Debra will cover techniques and extensive applications of the accordion fold in bookmaking including gluing and collage techniques, ways of adding stitching/sewing, and how to create poetic text effortlessly. The last hour of the workshop will be devoted to bringing projects to completion as time allows and how to add techniques from the participants’ chosen art forms and expertise to their books, and sharing completed or in-process books as desired. 

Materials Provided: Book board prepared for book covers
Acid-free paper prepared for book spines
Acid free- glue sticks
Neutral pH Adhesive/brushes
Scissors
Folding tools
Awls/punching tools
Hemp and other cord and thread
Drawing and Writing Materials
Print Media (repurposed)
Fabric and paper scrap and samples (repurposed)
Designer wallpaper and textile samples

Materials/Tools to Bring if Desired:
Favorite scissors for cutting paper and fabric

Awl or other “punching” tool
Collage materials (that can be glued with a glue stick or fluid adhesive)

Print Media to cut up and repurpose (magazines/books/brochures/postcards)

Debra Disman is a Los Angeles-based artist working with the form of the book, both as a solo practitioner and in the public sphere of community engagement. She investigates states of being and connectiveness through intensive engagement with materials, employing the materiality of fiber to invite altered ways of experiencing the world and how we inhabit it.

Her work is shown in museums, galleries, universities, libraries, and art centers across the US as well as through social practice and community endeavors. She has been the featured artist for the Big Read in LA and is the recipient of an inaugural WORD: Artist Grant / Bruce Geller Memorial Prize to create “The Sheltering Book”, a life-sized book structure designed as a catalyst for community creativity. She was commissioned by LA’s Craft Contemporary Museum to create an interactive book for the exhibition, “Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California" and by 18th Street Arts Center to create the artists’ book “Unfolding Possibilities” in collaboration with the community-at-large. Her book, “CONCURRENCIES Charlotte Salomon and Eva Hesse: Genius, Trauma, and the Creative Imagination” was published by ReflectSpace Gallery/Glendale Library Arts and Culture in 2023.

Debra has been a Studio Resident at the Camera Obscura Art Lab in Santa Monica and a Santa Monica Artist Fellow in 2021-22. She has served as an Artist-in-Residence with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs since 2017 and has been an artist-in-residence at 18th Street Arts Center since 2018. See more of Debra’s work Here