

She shares  further “There are whispers everywhere, they arrive in our dreams, at a bus stop, museums, and beyond. Original works of art carry whispers. The whispers from the artists mingle with the viewers subconscious, and a connection is made!…The idea of the “whisper” may be inextricably attached to the importance of the unknown or the hidden. A degree of reverence may be ingrained in our collective psyche around all things art. For me, perhaps it began when I first entered museum spaces as a young girl (in NYC), I remember adults turning to children with their pointer fingers glued to pursed lips. They were signaling that hushed tones (and respect) were the order. And anticipation is in order, like the closed curtains and the dimming of lights in the theater, the collective whisper commands our attention toward these 38 provocative works. They whisper far beyond the bounds of literal elucidations.”
There are 38 artists and 38 unique, original works of art in this inaugural exhibition in the new space!

I am thrilled to show “Excavation of the Interior“ (shown closed and open below)
12 x 28 x 12.5″, wood, paper, cloth, hemp cord, linen thread

                   

SEE THE SHOW

SHOP THE SHOW

PURCHASE THE CATALOGUE

Filed Under: ARTISTS, Artists' Books, Exhibitions, TEXTILE/FIBER, Work Tagged With: Artist Book, Book Form, Contemporary Artist, Group Exhibition, Group Show, Jennifer Gillia Cutshall, Juried Exhibition, New Space, Oregon, Oregon Art Gallery, Portland, Portland Art Gallery, Portland Art Scene, Portland Galleries, Portland Gallery Scene, Sculpture, Southeast Portland, Summer Show, Verum, Verum Ultimum, Verum Ultimum Gallery, Whisper, WHISPER EXHIBITION, WHISPERING

EXHIBITIONISTA: WHISPER at Verum Ultimum Gallery

June 8, 2024 By Debra Disman

I am thrilled to participate in WHISPER! at Verum Ultimum Gallery in Portland.

I will be showing:

"Excavation of the Interior" (shown closed and open below) 12 x 28 x 12.5", wood, paper, cloth, hemp cord, linen thread
   

Says Owner and Curator Jennifer Gillia Cutshall:
 "...when the murmur from art echoes beyond the walls & settles somewhere secret.  And "Whisper" with an exclamation may signal contradictions or dualities.  The term carries symbolism pertinent to the momentous occasion, but it also carries mystery to be filled in by artists' interpretations.  Verum is open to all perceptions of this theme.  Delicate expressions are presented, as are bold, and the term WHISPER may be framed in many ways, not necessarily meant to be a literal elucidation. All mediums and modes of expression were welcomed..  Verum Ultimum Gallery tasks artists to define this inaugural exhibition to herald in Verum's new space in Southeast Portland this summer of 2024!"

Tagged With: Artist Book, Book Form, Contemporary Artist, EXHBITION, Group Show, Jennifer Gillia Cutshall, Juried Exhibition, New Space, Oregon, Oregon Art Gallery, Pacific Northwest Art Scene, Portland, Portland Art Gallery, Portland Art Scene, Portland Gallery Secen, Sculpture, Southeast Portland, Summer Show, Verum, Verum Ultimum, Verum Ultimum Gallery, Verum Ultimum new space, Whisper, WHISPERING

(not so) WHITE WEDDING

January 18, 2024 By Debra Disman

Studio spotlight on:
WHITE WEDDING
 2023
15 x 21.5 x 10.75″,
materials: book board, canvas, muslin, watercolor paper, hemp cord, string, linen thread

What does the term  “white wedding” mean to YOU?

Filed Under: Artists' Books, BOOKS, Work Tagged With: Artist Book, Book, Conceptual, Conceptual artist books, Conceptual Book, Contemporary Artist, Contemporary Los Angeles Artist, Fiber, Handmade Book, Sculptural Book, Sculpture, Sewing, Stitiching, Textile, White Wedding

Sharing Shows: Arizona, California, Texas

October 14, 2022 By Debra Disman


Excavation of the Interior, 2021, 12 x 28 x 12.5″ (wood, mulberry paper, hemp cord, canvas, muslin)

 


Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020, 76 x 90 x 1.5″, mixed media installation utilizing file cards written and drawn upon by Craft Contemporary Museum patrons participating in my commissioned interactive artists’ book project: Chromatic Interactions, (File cards, gold thread, pencil and crayon)

 


Rent Wound Tear, Mend Heal Repair, 2022, 64 x 68″ (dimensions variable), Triptych Installation, (canvas, acrylic paint, hemp cord, lace, string)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2022 Exhbitions, Artist Book, Book as Sculpture, Exhibitions, FASA, Fiber, Fiber Artists of San Antonio, Fifty Years if Fiber, Group Shows, Handmade Book, Hangings, Sculptural Book, SDA: Southwest Regional Exhibition, Sharing Work, Shoebox Arts, Shoebox Projects, Shows, Surface Design Association, Tapestry, Telling Stories, Textiles, Tubac Center of the Arts

Unfolding Possibilities: Something to Ponder for the New Year

December 15, 2021 By Debra Disman

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.

Filed Under: Artist in Residence, ARTISTS, Artists' Books, BOOKS, Exhibitions, New Work, Presentations, Teaching Artist, Work Tagged With: 18th Street Arts Center, 18th Street Arts Center (Airport Campus), 18th Street Arts Center Campus, 18th Street Arts Center exhbitions, Art in the time of pandemic, Artist Book, ARTIST'S BOOKS, Artists' Book/s, Arts Learning Lab, Awl, Bookmaking, Bookmaking With Self-COmpassion, Community Art Projects, Community Arts, Community Collaboration, Film, Flower Fold, Flower Fold Book, Flower Fold Structure, Folded Books, Frida Cano, Handmade Books, Left/Right/Here, Los Angeles Department of Mental Health, Making Books By Hand, Mulberry paper, Online Art Workshops, Pandemic, Pandemic Art projects, RECOVERY JUSTICE: Being Well, Respending to the Pandemic, Sara Delaiden, Screening, Unfolding Possibilities, Use Your Words, Video, We Rise, We Rise LA

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