Debra Disman

Artist

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New Year

“Unfolding Possibilities” at the Los Angeles Museum of Art

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On December 13, 2025, I was honored to teach a bookmaking class entitled “Unfolding Possibilities” at LACMA (The Los Angeles Museum of Art). It was fun to teach right in front of the extraordinary monumental outdoor sculpture, “Levitated Mass” by Michael Heizer, a 456-foot-long concrete slot constructed on LACMA’s campus, over which sits a 340-ton granite megalith.

Upon entering LACMA’s  Resnick Pavilion, we observed the use of layered and torn paper in  artist Mark Bradford‘s  “150 Portrait Tone“, visited the ongoing exhibition,  “Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia” to observe accordion fold structures, and the  “Deep Cuts: Block Printing Across Cultures” show  to view a variety of codex book structures with pages and signatures as preparation for our bookmaking process. We found inspiration in the large-scale outdoor sculptures of  Ai Weiwei:  “Circle of Animals/ Zodiac Heads (2011) and  Simone Leigh 16′ tall  Sentinel (2022); finding commonalities between the artworks and our reaction to them.

After our energizing and thought-provoking artwork, sculpture, exhibition and museum gallery visits,  we returned to our outdoor workspace, and let the fun begin: Folding, measuring, gluing, hole-punching, sewing and embellishing to create our own Unfolding Possibilities.
How great for the New Year.

We created accordion-folded book which unfolded to reveal pockets and pages. Students learned to fold and sew “signatures” (gatherings of folded pages)  into the “valley” (downward or exterior-pointing) folds of the structure.


The amazing teaching assistant Alexis was a great support, and a credit to the LACMA education department!

 
Education Department Staff Susi Castillo keeps Everything on track!

For those interested, this Unfolding_Possibilities_step-by-step contains the diagrammatic step-by-step instructions for the folds and the pamphlet stitch.

 

 

“We Write the Book” Culmination Event at the Northridge Public Library! 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. (NOT 5PM!)

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11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. (NOT 5PM!)

“We Write the Book” Culmination Party and Final Craft
All are invited to our free culmination event for our “We Write the Book” program with our artist Debra Disman. Please join us!

Saturday, December 20, 2025

Time:

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. (NOT 5PM!)

Location:

Northridge Branch Library

Type:

In Person

Audience:

Kids, Teens, Adults, Seniors

Category:

Arts, Crafts & Hobbies

Language:

English

Description:

All are invited to our free culmination event for our “We Write the Book” program with our artist Debra Disman. Please join us to see some of the books participants have created, enjoy refreshments, and learn how to make a book of your own!

All materials included!

Children under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult.

This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

For ADA accommodations, call (213) 228-7430 at least 72 hours prior to the event.

Para ajustes razonables según la ley de ADA, llama al (213) 228-7430 al menos 72 horas antes del evento.

 

”We Write the Book” Make a 2026 Calendar at the Northridge Public Library! 3:30 – 5:30PM!

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I am thrilled to serve again as a 2025-26 “NEAR” Artist in Residence at the Northridge Branch Library!

Join Us Wednesday December 10th from 3:30 – 5:30PM and bind together your own handmade calendar to welcome 2026!



Then join us at 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM Saturday December 20th for our CULMINATION EVENT!

Artist-In-Residence: The Silverlake Independent JCC!

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I am thrilled to serve as this year’s Artist-In-Residence at the SILVERLAKE INDEPENDENT JCC!
I have created an 18 x 30′ tapestry in six panels, which will be detailed in blog posts.

Welcome to Days of Awesome at SIJCC!

Each year, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the days in between invite us to reconnect with what matters most. In Jewish tradition, they are called the Days of Awe. At SIJCC, we call them the Days of Awesome. The Days of Awesome are a community-rooted invitation to show up just as you are. To reconnect with yourself. To recast belonging. To remember that we are part of something imaginative and courageous.

Come with questions, hopes, hurts. Bring your family, your friends, your imagination.
Everybody-friendly. God-optional. 

Childcare, youth programming, and three communal meals will nourish us along the way.
See options below to decide what’s right for you.

✨ We’re thrilled to welcome Debra Disman as this year’s Days of Awesome Artist-in-Residence!

A Los Angeles–based artist, Debra’s work bridges books, textiles, sculpture, and installation to create spaces of wonder, reflection, and connection. Her practice weaves together making, teaching, and community engagement, and her pieces have been shown in museums and art centers across the country.
This season she’s creating an original, interactive tapestry for our High Holidays – a chance for our community to experience art as part of our sacred gatherings.

🌊 Experience it at Days of Awesome.

Artist-in-Residence
Debra Disman

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.

Upcoming Exhibitions 2025

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I am excited to start off the new year with two exhibitions, and appreciate the opportunity to share and commune with others, near and far.

DWELLINGS: An Exhibition of Inhabited Spaces
January 2 – February 2, 2025 at


I am thrilled to participate in the exhibition: “DWELLINGS: An Exhibition of Inhabited Spaces” at ARTLINK, at the Auer Center for Arts and Culture, Fort Wayne, Indiana. I love to get my work involved in events and shows all across the country and in areas not considered major art centers, and off the edges of the US. I find the commitment and caliber of shows, curators/jurors, artists and work to be audacious and  inspiring on all fronts. “For the exhibition DWELLINGS, juried Steve Garst, Artlink invited artists to submit works of any media that involve homes, shelters, forts, nests, burrows, or any other forms of inhabited space used by humans or non-humans. Where a creature lays its head can be a place of refuge, sustenance, and identity.  They are cauldrons of growth, filled with love, hurt, anger, learning, and memory.  Often, homes are constructed and, in turn, end up constructing the lives of those who dwell within them, for better or worse.  Artlink is excited to offer an exhibition exploring the variety of human and non-human places that serve as home, in all its numerous manifestations.” I am showing “Window Treatment”

Window Treatment, 2018, 13 x 38 x 9.25″, mixed media

VIEW THE SHOW HERE!

and close upon DWELLINGS,

The 2025 LA OPEN, at TAG Gallery in Los Angeles
January 8 – February 24, 2025

I am thrilled to show two works in this fun and fantastic annual show!

The Body Politic: Black and Gold, 2024, 8.5 x 23 x 7″, book board, paint, canvas, metal leaf, lace, cord, netting, trim, beads

Hopes and Fears and…, 2020, 24.5 x 16.25″, textile samples, linen thread

View the SHOW here!

Illustrious JUROR: Genie Davis 
Genie Davis is a writer who loves and writes about art as well as a wide range of other subjects as a journalist, biographer, novelist, and WGA-W screen and television writer. You can see her written work in the arts on her own www.diversionsLA.com as well as in past publications of Artillery, Art & Cake, Art Scene, Fabrik, and Riot Material.
She is the curator of 2023’s Leaving Eden, a two-person thematic exhibition at Keystone Art Space; September 2024’s Thresholds, a small group exhibition at Gallery of Hermosa; and upcoming in March 2025, the international exhibition Windswept at Wonzimer Gallery.

Here’s to meeting and marching into the New Year, with courage, bravery, heart and honesty, as much as we can…

 

Be My Valentine at the Canoga Park Library

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February 14th, 2024, was a sweet day at the Canoga Park Branch Library!
A group of wonderful and creative participants joined us for “Valentine’s Day Bookmaking”.

Using the accordion fold and sized covers, they created colorful books to which they added stickers, collaged images, drawing and writing, and love!


This program was part of my artist  residency “We Write the Book” at the Canoga Park Branch Library, supported by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs!


Hearts galore!


Librarian extraordinaire Marcia Melkonian helps our participants, along with their exemplary caregivers.


Creativity in action.


Gina, an accomplished artist and supporter of our program sets up her own creative space.


The caregivers get into the act.


Lending a helping hand.


The talented Hilary loves orange.


All of Hillary’s elements work together to create a cohesive whole.


It is fascinating how she used the orange-striped washi tape, and extended the pattern upward to create what looks like a fence. Everything os orange color-coordinated.


Then, she added the calendar image of a pinky orange sunset to the top, to complete the scene.


Completed book, with ribbon!

See the participants enjoying the workshop HERE!