Debra Disman is a Los Angeles-based artist known for her work inspired by the book, both as a solo practitioner and in the public sphere of community engagement. Her practice traverses textiles, installation, sculpture and performance to push the familiar into forms that arrest and baffle, while simultaneously offering places of contemplation and solace. As a maker, teaching artist, researcher and writer she creates work and projects which investigate states of being and connectiveness through intensive interactions with materials while attempting to fully explore and exploit their haptic properties.

Her work is widely shown in museums, galleries, art centers, universities and libraries including The Torrance Art Museum; Art Share LA; The Irvine Fine Arts Center; The New Bedford Art Museum; The Brand Library and Art Center; ReflectSpace Gallery in Glendale, CA; Craft Contemporary in LA: The Long Beach Museum of Art; The University of the Arts in Philadelphia; The Cape Cod Museum of Art; and The Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA, as well as through social practice and community endeavors.

Disman was the featured artist for the 2016 Big Read in LA and recipient of an 2016-17 WORD: Artist Grant / Bruce Geller Memorial Prize. She was commissioned by LA’s Craft Contemporary to create the interactive book “Chromatic Interactions” in 2017 and 18th Street Arts Center to create the artists’ book, “Unfolding Possibilities” in 2021. Her book “CONCURRENCIES Charlotte Salomon and Eva Hesse: Genius, Trauma and the Creative Imagination” was published by ReflectSpace Gallery/Glendale Arts and Culture in 2023.

She was a 2018 Studio Resident at the Camera Obscura Art Lab at 1450 Ocean in Santa Monica, and has served as an Artist-in-Residence for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs since 2017, directing the “We Write the Book” project. A Santa Monica Artist Fellow in 2021-22, she has been a local artist in residence at 18th Street Arts Center since 2018.