Debra Disman

Artist

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Textiles

Exhibitionista: “Please Touch”

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“Please Touch” is: 
a group exhibition that is part of Arts at Blue Roof 2022 Summer Festival, “A Celebration of Creativity and Joy

June 4, 12-5pm PST
On view through June 18th by appt.
Arts at Blue Roof
7329 S. Broadway Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90003
https://www.artsatblueroof.org/

Curated by Kristine Schomaker and Sheli Silverio

Featuring: Debra Disman, Cathy Engel-Marder, Monica Marks, Liz Nurenberg, Julie O’Sullivan, Laurel Paley, Robyn Sanford

Arts at Blue Roof Summer Festival, “A Celebration of Creativity and Joy celebrates the summer solstice while highlighting the richness and diversity of the arts in South Los Angeles and beyond. It reflects Blue Roof Studios’ commitment to fostering and amplifying creativity, connection, and inclusion within the community.

The festival is produced by Arts at Blue Roof Studios, Lisa Diane Wedgeworth 

Fantastical….2022!

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I am honored to be participating in FANTASTIC FIBERS, (2022), an international juried exhibition that seeks to showcase a wide range of outstanding works related to the fiber medium. It was a wonderful experience to be a part of FANTASTIC FIBERS 2021, and i very much look forward to seeing (albeit online) all the works in this year’s show!

One of Yeiser Art Center’s most engaging, innovative & colorful international exhibits, Fantastic Fibers is an inspirational must-see for fine artists, quilters and textile art enthusiasts across the globe. The exhibition is comprised of contemporary and innovative works created with fiber as the primary medium or concept

The show began in 1987 as a wearable art show but has evolved over the years to include a compelling mix of traditional and non-traditional works created from natural or synthetic fibers, and work that addresses the subject or medium of fiber.

View a video of the show here!

JUROR: Matt Collinsworth
Matt Collinsworth became the new CEO of the National Quilt Museum during the summer of 2021.  Matt attended Georgetown College in central Kentucky and received his MFA from Ohio State.  He has been directing nonprofit organizations since 1998 and museum’s and other cultural organizations since 2003.  Matt has served as Director of the Kentucky Folk Art Center, Senior Director of Cultural Outreach at Morehead State University, Interim Director of the Lexington Art League, and Director of the National Music Museum.  Matt has curated and co-curated dozens of exhibitions that have appeared at museums and galleries across the country, including national and international traveling shows. He also produced numerous major exhibition catalogs, overseen large cultural events, and led several facility renovation projects. Matt lives in Paducah’s Lowertown Arts District with his wife, Kelly, his son, Eli, and (when she’s home from college) his daughter, Brynn.

I am especially thrilled to be showing “Excavation of the Interior”, a work completed in 2021, made of wood, mulberry paper, watercolor paper, muslin, canvas, hemp cord and linen thread.



Artist Amy Usdin photographs the show!


Exterior/Closed


Interior/Open


Interior/Detail


Exterior/Closed


Exterior/Spine-Back

EXHIBITIONISTA: FANTASTIC FIBERS 2022

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I am thrilled to be participating in FANTASTIC FIBERS 2022, an international juried exhibition that seeks to showcase a wide range of outstanding works related to the fiber medium.

Pictured, my work, “Excavation of the Interior“, 2021

One of Yeiser Art Center’s most engaging, innovative & colorful international exhibits, Fantastic Fibers is an inspirational must-see for fine artists, quilters and textile art enthusiasts across the globe.

Contemporary and innovative works created with fiber as the primary medium or concept were welcome. This exhibition was open to all artists 18 years and over working in the field of fiber art.

The show began in 1987 as a wearable art show but has evolved over the years to include a compelling mix of traditional and non-traditional works created from natural or synthetic fibers, and work that addresses the subject or medium of fiber.

JUROR: Matt Collinsworth
Matt Collinsworth became the new CEO of the National Quilt Museum during the summer of 2021.  Matt attended Georgetown College in central Kentucky and received his MFA from Ohio State.  He has been directing nonprofit organizations since 1998 and museum’s and other cultural organizations since 2003.  Matt has served as Director of the Kentucky Folk Art Center, Senior Director of Cultural Outreach at Morehead State University, Interim Director of the Lexington Art League, and Director of the National Music Museum.  Matt has curated and co-curated dozens of exhibitions that have appeared at museums and galleries across the country, including national and international traveling shows. He also produced numerous major exhibition catalogs, overseen large cultural events, and led several facility renovation projects. Matt lives in Paducah’s Lowertown Arts District with his wife, Kelly, his son, Eli, and (when she’s home from college) his daughter, Brynn.

NEW WORK in 2021: “Forest Through The Trees”

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I was happy to finally be able to have Elon Schoenholz Photography in to photograph works completed during 2021… fast away the old year passes…

Here I share “Forest through The Trees“, 15 x 42 x 12”, made of book board, canvas, hemp cord, ribbon, typewriter ribbon, acrylic paint, wood.
It is part of a monochrome series in black, through the colors of “black” are infinite, and change with light, material, juxtaposition, and how the viewer engages with the piece.

Comprised of two accordion-folded “spines”, the “book”, becomes a “box”, with a “door” that opens, expandable “walls”, and  painted canvas “pages” held up precariously with wooden dowels. The piece can be presented and contemplated in numerous ways, and begs a tactile connection, through all of us working in book, and perhaps sculptural forms in general grapple with how to do this.  How to have viewers engage with the work, participate in it, without having it worn away over time in the process…

We are seekers.
The Journey continues.

Happy New Year.

(exterior, closed)

(exterior, ajar)

(interior/exterior, open)

NEW WORK in 2021: Red Notebook (“Here’s To The Red, White and Blue”)

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I was happy to finally be able to have Elon Schoenholz Photography in to photographs works completed/created during 2021, which continues to race by.

Part of an ensemble, suite, or installation of works entitled, “Here’s To The Red, White and Blue”, Red Notebook is structured as a “traditional” codex, with covers that open and pages that turn.  Moderately, “red” (hence the “red” element of the “Red, White and Blue” theme-meme-trope?) it contains a great deal of black as well.
In the immortal words of  Mark Rothko, “There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend;  One day, the black will swallow the red.”

Made from a repurposed placemat, hemp cord, linen thread, canvas, and lace, it is 8.5″ high, 12.5″ when opened in full, and 6.5″ at greatest depth and opens left to right, from cover through pages to cover, bound together through a single signature.


The red and back play off each other in all their associations


Sewing, stitching, gluing, knotting, coiling, massing


Amassing, accumulation, the RED in


Up next.

Tricksters and Transformation…What could be better?

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There’s a cool new show in town, transforming not through trickery, but with an Open Heart, and wondrous “soft” materials.

“Textiles have the universally demonstrated capacity for holding meaning, establishing connections, and creating healing. As we emerge, on many levels, from the darkness into the light of awareness of isolation and injustice we have an opportunity and obligation to examine the status quo. This exhibition will allow the artist to step into the now and make work that opens doors within themselves, thereby acting as a portal to a collective resurgence into a renewed relationship with the world. This awakening inspires transformation.

There is a deep potential for the artist to act as trickster, agent of change, or boundary crosser. After the pandemic and the social upheaval of the past eighteen months, the artist has gained renewed agency for creating more enlightened definitions of meaning and new ways of seeing.

The pandemic can be a portal, serving as a provocation to transformation.”

I am honored to be showing “Torrent and Tangle: Keep Your House In Order”, in a new, open configuration!





This work begs the question: with all the torrent and inevitable tangle, how DO we “keep our house in order” or keep our house at all?
Also a play on “keeping house” a sort of 1950’s housewifery term to my mind, , which eerily reverbs with the growing rate of homelessness across LA Counbty, the US and the globe.

In the words of revered and beloved LA-based artist Kim Abeles:
“I followed the thread like a stream to find balance.
Textile Arts Los Angeles has presented a rich exhibit juried by Carol Shaw-Sutton at the Helms Bakery space in Culver City. “Tricksters & Transformation” is the show, an artist-in-residency with Carmen Mardonez, and a zoom presentation with Beverly Naidus who provided an inspiring history of some of her many audience-engaged artworks.
It was tempting to photograph every piece because the exhibition is divine with art that offers detail and a tactile emotion. Speaking with hands and care. The title comes in part because of the multiple ways that the artists transform the materials, including post-production remnants and those that would have gone overlooked except for the poetics of art.

And here is a link to the show details: https://textileartsla.org/tricksters-exhibit-1” 

Join us for the
ARTISTS’ RECEPTION: TRICKSTERS & TRANSFORMATION

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Helms Design Center
8745 Washington Blvd. Studio E
Culver City, CA 90232 United States + Google Map
Website:https://textileartsla.org/tricksters-exhibit-1