Image courtesy of Leon Gallery — Tya Anthony’s “Muscle Memory” Exhibition. Photographer Amanda Tipton.
One of the primary goals of our Artist Residency and Reach Studio programs at RedLine is to support emerging artists of all experience levels as they grow in their career.
That’s why in 2022, we’re kicking off a monthly artist achievement & exhibition roundup to showcase all the incredible things our artists are doing.
Starring in new exhibitions, winning awards, selling pieces, landing grants — our artist community at RedLine never ceases to impress and amaze us. And while many of these events are local to Colorado, we have artists and alumni making an impact all over the globe.
From exhibitions and events to awards and art sales, here’s what’s going on with our Resident and Reach Studio Artists and alumni this January.
January Artist Exhibitions and Events
Tya Anthony - “Muscle Memory” Solo Exhibition
Image courtesy of Leon Gallery — photographer Amanda Tipton
What: Multimedia Solo Exhibition
Where: Leon Gallery - 1112 E 17th Ave, Denver, CO, 80218
When: November 13, 2021–January 8, 2022
Artist Statement about Muscle Memory: “Muscle Memory is an interactive performance, photographic and sculptural exploration intended to offer communal healing and catharsis in honor of those who have lost their lives due to the global coronavirus pandemic, civil unrest, police violence and those incarcerated in the preschool to prison pipeline. While reflecting on Black and African-American experience, healing practices and traditions, hand plastered white flowers and framed white plastered bouquets that look like the plaster is still dripping, float along wall papered walls encasing the space with images of the black body in movement, rest and play.
“The wall paper reflects a patterned collage of photographs of the black experience and community representing contrasting monuments for those stories that continue to plague our radios, televisions, newsfeeds, social media and advocacy spaces.”
About the Artist: Anthony has become a central figure within the Denver art community as an artist, a curator, and an educator. She is a Redline Residency Artist Alumni, has had her work featured in MCA Denver’s Octopus Initiative, has been acquired by The Denver Art Museum for their permanent collection, and curated “From This Day Forward” at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in spring of 2021.
Contact: tyaalisaanthony@gmail.com
Artist website: http://www.tyaanthony.com/
Instagram: @tyaanthony
Eileen Roscina - Art of the State 2022
Image courtesy of Eileen Roscina. “Iris” - 36” x 36" x 3" resin, pressed flowers, gold leaf, ink, glass
What: Juried Exhibition
Where: The Arvada Center - 6901 Wadsworth Blvd. Arvada, CO 80003. Main, Upper, and Theatre Galleries.
When: January 20–March 27, 2022
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 20, 6-9 pm. Awards Ceremony at 7:30 pm.
RSVP: A free reservation is required to visit this exhibition. RSVP here >
RedLine Resident Artist Alumn Eileen Roscina will be displaying work in the Art of the State show at The Arvada Center.
About the Exhibition: “Every three years, all 10,000 square feet of the Arvada Center Galleries is filled with a celebratory survey of the incredible diversity, quality, and depth of work from Colorado Artists. After its start in 2013 and iterations in 2016 and 2019, Art of the State 2022 continues the legacy as a juried exhibition showing off the powerful scope of contemporary art from across the state. The jurors worked diligently to select a comprehensive overview of work that strives to capture a wide scope of art from across the state. From those entries, 149 artworks by 142 artists were selected.”
Jurors for Art of the State 2022:
Louise Martorano, Executive Director, RedLine Contemporary Art Center
Ellamaria Ray, Artist/Anthropologist, Professor of Africana Studies, Metropolitan State University of Denver
Collin Parson, Director of Galleries and Curator, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities
About the Artist: Eileen Roscina Richardson is an artist, chef and naturalist from Denver, Colorado who works in a wide variety of mediums. Eileen is an experimental filmmaker with a BFA from Emerson College in Boston, MA, a botanical illustrator, trained at the School of Botanical Art and Illustration in Denver, CO, and a Natural Food Chef, trained at Nutritional Therapy Institute. Through biomimicry and the study of biophilia, her work examines and seeks to raise questions about human’s spiritual and social (dis)connection with nature.
Contact: eileen.roscina@gmail.com
Artist website: www.eileenroscina.com
Instagram: @eileenroscina
Becky Wareing Steele — Art of the State 2022
Image courtesy of Becky Wareing Steele
RedLine Alum Becky Wareing Steele will also have a sculpture on view as part of the Arvada Center’s Art of the State 2022 Exhibition.
About the Artist: Becky Wareing Steele is an artist living and working in Denver, Colorado specializing in small scale sculpture. Her work deals with the commonalities that exist in our shared experiences through the examination of scale and environment. Through her sculptural and photographic work with 1:160 scale figures and 1:12 scale objects she explores the impact of scale and how it affects our perception of the world around us.
Contact: bwareingsteele@gmail.com
Artist website: https://beckywareingsteele.com/
Instagram: @beckywareingsteele
Rochelle Johnson — Pop Up Artist Event & Wine Tasting
Image courtesy of Rochelle Johnson
What: Pop up wine tasting & art viewing
Where: Union Hall — 1750 Wewatta Street, Denver, CO 80202. Located in suite 144 inside The Coloradan.
When: Thursday, January 13th, 6-8pm MST.
Union Hall and community partners will host a pop up artist event & wine tasting featuring artist Rochelle Johnson. Johnson is a contemporary painter with 2 series: Urban Life and Blue World. Urban Life talks about the black narrative, while Blue World celebrates black bodies in shades of blue hues.
Please contact Emma at Union Hall for more details by emailing info@unionhalldenver.org.
About the Artist: Rochelle Johnson was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. In 2005, her artwork was featured on the cover of the novel When a Sistah’s Fed Up, previously on Essence’s Top Ten List. Rochelle has been published in several journals — the most notable being the American Art Collector Magazine. Johnson continues to develop her unique style of story-telling through painting from her Denver studio and has also added to her accomplishment as curator.
Contact: rochelle.johnson696@gmail.com
Artist website: https://www.rochellejohnsonstudio.com/
Instagram: @rochellejohnsonstudio
Charles Parson - Multimedia One-Person Exhibition
Photo courtesy of Curtis Center for the Arts
What: One-Person Multimedia Exhibition
Where: Curtis Center for the Arts - 2349 East Orchard Road, Greenwood Village, CO, 80121
When: January 8–February 26
Opening Reception: January 8, 6-8 p.m.
About the Exhibition: In Charles Parson’s one-person exhibition, he will be presenting around 70 new dimensional drawings and site-observation studies, as well as garden sculptures from 2 different series: "Landscape's Scores," and the "Near/Far" series.
In “Landscape's Scores” series, many of these works were developed during his stay at RedLine — including a one-night, pop-up evening of collaborative performance art in RedLine's main gallery under the auspices of Leaping Man non-profit.
In the “Near/Far” series, Parson takes a look at the artist's love of the remote, rural, Eastern high plains vistas and their direct influence upon his contemporary western aesthetic. A year of Covid-induced solitary day trips out onto Eastern Colorado's high plains interwoven with intense studio work resulted in this most recent series.
About the Artist: Charles Parson was a Resource Artist at RedLine from fall 2018-spring 2020. He has over 75 solo exhibits throughout the United States. He has over 80 one-person exhibits throughout the U.S., along with an extensive participation in group exhibits, as well as large scale installations and monumental public sculptures which have been seen in places such as New York City, Chicago, Kansas City, and more.
Contact: cparson.art@gmail.com
Artist website: www.charlesparsonart.com
Instagram: @charlesparsonart
Taiko Chandler - “Indelible Garden” Solo Exhibition
Image courtesy of Taiko Chandler
What: Solo Exhibition
Where: Denver Botanical Center — Kemper Family Gallery at the Freyer–Newman Center, 1007 York Street Denver, CO, 80206 (York Street location).
When: December 11, 2021–April 3, 2022
Opening reception: Saturday, January 15, 5p.m. MST
About the Exhibition: This solo show is titled “Indelible Garden: Prints by Taiko Chandler. It will be up during Denver’s Month of Printmaking 2022. This isn’t a typical print show — using unconventional (nontraditional) materials for print making and using prints for innovational way (manipulated by hand to create 3 dimensional pieces, combined with heat manipulated textile work).
The show contains over 20 original prints on paper and 3 large installations. The “On and On” series is Chandler’s continuous project since 2018, with master printer Sue Oehme at Oehme Graphics in Steamboart Springs.
Image courtesy of Taiko Chandler
Two of the three installations are site specific, which means they were created on site and took me about a week to install. That was my biggest challenge for this exhibition. The third installation consists of 9 separate pieces of Tyvek. Each piece is an original print cut by hand using an Xacto knife.
The opening reception for the show is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required (because the space is limited). Learn more and register here for the opening reception >
About the Artist: Taiko Chandler lives and works in Denver, CO. Her work has been exhibited in Colorado (most recently a solo show at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art), Texas and New Mexico, as well as at numerous print fairs throughout the U.S. Her work is in private and public collections in the U.S. and Japan, including the Cleveland Clinic Art Program, University of Colorado Denver Business school, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (NY) and the Denver Art Museum (Education Collection).
Contact: taikochandler@gmail.com
Artist website: https://www.taikochandler.com/
Instagram: @taikochandler
Lares Feliciano — “Memory Mirror” Immersive Installation
Image courtesy of Lares Feliciano
What: Immersive Installation
Where: Denver Art Museum — 100 W 14th Ave Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204
When: Memory Mirror opened in July 2021 and will be up until March 2023. Lares will be making updates/edits to the animation three times throughout the run of the exhibition. The first update will happen in January 2022.
Lares Feliciano’s “Memory Mirror” is an immersive installation that invites visitors to explore their relationship with memory through animation, shadow boxes, and interactive storytelling. Designed to evoke the memory of a relative’s living room, Memory Mirror transforms the museum’s Precourt Family Discovery Hall into a surreal domestic den that is both familiar and fantastic.
As part of the installation, Lares Feliciano invites the community to contribute images or an audio recording that represents a personal memory. The memories shared with Feliciano will result in a changing animation and experience that evolves regularly, morphing and changing, just like memory.
Image courtesy of Lares Feliciano
About the Artist: Lares Feliciano is an animator, filmmaker, collaborator, and curator. She has served as the Artist in Residence at Grand Canyon National Park and was a participant in the Colorado Creative Industries Change Leader Institute. Her films have screened all over the world including New York, San Francisco, Berlin, London, and Melbourne. Lares lives in Denver, CO where she creates experimental animations, mixed media collages, and has several film projects in development.
Contact: lares.feliciano@gmail.com
Artist website: http://www.laresfeliciano.com/
Instagram: @lareslovesyou
Ramón Bonilla — “Fiat Lux” Solo Show
Image courtesy of Ramón Bonilla — a picture of a line mural but done with markers at Market Station in 2021.
This solo show consists of an installation that would cover the wall space of the gallery with paper tape, vinyl, and some reclaimed materials such as cardboard. It will also include light and sound elements.
“Fiat Lux” will be an ad-hoc installation responding to the particularities of the gallery space. This installation is a temporary extension or continuation of a mural also titled "Fiat Lux," which is installed on the exterior of Alto Gallery. This mural was produced with paper tape by Ramón Bonilla for the 2021 Redline Gala.
In Bonilla’s work, visual elements are purposely misaligned, overlapped, and allowed to coincide. Irregularity and geometrical variation provides contrast. This practice also extends to Bonilla’s tridimensional work, which uses recovery materials as building blocks that are reconfigured through an excessively casual approach happening between intention and serendipity.
Image courtesy of Ramón Bonilla — tape mural installed at Alto Gallery titled "Fiat Lux," which paved the way to the Alto Gallery show.
As an ode to minimalism, the use of plain-spoken elements recall a resilient spirit acquired while growing up in Puerto Rico and eventually immigrating to the US. This unsystematic approach is grounded on topographical observations and an interest in bricolage, sustainability and material resourcefulness pointing to concepts of impermanence and everlastingness.
About the Artist: Ramón Bonilla is a Denver based artist that works with painting, wall vinyl, paper tape and tridimensional work. From 2015 to 2017 Bonilla completed his Artist Residency at RedLine. He has been featured on 5280’s Home magazine as one of the “The Five Local Artists To Watch And Collect.” Bonilla recently received a grant from the Inside Fund through the Andy Warhol Foundation to develop his project Illuminati DIA.
Contact: ramonbnll@gmail.com
Artist website: www.ramon-bonilla.com
Instagram: @ramonbnll
Ben Coleman — “fence” Sound Composition
What: Composition and sound design
Where: Alabama Dance Festival — 1200 10th Ave South, Birmingham, AL 35294
When: January 20–23, 2022
Coleman will be on tour as a composer in residence with Staibdance, a contemporary dance company. Staibdance’s original work “fence” (funded via a New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) will be presented by the Alabama Dance Festival. Coleman created the composition and sound design for this work.
About the Artist: Ben Coleman is a British multi-disciplinary artist residing in Denver, CO. His practice is multidisciplinary, grounded in sound and performance, and often encompassing other media, including music, dance, video and installation.
Contact: contactbencoleman@gmail.com
Artist website: https://www.bencolemansounds.com/
Instagram: @bencolemanart
Art Classes & Craft Talks
Sarah Palmeri — “Flow State” Painting Class
Image courtesy of Sarah Palmeri — "Disassociate." 24 x 18 in, acrylic on paper, created in 2020. This is a part of a series of paintings on paper that Palmer created using meditative painting techniques.
What: 6-week painting class
Where: Denver Art Museum - Martin Building
When: Every Wednesday for 6 weeks beginning on January 19, 2022. 12-2 pm MST
This class explores "meditative painting" and creative mindfulness techniques that she uses in her own practice. This is a new program by the DAM. Sarah will be the first teacher kicking off this series in the new Martin Building.
“Flow State” is an abstract painting and drawing class that explores the connections between intuitive painting, mindfulness meditation, and community. Participants will learn how to combine abstract painting and drawing skills with mindfulness meditation techniques. Acrylic paint, pastels, paper, and canvas will be the primary media for this course. Connections will be made to abstract works in the Denver Art Museum collection through gallery visits and digital images.
From Palmeri: “While this specific class is sold out, I want people to know that I'll be offering more of this kind of programming in the spring with other community partners! I think this kind of program is what people need right now, especially because of the current state of the world. Creativity intentionally combined with meditation practice has helped me understand the ways in which I've experienced systems-based harm — but also how to disrupt the ways in which I perpetuate systems-based harm. As a white woman, I believe there is no work more important than this right now, and I want to invite people into this process with me.”
About the Artist: Visual artist Sarah Darlene Palmeri explores the functionality of abstraction through a feminine, queer and contemporary perspective. While she primarily identifies as a painter, Palmeri often uses different tools that serve as a substitute for paint, ranging from fabrics like bedsheets and clothing to more organic objects like wood, seeds, and sand. Palmeri’s body of work explores the intersections of painting, social practice, and meditation and their collective ability to promote self-reflection, cathartic healing, and true social change.
Contact: sarahdpalmeri@gmail.com
Artist website: www.sarahpalmeri.com
Instagram: @darlene_in_denver
Artist Achievements
Tony Ortega - "Northside Gothic” painting purchased by the Loveland Museum
Image courtesy of Tony Ortega — "Northside Gothic,” acrylic and collage on panel, acrylic on paper mache.
Ortega had a one-person exhibition titled "Magia Chicana" at the Loveland Museum in Loveland, Colorado, from July 24-November 13, 2021. The Loveland Museum purchased the mixed media piece, "Northside Gothic,” which was part of that exhibition.
Ortega originally created “Northside Gothic” for the 2019 Annual Resident Artist Exhibition at RedLine, titled, “Now That I Have Your (un)divided Attention!”
About the Author: Tony Ortega has been a working artist and teacher for the past 36 years. He is the recipient of the coveted Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1999) and the Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1998). His work can be found in the Denver Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum, and the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center. He has exhibited extensively in the United States, Latin America and other parts of the world.
Contact: tortegaartist@cs.com
Artist website: www.tonyortega.net
Instagram: @tortegaartist
Matt Maes — Gypsy House Cafe Featured Artist of October 2021
Image courtesy of Matt Maes — “In the Garden of Her Eyes” at Gypsy House Cafe
What: Featured Artist Event
Where: Gypsy House Cafe
When: October 2021
Maes hosted a goddess themed series and show including live music, painting and a talk about the inspiration behind mythic art — specifically the relevance of goddesses in our lives.
This event represented a real joining of people aligned around a love of the feminine energy coming through goddess centered art. Each one represent a medium connecting the creator and those experiencing them, and ultimately the goal is to create moments of personal reflection. The deities represent aspects of ourselves which when we truly connect and understand them, we come into contact with vital aspects of our own shared humanity.
About the artist: My name is Matt and I create art for people who share my love of myth and creativity. My aim is to create ways for you to have deep, meaningful encounters with reflections of yourself. The truth is that creativity lives within our spirits and is accessible to everyone — potential to be unlocked and shared with the world. My invitation is to join in exploring worlds of wonder within the doorways of our spirits.
Contact: matt.qkstudio@gmail.com
Artist website: https://www.quantumkeyholestudio.com/
Instagram: @quantumkeyholestudio
Support Denver Artists with a RedLine Membership Today!
New exhibitions, awards, grants, and more — there’s never a shortage of “wow” with our RedLine artists and alumns.
But what’s the best way to support all these active artists? Becoming a RedLine member!
Our members and donors are a vital part of our artist exhibitions, programs, and events. A RedLine membership also includes exclusive invites and complimentary access to programs in the Community Studio.
Plus, every month, you’ll be served up fresh content all about our artists and where to find them next.
