Скачать или смотреть SANCTUARY Interview with Adrienne Devine on December 23, 2025

“Sanctuary: Know Safe Space” expands upon Debra Disman’s 2023 piece, “K no W Safe Place” with the addition of a hanging roof surrounded by an inverted “forest” of knotted colored cords added to and developing over time, hung from the ceiling in various arrangements allowing pathways to the suspended black sanctuary space. The installation grew and changed over time with the addition of these hanging elements
Disman also engaged in dialogue with others inside the Sanctuary space, informally videotaping these participants’ response to the installation and their immersion in it, as well as offering “interviewees’ the opportunity to share about their own practices, projects and practices, especially as they relate to 18th Street Arts Center. These short-form videos serve as an informal archive of our present moment, the role of the creative process in it, and the support and sanctuary 18th Street Arts Center is offering to the community by allowing us to Know Safe Space.

Interview with Artist and Educator Adrienne Devine in the "SANCTUARY: Know Safe Space" installation on December 19, 2025.

Adrienne DeVine is a mixed media artist based in Pasadena, California. Her portfolio includes installations, paintings, prints, collage, hanging wire sculptures, and handmade books that explore history, cultural heritage, indigenous worldviews, and materiality in art; inviting deeper reflections on Black centered narratives and artistic expression. She has exhibited at the California African American Museum, colleges, universities, and galleries throughout greater Los Angeles.
DeVine is an alumna of California State University Long Beach and Claremont Graduate University. She combines research in history and culture with her creative practice, bridging academic discourse with visual innovation. Her voice as an artist contributes to critical conversations on art and culture. In 2020, she was one of six women artists on the inaugural panel of the Los Angeles-based platform, Conversations About Abstraction. She was also a contributor to the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s African American Craft Initiative, helping to shape the historic and evolving contemporary narrative of African American artistry and craftsmanship.
Driven by a commitment to creating meaningful dialogue, DeVine’s art challenges, inspires, and invites us to reimagine the possibilities of artistic expression.
Adrienne Devine:
"Thank you for inviting me to the "Sanctuary: Know Safe Space" series of conversations Debra! It was an honor to participate and to examine my own thoughts about my work as I watched the video. I want to add a shout out to Tia Blassingame, book artist and printmaker, in regard to my book arts experience at Scripps College Press and more specifically for her trailblazing work in the Book Arts genre as Founder of the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective. I also want to leave viewers with a quote from the late Toni Morrison. I believe it resonates with the power and impact that artists' books in all of their vast iterations, bring to us visually. “The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power” --Toni Morrison"
TIA BLASSINGAME: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tia_Blassingame

https://www.adriennedevine.com/ (Website)
@adevine_art4life (Instagram)
https://www.facebook.com/ADeVineArtist/ (Facebook)