Annual Resident Artist Exhibition Gallery Guide
RedLine Contemporary Art Center
January 27 - March 1, 2023
Exhibition Layout
About the Exhibition
Animals—including human beings—are often characterized as being distinct from plants by means of our mobility. We aren't bound to one spot on the Earth. Why, then, do we speak so often about being rooted or wanting to be rooted; about exploring our roots or breaking away from them?
Plant life offers a powerful metaphor: growth and movement, or tropism, actively respond to stimuli—not despite rootedness, but because of and through it.
Gravitropism refers to plants’ responses to gravity: putting roots down into the earth and reaching branches and leaves up and away. These seemingly opposite movements are both responses to the same force. Visitors to the exhibition will experience works that explore the relationship between gravity and mobility; memory and land; artifice and nature; inhabitation and belonging.
About the Pieces
Adri Norris
Wangari Maathai, 2022-2023
mixed media (wood, acrylic paint, collage, faux foliage)
12’ x 11’
In 2017, I was working on a series of paintings focused on female Nobel laureates and came across the name Wangari Maathai. She was the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize because of her environmental activism as well as her work to promote women’s rights and democracy.
Over nearly fifty years, Maathai worked tirelessly to plant trees in her native Kenya, while simultaneously lifting women out of poverty. She believed that the way we treat the environment is a reflection of the way we treat each other. Care for the Earth, and everything else will fall in line.
Agnes Ma
Weeds in the Wind, 2023
PLA (bioplastic) and found tumbleweeds
3.5’ x 8’ x 6’
Have you ever seen tumbleweeds rolling around, listless and aimless? They move across the landscape until they hit a barrier and have nowhere else to go. More and more follow suit, piling up ridiculously along a fence. What are we but just another tumbleweed blowing in the wind?
Ana Maria Hernando
La Memoria de la Montaña //
The Memory of the Mountain, 2022
tulle, organza, silk, thread, wood, chicken wire, plastic, pins, dimensions variable
My belief that everything has a spirit spans how I interact with the world. My curiosity about the memory contained in all beings is infused in La memoria de la montaña // The Memory of the Mountain, asking: What do ancient beings—like Ñusta, the feminine spirit of the mountain—carry forward over time? Although the work reflects my own human projections onto beings I may never fully understand, it brings me closer to a mountain, the mystery of others, and myself.
This work includes many embroidered fabric pieces by cloistered Carmelite nuns from the Monastery of Santa Teresa in Buenos Aires and some of their relatives.
Autumn T. Thomas
The Secrets of the Forest, 2023
padauk wood, pine wood, copper, latex paint, insulation foam, water
94” x 94” x 60”
In 2022, I rode in a canoe down the Suriname River in South America on the way to Pikin Slee Village, home of the Maroon people. Surrounded by rainforest, the river was deep blue and full of boulders, tiny islands, and driftwood. Mid-trip, we drifted by a massive tree trunk that was perfectly balanced atop a boulder in the middle of the river, on which it would balance for the remainder of its existence. This trunk became a metaphor for my own existence: I was surrounded by a blue river of unfamiliar familiarity. Nature had balanced me perfectly within a foreign environment that felt more like home than any other place, while depositing me safely among descendants of Africa. This felled and balanced tree, with its exposed roots and inability to populate new leaves, refused to die and instead established its own method of living into the future.
Ben Coleman
Copse, 2023
mixed media
dimensions variable
This work was inspired by the dressing up of cell phone towers as trees, a practice which is claimed to have originated in Denver 31 years ago[1].
Copse is a term for a small group of trees, and is derived from the word coppice. Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management that involves extreme cutting. The copse, while organic, is no more “natural" than the artificial-tree cellular tower.
My thanks to Lonnie Hanzon for the kind donation of the artificial trees that were recycled to make this work, and to Brad who helped drive them across town to my studio. Also thanks to Chris Bagley for the TV.
[1] The bizarre history of cell phone towers disguised as trees. Stromberg, Joseph
Chelsea Kaiah
Quintessence of a Quill, 2023
various dyed porcupine quills (turmeric, blueberries, beets, dye), deer hide, metal Armature, thread
2.5” x 30” each
Porcupine quills have been used by Native people for centuries to decorate clothing, moccasins, and other items through the traditional skill of quillwork. This involves cutting the barbed tip and root of the quill to create a hollow, squishy tube that can be flattened and woven to create texture and patterns. In Plains Native communities, quillwork is a way to connect to their past and preserve cultural traditions. It is also a way to honor the porcupine, an animal whose quills serve as a natural defense mechanism, by creatively reusing them in artistic expression. Quillwork is an important part of Indigenous creativity and will continue to be a central part of Native culture.
Cherish Marquez
To Forage, 2022
digital animation
1920x1080
There is an abundance of food in the desert, not just for animals but for humans as well. Such as the mesquite tree, which produces mesquite beans that are full of nutrients and were once a vital source of food for indigenous peoples of Mexico and the Southwest. The seeds were crushed to a powder and used to make meal or flour for bread and other items. Through colonization, these food resources have been forgotten or lost because settler colonizers did not view the desert as a terrain that could sustain life. Through food, we can reclaim our history, and connect with each other and the land.
Christine Nguyen
Maximilian Sunflower Aura I, 2022
spray paint and salt crystals on cotton paper
87” x 58.25”
Maximilian Sunflower Aura II, 2022
spray paint and salt crystals on cotton paper
87” x 58.25”
Auras are an energy field or feeling that surrounds or comes from a person or place. This series of paintings depicting plant auras reflects my interest in the natural world. I’ve been especially drawn to the work of cosmologist, astrologer, and occult philosopher Robert Fludd, who believed that every plant in the world had its own equivalent star in the firmament. I see that every plant has a corresponding star in the cosmos, in which direct connections were made between the microcosmic earth and the macrocosmic celestial space.
JayCee Beyale
They Are Speaking, 2022
acrylic on canvas, house paint on wall and feather and ribbon
15’ x 20’
They Are Speaking tells the story of how the Diné (Navajo) people relate to their surroundings. The element of water is a persisting thread binding the Diné to their land, plants, insects, and animals; and ensures that the cyclical nature of the land remains in harmony.
Today, the Diné people still haul clean water back to their communities. In our creation stories, water is revered for its ability to give life and to take life away—for all growth that is catalyzed, a shadow of damage follows. In our communities, we push through the side of commodification, contamination, and scarcity towards a voice for our water, a voice for our life. Embodied in these images is a conversation about the future.
Within the sacred colors of our cardinal directions—black, turquoise, yellow, and white—the beings who shape our life flow through one another. Water is a life-giving force. Water demands the consideration of our next world, and demands we analyze our roles in a larger cycle. This piece reminds us to consider what, and who, is being left out when we make decisions about water. The animals, insects, and land don’t always need us, but we need them.
Within the sacred colors of our cardinal directions—black, turquoise, yellow, and white—the beings who shape our life flow through one another. Water is a life-giving force. Water demands the consideration of our next world and demands we analyze our roles in a larger cycle. This piece reminds us to consider what, and who, is being left out when we make decisions about water. The animals, insects, and land don’t always need us, but we need them.
Jazz Holmes
Collards, 2022
mixed media drawing
38” x 42”
Collards are a food staple for Black Southerners. Due to their natural bitterness they were viewed throughout American history as scrap food, much like chitlins and oxtails. Black enslaved folks, through all their suffering, still found ways to express their creativity by making the most flavorful meals with leftover ingredients. Collards were boiled for hours on end along with a bevy of spices and scrap meat such as ham hocks.
Now collards are yet another staple of Southern food culture. Our recipe has been passed down to me by my ancestors and we still, to this day, grow and cook them during holidays and special events. This piece is a dedication to my ancestors whose labor continues to sustain our community.
Sorrel, 2023
mixed media drawing
30” x 40”
Sorrel is another name for hibiscus flowers in the Caribbean. These flowers are dried and used within a variety of drinks and dishes. I grew up drinking sorrel punch—a spiced hibiscus drink flavored with fresh orange peel, juniper berries, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a splash of caribbean rum—with my family around Christmas as our citrus trees are always full of fruit in the winter.
The bright pink coloring of sorrel is one of the most unique and vibrant colors in nature. It’s such a cheap, nutritrent heavy ingredient that my ancestors discovered and turned into a drink that entirely warms your body and soul. Everytime I partake of this drink with my family I feel such a deep connection to my ancestors. They constantly created beauty while being forced into backbreaking labor.
Jenna Maurice
Joshua Tree (from the series ”Subtle Appearances”), 2017
single channel video
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
This performance is based on my musings of how humans as a species could exist within the natural landscape. They subtly appear without changing anything. The only addition they make is their presence. They coexist without dominating. They appear, with subtlety.
LA Samuelson
Telegraph Valley Site #2, 2023
2x4’s, roofing membrane, flashlights
dimensions variable
I made this work the week I moved from Colorado to New York. I wanted to make something that would help me understand change, containment, and connectivity in a different way. I wanted to feel how asphalt roofing shingles transform into asphalt roads when you cut them into skinnier strips. I wanted to know I could recirculate light and invest in a kind of internal and interpersonal safety that had more to do with trusting the ground than shutting anything out. Making things transforms the maker which transforms the making. I want to try to do this out in the open. Hello. I am waving to you from over here.
Special thanks to Emily K Harrison, Sarah Darlene, Ben Coleman, Leigh Kargol, and Eddie Sepeda.
Laura Conway
Venus in Ferns: A ballet of practical gardening lore., 2023
multi channel video, 16mm film
dimensions variable
Venus in Ferns is a dance satire set in a Victorian garden. As Florence, the author of a gardening advice column, teaches her flock gardening techniques, she reinscribes toxic gender scripts. However, despite her best attempts to domesticate nature, she finds Kingdom Plantae to be a queer destination.
Lauri Lynnxe Murphy
Subliminal Annexation, 2023
bindweed roots, paverpol, frames, soil
dimensions variable
As I dug deep in my raised beds, I became fascinated by the looping shapes of the rhizomic roots I pulled, akin to patterns I had used in previous bodies of work. While the visual patterns are easy to see, the metaphorical patterns run deeper, as deep as Convolvulus Arvensis, aka Bindweed, can burrow. It sprouted from seeds brought by the first colonizers to plant the lawns that Europeans used to signal power and domination over nature, lawns cultivated by enslaved people for aesthetics as opposed to sustenance. As any gardener can tell you, bindweed chokes out everything else and is nearly impossible to eradicate. Alfred Crosby noted that this destruction of native plant species was “directly tied to the forced and brutal removal of Indigenous people from the land”.
This installation contains two summers’ of extraditing these destructive forms from deep under the soil and composing them into closed systems. It reminds us that we are constantly surrounded on stolen land by the noxious traces of our history, and of the labor required to eradicate the roots - both literally and figuratively - of environmental imperialism and white supremacy.
Max Maddox
Hats and Chains, 2023
children’s fedoras, coat hooks, tow chains, artificial feathers, attachments, and enamel on aluminum composite panels
dimensions variable
Hats and Chains is inspired by my favorite game as a boy – Chutes and Ladders. There is no point to the game, really it's a matter of luck. But to this day it always gets me choked up when I get the long ladder or the even longer chute. We all know what it means to have “something to hang your hat on” or to get “a feather in your cap.” We even know the subtle difference between being “on the hook for something” and being “hooked on something.” Human relationships are reflected in objects, but hooks and feathers don’t mean anything as such. We are truly neurotic, that's what objects show us. They externalize power relationships without even having to do or be anything in particular. They are empty vessels; by always remaining symbolically unfaithful they make a clandestine home to our mercurial ideas.
Raymundo Muñoz
Dimensional Translations, 2023
linoleum block relief prints, monotype paper sculptures, ink, paper, tape, wood, thumbtacks
dimensions variable
Translating dimensions back and forth fascinates me. As a printmaker and photographer, two dimensions form the expressive roots of my practice. This flattening and freezing of form and time simplifies and focuses an overwhelming amount of information. I feel compelled, however, to branch out and bring back the lost dimensions. In Dimensional Translations, monotype prints from natural textures (like tree bark and soil) are cut and fashioned into organic forms that spring out from the wall and connect with linocut prints. This interplay invites the viewer to see beyond what’s in front of them — an expansion of awareness through everyday observations.
Sam Grabowska
Sanctum for 1985, 2023
PVC conduit, human hair, paint, moving air
44" x 58" x 19"
Sanctum for 1985 is a meditation on our earliest childhood trauma. The work centers on the longing for refuge that we wish we had then, the way time rearranges itself after trauma, and the manner that our bodies calcify and grow around that experience. The rib-like tubes were formed around a person lying on their side in a fetal position. They echo like rings of a tree trunk, documenting the context and experiences of every year, each different from the last. Human hair cascades from each piece carrying DNA mutated and shaped by intergenerational trauma. A gentle breath of air keeps this "body" moving.
Sarah Darlene
Trust Fall I, 2022
curtain, skirt, thread
81” x 58”
Trust Fall II, 2023
bedsheet, sweater, fabric scrap, wood
48.5” x 36.5”
Rooted in abstraction, Trust Fall I and II use the familiarity of everyday materials like clothing, bedsheets, and curtains to explore how body-based ritual can support healing and transformation. The intuitive construction and abstract composition of each work speaks to the internal, emotional experiences of the Self, while the materials reference the external, tangible expressions of the body. As a survivor, yoga teacher, and artist, I found that the tedious and slow process of hand sewing each work creates space for present moment awareness through repetitive movement and ritual. The intricacy of the process also requires that I do not rush through my healing, and instead be fully present for every step. These works ultimately aim to explore how body-based ritual and regular practice can support healing after trauma, which creates a sense of disconnect between one’s body and Self over time. The various fabrics in this series are sourced from my own closet, as well as local thrift stores and donations from family and community.
Scottie Burgess
What’s Seen Resilient Above Ground, 2023
polystyrene, acrylic paint
7’ x 5’ x 1.5’
Like the earth’s horizon line acting as a plane from which a plant’s growth response to the gravitropic process diverges, the body in creative action also lives within a similar boundary between the simultaneous activities of making outwardly into the visible physical world, while the unseen roots of the subjective experience deepen within.
As natural and artificial forces strengthen and influence a plant’s growth, we as makers are spiritually supported when creative action is taken in the face of compelling conditions, while the hidden roots of consciousness ground into the moment, allowing for the flow of creative nourishment and inspiration.
Shieka Leslie-Eke
Momma Sebi, 2022-2023
mixed media
dimensions variable
Mystic Mist, 2022-2023
mixed media
dimensions variable
Ancient Medicine, 2022-2023
mixed media
dimensions variable
While looking to the East, we remember our roots…not just FROM where we hail, but also TO how we heal. Roots of flesh connected by roots of seed.
Education. Germination. Resurrection. Culmination. Ultimation.
Taiko Chandler
Route-less (根無し), 2022-2023
rope, wire, sand, spot light, acrylic paint
dimensions variable
I started with an old rope, which I disassembled. What had been strong became frail, so I wrapped each strand with wire to reconstruct the original shape. At the time, I was reflecting on my past and trying to preserve my memories of Japan. The process of discovery helped clarify what is important. Living abroad isolates different parts of my identity. Although I try to retain what is essential, my identity always evolves. What remains is strong and flexible, but also fragmented and complex as I am transformed by my experiences abroad. Unraveling my connections to family, culture, and country helped me understand more deeply who I am, which in turn helps me continue to adapt.
Victor Escobedo
Ancestral Portal, 2023
red clay, leaf, rope, cork, tea bags, incense, acrylic and enamel paint
dimensions variable
Ancestral Portal is a physical representation of an ethereal connection with an everlasting energy experienced during indigenous veneration practices. The significance of smoke in smudging and incense burning is to clear unwanted energies. The sanctification and purification of space allows the practitioner to intentionally draw in desired energies. This precedent allows for the thinning of the veil and for direct communication with the spirit realm. In this work, an ancestor is phasing through the wall with their hand in an open gesture that suggests either an act of presenting or receiving communication.
Vinni Alfonso
Thought Memories 1-6, 2022
acrylic and mixed media
25” x 25” each
Memories can be fickle. What was at once a concrete moment will erode, shift, degenerate and regenerate with time. Thought Memories explore the notion of this malleability of the mind. Each piece represents the abstraction of memory and an even further abstraction of the memory of a thought. The painted images are familiar but foreign and seem to be in a constant state of change. They are framed by plastic plant life; a synthesis of nature. The harder we try to objectify our past thoughts and memories, the more they become overgrown with subjective matter.
Yazz Atmore
Roots Garden: Gatekeeper, 2022
collage, wheat paste & mixed media
8’ x 8’
Roots Garden: Gatekeeper explores the many gatekeepers we must cross paths with on our journeys. One of them being our inner kiddo. This particular gatekeeper is meant to remind you of your fun, your playfulness, your essence. Have you forgotten the promises you made to your inner kiddo? When was the last time you even hung out with them? Have you forgotten or abandoned them?
As you experience this piece, I want you to call upon and truly sit with your inner kiddo. Listen closely, reconcile with them if you must and give thanks for the remembrance of who you are.
RedLine would like to thank The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, Colorado Creative Industries, The David & Laura Merage Foundation, Denver Arts & Venues, Meow Wolf, Resident Society Members and the Scientific & Cultural Facilities District for their support of the Artist-in-Residence program.
Special thanks to Christina Linden for her time, energy and thoughtfulness. Whit Sibley and Leigh Kargol for their endless energy and dedication on planning, installing and presenting RedLine’s exhibitions program.
Learn more about RedLine’s exhibitions and Artist-in-Residence program at https://www.redlineart.org/artist-in-residency
