Debra Disman

Artist

  •

ARTS LEARNING LAB @ HOME: CREATIVE SELF-COMPASSION

Unfolding the Possibilities: Bookmaking with Self-Compassion 2

By

I was honored to have led “Bookmaking with Self-Compassion” on
Saturday, May 15, 2021, a workshop which invited participants to:

“Make an artist book celebrating their own creative growth”.

This program was presented through 18th Street Art Center’s Arts Learning Lab, with support from the County of Los Angeles Department of Mental Health‘s campaign We Rise LA. WE RISE encourages wellbeing and healing through art, connection, community engagement and creative expression and takes/took place during May: Mental Health Awareness Month.  It is part of artist Sara Daleiden’s artist project  RECOVERY JUSTICE: BEING WELL. 

Participants discovered how to create the beautiful, fun and versatile Flower Fold book into which they could add wishes, hopes, prayers and dreams. This post celebrates our MATERIALS!

Participants received “art kits” containing origami papers, ribbon, railroad board, stickers, markers, and glue sticks.

The beautiful origami papers were folded into smaller shapes containing “hidden” folds…

then glued together to create a longer book that could be folded up into a square, unfolded into a sculptural shape,

or hung as a chain!

“Found” words and images were added to the “pages”, as well as stickers drawing, collage and more…

and a whole now expressive artwork was created!

Unfolding the Possibilities: Bookmaking with Self-Compassion 1

By

I was honored to have led “Bookmaking with Self-Compassion” on
Saturday, May 15, 2021, a workshop which invited participants to:

“Make an artist book celebrating their own creative growth”.

This program was presented through 18th Street Art Center’s Arts Learning Lab, with support from the County of Los Angeles Department of Mental Health‘s campaign We Rise LA. WE RISE encourages wellbeing and healing through art, connection, community engagement and creative expression and takes/took place during May: Mental Health Awareness Month.  It is part of artist Sara Daleiden’s artist project  RECOVERY JUSTICE: BEING WELL. 

Participants discovered how to create the beautiful, fun and versatile Flower Fold book into which they could add wishes, hopes, prayers and dreams.

These works could become a chain to hang in their homes,

give as a gift,

or remain  an individual document of self-expression

exploring what the pandemic has meant to  them,

while learning new skills and creating a unique expression of renewal and rebirth during the spring season.

Makers used origami Papers,  glue sticks, railroad board, cardstock, ribbon,  stickers and items
they found in their immediate environment to create their books.

The results were stunning…beautiful, expressive, evocative, and telling of the past year.

It is a joy to share these self-compassionate bookworks….

These works shall remain powerful and poignant

of a never to be forgotten experience, that lingers and informs our present moment.

Kudos to filmmaker and videographer Jeny Amaya for her stellar documentation.

RECOVERY JUSTICE: Being Well

By

I am thrilled to participate in:

RECOVERY JUSTICE: Being Well

March 8, 2021 – September 11, 2021
at
18th Street Arts Center (Airport Campus)

“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.”

Participating artists include: Sara Daleiden, Nicola Goode, Susie McKay Krieser, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, M Susan Broussard, Lionel Popkin, Yrneh Gabon Brown, Lola del Fresno, Debra Disman, Melinda Smith Altshuler, Gregg Chadwick, Luciana Abait, Deborah Lynn Irmas, Rebecca Youssef, and Dan S. Wang.

Sara Daleiden’s residency and facilitation work on these projects is generously supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Bailiwik is also a supporting partner on this exhibition.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR
(such a joy working with Sara)
Sara Daleiden is a Los Angeles-based artist who facilitates civic engagement within developing landscapes, exercising arts and cultural exchange strategies. She encourages local cultures to value neighborhoods, public space, civic art, land and racial and gender equity. Sara has an expertise in working with artists and other cultural entrepreneurs for civic engagement, creative placemaking, network development and small business development.

Her project at 18th Street Arts Center grows out of the placekeeping work that 18th Street has been engaged in over the past six years through our cultural asset mapping project (culturemapping90404.org) and the Commons Lab, which involves community voices to define, center, and connect cultural practices within their own neighborhoods. Her practice investigates the influence of location, scale, market, values and other regional factors on the production of the arts and cultural identity. Through methodologies involving partnership mapping, network building, and the facilitation of self-organizing and advocacy, Sara aims to enhance the advocacy power of artists in influencing neighborhood development in the city. Her durational engagement with 18th Street will spin off land-based activations with opportunities for neighbors, artists, city staff, and the broader public to participate. Sara has been collaborating with arts workers Nicola Goode, Susannah Laramee Kidd, Dorit Cypis and Kimberli Meyer for this artist project.

Pictured is  “Womb”, 2021, (plastic, canvas, jute cord) and “I Smile At You With My Eyes”, 2021, cardboard, magazine pages, acrylic paint,