Youth Art Mentoring at RedLine

Using a one-on-one mentoring model, Youth Art Mentoring provides a safe environment for students in local schools to explore artistic expression while creating connections with a trusted adult figure.

What is Youth Art Mentoring at RedLine?

Throughout the year, selected students in local Five Points schools have the opportunity to work with a professional artist to create a year-long art project that investigates social justice issues.

Youth Art Mentoring fosters creative thinking and empowers students to discover practical ways to approach difficult issues with the inquiring mind of an artist.

By developing skills of inquiry and imagination, students find new in-roads to core subjects and are better prepared for lifelong learning.

Objectives of Youth Art Mentoring

1. Ensure that youth have a safe space during after school hours.

2. Create meaningful relationships between students and local artists.

3. Initiate conversation among students in response to community and social justice issues, using art as a tool for social change.

4. Create a space for youth to speak up and be heard through their own creative processes and practices. 

We evaluate these objectives using qualitative and quantitative data via pre and post surveys with student participants.

We measure their growth in initiatives pertaining to how they feel about art and its importance, their social, mental and emotional health, and how they show up in their community.

Youth Art Mentoring has been successful in its mission of supporting students' growth, and has several returning students each year who continue to grow in their craft.

Do you know a 4th-12th grade student who would want to be a Youth Art Mentee?

Apply below!

Meet our 2022-2023 Youth Art Mentors!

Tiffany Medina

Tiffany Medina is a multi media artist who currently resides in Denver. She works with a diverse range of mediums. Creativity has been used to express her empathy and perception.

Tiffany has evolved through her entrepreneur spirit. From selling candy on the school yard, running several businesses to embracing the artist at heart. She became a “student“ at RedLines’ Reach Studio in 2019.

Tiffany’s essence is represented through connection with her empathetic views, to social issues and self reflection. She focuses on her peace yet creates from her noise. Tiffany paints with intention and lives in a place of healing, using experience to bring her creativity to life.

Her intention to share her creativity and inspire others to find theirs, and learn to embrace the tough experiences that we must work through to find oursleves.

Sophie Aldinger

Sophie Aldinger (they/them) is a transmedia artist who explores symbols and archetypes. The artist combines symbols that hold personal, sacred meaning to them with these age-old character archetypes (like the inner child, mother, king, sorceress, and hermit) to create newfangled, modern myths.

Aldinger’s interest in magic, storytelling, and the human mind traces back to their youth. They grew up homeschooled in Michigan where they loved to play outside—learning from nature and creating imaginary worlds with their 6 younger siblings. While their family often struggled, Sophie always found safety in the comfort of creating a good story and looking for the hidden magic in “boring everyday life”. This is what inspires them to be a RedLine youth art mentor and help students channel their creativity.

Aldinger graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2020, with a BFA in panting+drawing. They work as an art educator at the Clyfford Still Museum. Artist website: https://sophiealdinger.com/

Autumn T. Thomas

Autumn T. Thomas (b. 1978) is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in wood sculpture. Her work challenges the boundaries of visual literacy by transforming wood into soft, twisting forms, mimicking the endurance required to thrive amidst the oppression and marginalization of women of color.

Minimal in design, Thomas' work personifies analogous, brown bodies as whispering forms of subversion, affecting prejudice by way of perception and visual literacy.

Thomas is a Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator (DVCAI) resident artist and 2022 Catalyst Award recipient. She received her MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia in 2017 and her BFA in Visual Communication from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. She lives and works in Denver, CO.

Kaylee Bender

As a self taught artist, Kaylee Bender’s work gives a voice to the inner child in playing with abstraction, surrealism and open, playful expression.

Her work is inspired by her personal journey of healing, feeling, and growing, using acrylic on canvas and aerosol based murals as a form of visual story-telling.

She values creation as a catalyst for liberation and shares this power with her community through mentoring, public artwork, and workshops.

Kristina Davies

Kristina Davies (b. Denver, Colorado) is a visual artist and educator who believes that the act of painting is a form of self-discovery, of tapping into the mindful presence of openness and awe. The interaction with materials, music, gesture, and mark making, all come together in an intuitive dance.

She is a process-based painter who often works without an attachment to a plan or goal, which allows her to experiment and take risks. Typically, her large works are non-objective, where her visual vocabulary is pure abstraction. At times, her paintings become figurative, and a narrative unfolds in a powerful, unexpected way.

She studied art at the University of Colorado in Boulder, San Diego State, and Art Students League of Denver. She earned her Master of Education, Integrating Teaching Through the Arts, at Lesley University. Being a public school teacher for twenty-five years, she brought her passion for the arts into the classroom, believing that artistic expression deepens learning, forms connections, and broadens perspectives.

A key component to her artistic mission is community-based art, knowing the transformative, healing power of expression through artistic experiences. She is passionate about making the arts accessible to all and creating positive social change in areas such as LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice.

Kristina has exhibited her work in Denver and Santa Fe. Her works are in private and public collections in France, California, New York, Kentucky and Colorado. She paints in her studio in the Art District on Santa Fe in Denver.

Mike Roderique

Mike Roderique (he/him/his) is serving as a youth art mentor for his 8th year at RedLine. As a visual artist, he practices storytelling and empathy through portraiture, oil paints, and textile work. Outside of mentoring and creating, Mike serves as the Assistant Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Community College of Aurora.

With his artwork and pursuit of equity within education and beyond, he believes today's youth have the greatest power to eradicate societal barriers and build paths to success, safety, and joy for our ENTIRE community.

Brigitte Thompson

Brigitte Thompson sees art as a vehicle to explore the complex relationships individuals have with reality, the hyper-real, and the imaginary.

To her, art is a form of therapy that can be used to release emotions, create energy, and generate discussion. In this way she is able to communicate concepts and ideas about reality that may be hard to articulate through any other means.

“My work focuses on the boundaries that set us apart in life and what lies in between them. Through my art I try to visually manifest this realm, this realm of what cannot be seen, but affects us nonetheless. The colors of our emotions, the beauty of the soul, and the bonds that keep us tethered to one another.”

Karen Deger McChesney

Karen (b. IL) is a story collector and teller in Denver.

Through photography, interviewing and writing, she thrives on creating photo stories magnifying people and nature doing the ordinary taken-for-granted things.

While working as an English and Theater teacher, Karen thrived on introducing urban students to gardening, cycling, and photography.

Karen’s photo stories explore how people discover and re-discover their roots, their story and ultimately, their voice.

She is insatiably curious about what lights people up and what holds them up, analogous to nature. 

She’s passionate about bringing art to marginalized populations. Her art has been exhibited at Redline Contemporary Art Center, Denver.

Karen is a member of Rocky Mt.Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, serves on the Free Spirit Publishing Advisory Council and Bezos Student Scholars Selection Committee. 

Got Questions About the Youth Art Mentoring Program?

Please email your completed application and/or any questions about Art Mentoring to our Art Education Coordinator, Shaunie Berry.

Meet our 2019-2020 Youth Art Mentors!

Art Mentoring is generously supported by the Harvey Family Foundation.