RedLine Artists Featured at Cart-Driver RiNo

Meet the RedLine Resident Artist Alumni whose art is featured at Cart-Driver in the RiNo neighborhood of Denver, Colorado.

Libby Barbee - RedLine Resident Artist Alumni

Artist bio: Libby was born in 1981 on the southeastern plains of Colorado and currently lives in Denver, CO. She received her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed her undergraduate studies at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO; receiving a BFA in painting, a BFA in Art History, and a BA in French Language.

At the root of Libby’s art, lies a fascination with the emotional, psychological, and cultural implications of place. She is fascinated by the human ability both to manipulate and be manipulated by an environment; and revels in the often confusing and multifarious mix-matches of meanings and associations that cling to particular places.

From interactive sculptures to images of western landscapes constructed from fragments of cultural debris, her work explores the dynamics that emerge from the interstices where people and place collide.

Recently, Libby has been interested in investigating the sometimes poetic, sometimes startling, but always-complicated relationship between nature and culture.

Her most recent work explores the historical relationship between Americans and their environment, and is specifically engaged in an examination of the American frontier myth and the mediating role it plays in the relationship between American identity and the American landscape.

Through various media and forms, Libby’s artwork explores the contemporary political and social implications of the frontier myth, and imagines the western landscape as both a culture-defining myth and as a thoroughly domesticated and culturally constructed space.

Ramon Bonilla - RedLine Resident Artist Alumni

Wireframes A & B. 18" x 18." Acrylic, graphite and pencil over wood panel.Ramón Bonilla - Wireframe A. 18" x 18." Acrylic, graphite and pencil over wood panel.

Artist bio: Ramon Bonilla's artwork stands within the limits of spatial memory. These works delve into the dim borderlines where nature and its design as well as the guise of architecture come together.

A notion of space drawn from Ramón's imaginary recalling of particular places provides the context and imagery for these pictures of the here, there and nowhere.

The influences of Ramón's work range from topography to the architectonic artifice. Rather than an attempt at representation Ramón's simulated environments act as an after-image of our ever growing number of transient surroundings.

Ramón Bonilla is a Denver based artist with a BFA from Escuela de Artes Plásticas de San Juan, Puerto Rico and is also an alumni of Redline Contemporary Art Center Denver. He has been featured on 5280’s Home magazine as one of the “The Five Local Artists To Watch And Collect”. His work has been commissioned for The Gates Building, Nexus BSP in Denver, Stanley Marketplace in Aurora, CO, The Bonfils-Stanton Foundation in Denver and through Muros, Chicago. His work is also part of the art collections of Le Meridien Hotel Denver and The Four Seasons Hotel and Resort Beverly Hills.

He has been represented by Michael Warren Contemporary and currently has limited representation through Space Gallery Denver and Simon Breitbard Fine Arts in San Francisco.

He has shown with Direction/Instruction, an international art group organized by Hyland Mather and showed his work at Paradigm Gallery in Philadelphia. He has also shown his work at Understudy Denver and 516 Arts in Albuquerque, NM. Bonilla recently received a grant from the Inside Fund through the Andy Warhol Foundation to develop his project Illuminati DIA.

Joel Swanson - RedLine Resident Artist Alumni

T/HERE, 6.7 x 35.5 inches, neon, 2017

Artist statement: Words are power(ful); my artwork illuminates the subtle but powerful ways that language shapes perception. My medium is text, but my artwork takes many forms including blinking neon signs, interactive digital works, and meticulous hand-made works on paper. Thematically I explore how language structures our world through standards such as spelling and grammar, digital character encoding, and even alphabetization.

As tools of language I am interested in erasers, highlighters, and correctional fluid but also typography, spell-check algorithms, and machine learning. Through dimensionality, repetition, and decontextualization my work makes the familiar unfamiliar and the ordinary strange; I want my artwork to make people perceive words from new and unconventional perspectives.

Artist bio: Swanson was born in Chicago, Illinois. He’s an assistant professor in the ATLAS Institute and the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics & Society at the University of Colorado Boulder where he works and teaches at the intersection of language and technology. He holds a courtesy appointment in the Intermedia Arts Writing and Performance PhD Program. He received his Masters of Fine Art at the University of California, San Diego with a focus in Computing and the Arts.

His artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions including The Banff Centre for the Arts, The Broad Museum in Lansing, The Power Plant in Toronto, the 57th Venice Biennale at the European Cultural Center, the Glucksman Museum in Cork Ireland, the North Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. In 2022, his work was included in the Electronic Literature Organization’s 4th Anthology.