Debra Disman

Artist

Frida Cano

“Mining Peace in a Troubled World”

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“Mining Peace in a Troubled World and How Artists Survive” Panel Discussion
was held as part of the programming for the 18th Street Arts Center exhibition:


curated by Frida Cano.


Debra Disman, Rent Wound Tear, Mend Heal Repair, 2022. Mixed media: canvas/acrylic paint/hemp cord/string. Exhibition view of “Collective Acts of Peace”
at 18th Street Arts Center’s Airport Campus Slipstream Galleries. March 15 – June 4, 2022. Photo by Marc Walker.

Mining Peace in a Troubled World and How Artists Survive 
Institute of United Minds, Salon #1
Part of Collective Acts of Peace
Sunday, May 22 |  3 pm-5 pm
18th Street Arts Center | Slipstream Galleries
3026 Airport Ave, Santa Monica
ONLINE on ZOOM

 Debra Disman , David McDonald,and Labkhand Olfatmanesh local artists in residence at 18th Street Arts Center who have work in the exhibition were the panelists for this conversation with contributions from Joan Wulf, Susie McKay Krieser and Melinda Smith Altshuler, moderated by writer, digital creator and Founder/Artistic Director/Editor-in-Chief of Installation magazine,  A. Moret!

Please see and hear the discussion HERE!

“Collective Acts of Peace / Actos colectivos de paz” at 18th Street Art Center

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I am thrilled to participate in: Collective Acts of Peace / Actos colectivos de paz, an exhibition of 18th Street Arts Center in the Slipstream Gallery, at the Airport Campus. curated by Frida Cano.

“Artists in residence at 18th Street Arts Center are pleased to present Collective Acts of Peace, a selection of 18th Street projects with the aim of exploring different embraces of the creative mind in the midst of an endless global pandemic. Featuring the work of Alexandra Dillon, Ameeta Nanji, Crystal Michaelson, Daniela Schweitzer, David McDonald,  Debra Disman, Doni Silver Simons, Joan Abrahamson, Joan Wulf,  Julia Michelle Dawson, Labkhand Olfatmanesh, Lola del Fresno, M Susan Broussard, Melinda Smith Altshuler, Rebecca Youssef, and Susie McKay Krieser,  this artist-led project is on view in the Slipstream Galleries 18th Street Arts Center’s Airport Campus (3026 Airport Ave, Santa Monica) from March 14 – June 4, 2022. The exhibition highlights the connections among creatives who strive to make this a better world for all living beings, humans and non-humans alike.”

I am showing my triptych: “RENT WOUND TEAR, MEND HEAL REPAIR” in dialogue with artist Joan Wulf‘s works on view from her “Ruminations” series.


Debra Disman, “Rent Wound Tear, Mend Heal Repair”, 2022. Mixed media: canvas/acrylic paint/hemp cord/string. Exhibition view of “Collective Acts of Peace” at 18th Street Arts Center’s Airport Campus Slipstream Galleries. March 15 – June 4, 2022. Photo by Marc Walker.

Explore the show and accompanying events here!

I will be participating on this panel, with artist David McDonald on May 22nd!

JOIN US!!!!

Collective Acts of Peace / Actos colectivos de paz

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I am happy to be part of a unique exhibition:

March 14, 2022 – June 4, 2022
at:
18th Street Arts Center (Airport Campus)

“Artists in residence at 18th Street Arts Center are pleased to present Collective Acts of Peace, a selection of 18th Street projects with the aim of exploring different embraces of the creative mind in the midst of an endless global pandemic. Featuring the work of Alexandra Dillon, Ameeta Nanji, Crystal Michaelson, Daniela Schweitzer, David McDonald,  Debra Disman, Doni Silver Simons, Joan Abrahamson, Joan Wulf,  Julia Michelle Dawson, Labkhand Olfatmanesh, Lola del Fresno, M Susan Broussard, Melinda Smith Altshuler, Rebecca Youssef, and Susie McKay Krieser,  this artist-led project is on view in the Slipstream Galleries 18th Street Arts Center’s Airport Campus (3026 Airport Ave, Santa Monica) from March 14 – June 4, 2022. The exhibition highlights the connections among creatives who strive to make this a better world for all living beings, humans and non-humans alike.”

Gallery hours are Monday-Friday 11am-5pm, Saturday 12-5pm

Participating artists:
Institute of United Minds, a manifesto-driven project: Ameeta Nanji, David McDonald, Doni Silver Simons, Joan Abrahamson,  Melinda Smith Altshuler, and Susie McKay Krieser.: Alexandra Dillon: Crystal Michaelson + Rebecca Youssef, Daniela Schweitzer; Debra Disman + Joan Wulf, Julia Michelle Dawson, Labkhand Olfatmanesh, Lola del Fresno, M Susan Broussard

I am showing “RENT WOUND TEAR, MEND HEAL REPAIR“, 2022, a triptych made of canvas, acrylic paint, hemp cord and string.

My work is in dialogue with artist Joan Wulf’s three pieces made of cut-up and repurposed journals: Ruminations 2, 4 and 5

“Our submitted works engage processes of dissembling and weaving together repurposed materials, text and experience in an effort to reconfigure and make meaning of the past and present, find a way through trauma, and achieve clarity in the confusing banality of everyday life.
Through exploring new forms of artmaking we seek transcendence and deeper understanding for ourselves and the viewer. In this way, the proposed dialogue between our works becomes a collaboration of the spirit as well as the material, as we work to imagine and achieve what seems impossible within and without, and invite others to do the same.” — Debra Disman and Joan Wulf

Unfolding Possibilities: Something to Ponder for the New Year

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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.

“Unfolding Possibilities” for RECOVERY JUSTICE: BEING WELL

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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’s Arts 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” is on view  in the Recovery Justice: Being Well exhibition, at 18th Street Art Center‘s Airport Campus Gallery, through September 10, 2021.

“Building Networks of Empathy”

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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.