Debra Disman

Artist

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Raising our Flags at the Sunland-Tujunga Library!

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Continuing my 2019-20 Artist Residency at the Sunland-Tujunga Library, supported by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, I led a  Bookmaking program, for teens, the winning, fun, wild and versatile Flag Book!

In addition to teens, families attended as well, and learned to fold an accordion spine, attach covers to it, and add the flag pages to create a pattern that created all kinds of options for text and visuals.


Color choices are one of the first ways the young makers express themselves.


Students from the nearby Verdugo Hills High School shared that the artmaking was a welcome break from academic pressures.

Great use of magazine text and letters.

Celebrating “STEAM VHHS” (STEAM is an educational approach to learning that uses Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics as access points for guiding student inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking, VHHS is Verdugo Hills High School).

So glad the Arts are in there! All of these disciplines must work together if we are to move ahead in this World!

MANGA Love at the Granada Hills Branch Library

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A workshop designed for teens turned into a family and community affair, at the Granada Hills Branch Library.

As part of my Artist Residency at the Library, supported by the wonderful Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs,  we held a Flag Bookmaking program with a Manga comics theme. In addition to teens, families and makers of all ages attended, creating wild and wonderful “Manga” Flag Books!


Father and son work closely together, collaborating on a radiant red book.


This brilliant young maker was amused to realize that he was using the same colors in his very cool book as he was wearing!


Sister and brother work side by side. Getting along…in the moment of making.


This wonderful woman has a attended numerous workshops, and is becoming quite the bookmaker!


Three unrelated generations of makers, working together in an atmosphere of collective creativity.


A mother with her two daughters takes advantage of Library offerings.


Makers’ hands.


A measured smile from a teen assistant and maker…using color to tell as story in her book.

Using the popularity of Manga and the arresting structure of the flag book as a means of engagement, participants worked together as a community on their individual projects, learning, enjoying and sharing all at the same time.

Does it get any better than that?

Like White on White 2

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Using the term “white” very broadly.

It is really the layering of similar hued discrete textures and materials and the richness, emotions and feelings this creates…thread on paper, paper on cloth, cord on cloth, paper on board. Cord, string and thread falling to the tabletop,  gathering, bunching, tangling, hanging or stitched, taut, linear.

“Texō“…”I weave.” Texture, textile, text, context.

Endless combinations, permutations, variations.