We’re so honored that our Reach program was the feature of a “Colorado Voices” episode by Rocky Mountain PBS!
RedLine’s Reach program is an open studio program for artists from all walks of life to create in a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment.
After 6 months of participation in Reach, artists interested in pursuing a career in the arts or building a creative business are encouraged to apply to the Reach Core Artist program. The Core Artist program is a 3 year commitment that offers professional development workshops, skill building, mentorship, portfolio development support, and earned income opportunities.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE REACH CORE ARTIST PROGRAM >
This episode follows three of our Reach Core Artists—Leticia Tanguma, Kesiena Sebeni, and Matt Maes—as they create inside RedLine’s Community Studio and at home. Each share the inspiring trials, tribulations, and triumphs they’ve experienced as artists and as human beings.
“I deserve better. I deserve to do something better with my life.”
“Art is my language for happiness or for sorrow, for justice and peace against hate.”
“The antithesis of depression is expression.”
Watch the Colorado Voices episode and read the video transcript below!
RMPBS Highlights RedLine’s Reach Program
Moe Gram:
What we do in this space is we work on building our craft so that way we can generate a revenue that supports this creativity that we all have. So there's a lot to accomplish. The human experience is very different for everybody, and that flexibility can be very, very important and valuable for people, and so if you create a life for yourself and you create a way to generate a revenue for yourself that allows you that autonomy over your time and allows you that flexibility, really beautiful things can happen from that, and there's a lot of great opportunity that can happen from that as well.
Matt Maes:
What I love about Cristal's work is that there is such potency in storytelling that comes through. Every time you look at one of her images, you get the sense that's just even beyond words, even beyond what you can perceive in that moment, and then when she goes and explains it, it just opens up an entirely new level.
Kesiena Sebeni:
I've honestly probably only talked to Cristal in person in the last week and she's been one of the friendliest people I've met here. But the weird thing is despite not really talking to her, I've been looking at her artwork all the time and it's like she's one of my favorite artists here and I didn't even know who was making these art pieces. She really goes big and I love that about her, just the way it's so beautiful. I love her drawing skills. She's a very talented artist and a lot of her art style reminds me of what I see myself doing more of in the next few years. She's very inspiring for me.
Image courtesy of RMPBS
Cristal Darlina:
It's hard for me to say exactly what themes I paint about, just about anything that moves me somehow, I will paint it. I painted a lot about experiences of being homeless. I had been homeless from escaping that abusive person with my daughter when she was little. I would go draw a park. In order to stay somewhere, I would go and draw all night. I would draw on the napkin or whatever. I kept art alive, art kept me alive actually. I've tried to do other things in my life and I always go back to art somehow, and it is just a part of who I am.
My name is Cristal Darlina and I'm an artist. My father has been an artist all his life and then I grew up observing him do his artwork. I notice the things that he painted about, especially about police brutality. He was painting images of the KKK and just using art to give voice to different types of struggles and injustices and also to give hope. So I've just tried to create art like that all my life. I believe that art could give voice to people who are not normally heard and that can make a difference, and so that's what I learned that art could be used for.
Yeah, we're at my daughter and son-in-law's house. They've been kind enough to let me use this room as a studio, and so we are in Five Points Denver. So I am going to paint the violin red to match the chest of the quetzal, which is a beautiful bird from Central America and Mexico. It's almost like the piece stuff to us. I love colors. I love different mediums such as oil and acrylic. I love to draw and observing my father always drawing his idea first and then applying it to the mural. That's what I learned, and then other times I would just go for it.
Different paint and different mediums will determine the effect of that painting. This painting is titled Promise. I Painted it in 2017. It shows a woman's maybe such as myself or my sister or cousins or something. They're being almost strangled by things like racism, the so-called figure of justice, that iconic image of a woman holding the scales of justice, but justice for who is what I'm asking for is justice for women who've experienced brutality and hatred, or is it only for certain people?
I've had exes tell me, "Your art is not going to make a difference. I don't know why you're doing that art." Someone actually hit me and would beat me up. He was really jealous of my artwork. That made me question the artwork that I was doing that I wanted to do. I think it was after that I started working with the children. I worked with people recovering from addiction and I would be drawing their pictures as I was drawing them and talking with them, making that human connection, and they helped me realize, "Wow, art is so powerful. It's helping me heal."
Reach Core Artist Cristal Darlina Featured on RMPBS
Read the full RMPBS interview here!
I left him because I knew he was going to kill me or my daughter. He threatened to kill my father once, he threatened to kill himself. I realized let him kill me. I cannot live without dignity if I stay with him. The art is a reflection of different points in the artist's life in my life. Maybe she's given life, maybe she's asking for life, maybe she's asking for forgiveness or giving forgiveness. She could be a shoplifter. She could have handcuffs on or she could be receiving something.
So I like how it could be interpreted different ways. I'm looking for just the right brush. The only living that I make is through my artwork, and so I'm really happy about that. I look back on my life at that single mom who was working so hard at different jobs at the same time, escaping violence. I would tell her, "You're doing the right thing, and that's good that your art is part of that right thing."
Art is so important in society. There's just so much hate, so much violence and corruption and greed and disparity. Art is my language for happiness or for sorrow, for justice and peace against hate. I want to create artwork that will bring us together so that we can see each other's human spirit and have that connection.
I think that the art that Matt does is phenomenal. It is so spiritual and moving. It teaches such a beautiful lesson about our own spirituality and our role in the universe. I just see Matt as such a friend to everyone and also like a brother and a fellow artist.
Kesiena Sebeni:
I've definitely learned a lot about what it means to work on art a lot, if that makes sense. I see him constantly drawing and I just see him constantly bettering his skills and evolving as an artist, which I think is very cool.
Matt Maes:
I've always been drawn to the hero's journey at different parts of my life. I've always loved storytelling. In the corner here, we have this dove, which represents redemption. I call this Crucified Entity of Id and it features Siegfried, who's a dragon slayer. I specifically remember going to Barnes & Nobles and they have the mythology book. Then you crack it open. It's just Greek mythology, which Greek is awesome and everything like that. But myth is so much broader than that.
Every region of the world has mythic representations, and I think that's really deep and really speaks to the universalness of these different myths, ways that tie into the human psyche, and so that's something that I really want to tap into and express through the artwork. This one was inspired by a dream that my wife Elena had were these wings supernatural beings going on this adventure together.
My name's Matt Maes. I'm a visual artist. I'd specialize in surreal mythical art.
Art is important to society because it is the way that we express ourselves. The antithesis of depression is expression. When I was about seven years old, I was playing this video game with my best friend at the time and we're taking a break and we go up to his attic. He presents me with a pencil and paper and I had the cover of the Mario game in my hand, and so I was sitting there, trying to emulate all the lines on the cover, and I just had this amazingly euphoric feeling. You just want to do it over and over and over again. So that's the feeling that I've been chasing ever since.
Reach Core Artist Matt Maes Featured on RMPBS
Read the full RMPBS interview here!
Asperger's is something that has affected my journey since I was about 18. Asperger's is a neurological condition. It's often termed as being on the spectrum. At the time, I was going through a ton of mood swings. I was socially awkward. I would get so anxious in front of people. I was just severely, severely depressed at the time. Art and music were really the only things that I could hold onto.
We're in my studio, which I call this because it's half study and half studio. This is the Lakshmi piece from the Goddess series that I'm working on right now, and she's part of the Hindu [inaudible 00:14:54] and she represents abundance. One of the trade-off benefits of that is just this hyper focus, and that's something that I'd say is pretty characteristic of people with Asperger's, for me, happens to be art just genuinely down to my bones, love art.
And I don't want people to feel pity. That's actually something that has held me back from announcing to the world that I have Asperger's, frankly, is I just want you to treat me like a normal person. I want people to see me as I am. Okay, I'm about to turn the lights off now. Meditation has been very important to me for a number of years because it's a way for me to get centered with myself, be able to cut out a lot of the noise.
So the meditation space itself for me is a place of beauty. It's a sanctuary that I can go to daily and immerse myself, refresh myself, remind myself of that beauty every single day. Becoming who I am as an artist today, just started with what I love. I'll want to start with curiosity and base it around an idea or say a concept, something like the Goddess series that I'm working on right now.
So I'll start out somewhat smaller, start with a sketchbook, a piece of paper, something like that, and then I'll get the very detailed sketch, do the acrylic paint on there, and sometimes I'll even throw in some micron artist pen and I'll really go until it's all very clean, till it's all very detailed. There always arrives a point in the piece where I feel that, that there's a presence in it where it has its own personality or there's a life coming through it. I want to bring out the very soul of every piece that I do.
So this is Xavier. This is my son. He has this koala, this is Campbell. He has an eagle. This is gray. He has this wolf, and then there's me and this center there. Because I am the bit master. The advice that I would give to my younger self is some advice that my dad has given me for years. One of the most important things that he's taught me is persistence. It's not your brains, it's not your level of skill. It's just keeping on going.
If I could see back then where I am right now, I lived for that self. I feel like in a lot of ways I lived to avenge that the 18-year-old depressed kid that didn't know where he was going, didn't know his true self and wish that then I could see now looking back on the road leading up to this point right now makes all the difference and to know that art led me here.
Cristal Darlina:
Well, when I first met Kesiena, it was when she was painting that painting right over there and I was like, "Wow, I love the watercolors and everything that she was painting." Her art reflects who she is, and so I've been really impressed by her story and her strength. It's amazing.
Matt Maes:
What I've seen about Kesie's work reflects this deep vibrance. The artwork is a portal into her mind and that speaks to a level of richness and depth and vibrance that comes through here, and there's just more and more and more that comes out.
Kesiena Sebeni:
I just start painting for the most part. I think art is important to me because it's the only thing that's permanent. You go way, way, way back in time. The things we remember from cavemen were the wall paintings and the caves from the Renaissance. All of this art is just how humanity's been able to look back. I think it's very important how much art really depicts what's going on in a human's mind. I really feel like it's a language on its own. It comes from your heart. So art has been a way for me to express what's going on in my mind. I think of it as a portal into my mind.
Read the full RMPBS interview here!
This is what I enjoy doing, making these weird shapes, I guess. My name is Kesiena Sebeni. I go by Kesi. I live in Denver, Colorado. I go to school nearby in the Auraria Campus. I'm a biology major, focusing on environmental science, and I work as an artist part-time at RedLine. I feel like I've always believed I'm an artist internally.
I've been creating artwork since I was a tiny child. It's always been innate in me to make art because it relaxes me. I draw a lot of female faces on my assignments. Here, I drew flower with an eyeball on my homework. I just love eyes. I love colors around my room. You can tell there's a lot of patterns.
My mom is Indian. In the Indian culture, there's a lot of scarfs and cloths and saris, which are just colorful, very colorful. But my dad also, he's Nigerian, and in Nigerian culture, a lot of the head dressed in clothing is also very colorful, so I try and put as much colors into my artwork. This is when I was still into acrylics. It was exhibited and it got sold off the wall. I started off with a lot of acrylic medium, but I also didn't really using acrylic because it's like liquid plastic and as a biology major who's very passionate about environmental science, I wasn't really proud of myself.
While I was at the gallery one day, I found a little watercolor container and I started experimenting with it and messing with it, and I started creating these whole new different pieces that were so organic to me. That's the thing you need to remember, if it looks bad, just add more water and I'll blend in. I try to put a lot of my emotions about the current state of things into my artwork from the feeling of dread of like, "Oh, my gosh, our planet is burning up," to the simple beauty of the world from flowers, the sky colors in general.
I feel like I'm connected to nature because we as humans wouldn't exist before the animals and then before the animals, animals wouldn't exist before the plants and then just go smaller and smaller and smaller. The first organism was a tiny microorganism. The fact that I'm 60% genetically the same as a banana is like maybe the whole world on the plants and stuff have a connection to me.
So yeah, here's an apple that I was working on shading in the beginning and more rough of a sketch. I think this is a woman from behind. I love painting bodies, especially feminine figures. I love painting about women in general, how it feels to be a woman that's exploited.
I grew up in California. I started dating the wrong guy, and he started making my life a living hell. He stalked me, harassed me, would show up at my job, just made things very hard to deal with, and eventually as the violence and scary stuff kept on happening, and it no longer became just me and him, but it became...My family got affected, my other friends got affected. That's when I knew that something had to change, so I had to come up here to hide. Thankfully, he's in prison for 5 years now, which is fantastic because I don't have to feel unsafe ever again. But I decided to stay up here because I really like Colorado, and I honestly feel safe here.
I really hide a lot of the information about how I came to Colorado. I don't like people looking at me as a victim. I'd just rather move on and show how strong I am, but we're just human and life can be hard sometimes, but anybody can get out there and make a name for themselves that they just suddenly think to themselves, "Hey, you know what? I deserve better. I deserve to do something better with my life."
This is more of the stuff that represents like me, but I wouldn't be able to tell you this is what I'm going to paint. I think it's important to share art because art for me is a little piece of me. When I put more artwork on exhibits, people get to see different facets of my mind. Art has really helped me look into my emotions, kind of see what's going on in my mind, because sometimes I feel like there's a lot of thoughts and things I want to say that are in my head, but I can't really say it. I really feel like it's a language on its own.
Cristal Darlina:
So this is a spontaneous lesson in oil painting. It's just an experiment to just paint whatever we want on this canvas, and so now we're just going to start painting and having fun.
Support our Reach Program
Shieka Leslie-Eke — former Reach Core Artist, now a 2022-2024 RedLine Resident Artist
RedLine is able to support the growth of amazing artists like Leticia, Kesiena, and Matt thanks to the support of community members like you!
From art supplies to staffing, your support goes a long way in helping us continue to make an impact in our community through our Reach program. Learn how you can offer your support today!
