Join us for an evening of creativity and resistance as local artist Wendy Rochman brings together artists of all kinds for a powerful multi-media event at KGNU’s Boulder studios.
Friday, July 11
5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
KGNU Boulder Studios. 4700 Walnut St., Boulder
Free and open to the public
This one-night event will feature poetry, music, comedy, visual art, live performances, and more, all exploring themes of resistance to the current authoritarian regime. Refreshments, including specialty cocktails, wine, and N/A beverages will be served.
The featured visual art will remain on display at KGNU throughout July and August, creating an ongoing space for reflection and dialogue.
Come experience art that challenges, inspires, and unites our community in the spirit of creative resistance.
Artist Bios and Statements
Valerie A. Szarek (Zeric) is an award-winning performance Poet, Native American Flute player, artisan, and Shamanic Practitioner. Her poems are healing, accessible, present and political, and cross between the seen and unseen worlds effortlessly. She teaches soul-centered writing workshops monthly. She has 4 books of poetry and is writing 5 new books plus a CD. You can find her at www.poetval.com.
Val performs and teaches at events around Colorado. She believes we all just want to be seen and feel something real and her approach to this is to share a short poem everyday, usually with a “stranger”. Doctor, IRS agent, a cop and grocery clerks all receive a quickly recited poem and they often cry and share a hug
Charlene Alvarez is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural advocate whose work uplifts Indigenous and Mexican-American heritage through bold color, reclaimed materials, and spiritual symbolism. Her portraits speak to survival, dignity, and the power of ancestral memory in the face of colonization and cultural erasure. Based in Florida, Charlene also runs a nonprofit teaching art and environmental stewardship and to youth, blending activism and creativity to preserve legacy through hands and heart.
Wendy Rochman, M.Ed., artist, teacher, musician, dancer, author and director of Blue Window Arts, has been creating art for over 50 years. As a public school art educator and facilitator of many adult creativity workshops, Wendy has helped thousands of people explore their own creativity while improving their artistic skills. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally, and she has earned several awards for her creative, motivational teaching style. Wendy has taught Nia, Silver Sneakers, and Zumba dance styles and is also a life-long a musician. She has written many songs, sung at Carnegie Hall with Sound Circle, and performed with various choruses throughout her life. Currently Wendy plays in an all-women marimba band, The Low Flying Knobs.
Jeanne Kipke dived into art & volunteering as the president of the Boulder Art Association after retiring from full-time teaching several years ago. Jeanne finds great satisfaction exploring with various art mediums – from digital drawing to cold wax, oils, watercolor, acrylics and more! This collage was created on a vinyl divider made to separate students from each other during COVID. (I rescued a pile of them that were about to be tossed last year from our school.) I love the idea of using something made to divide into art that unites.
I call this piece “Hands Off” – hands off our bodies, hands off our rights, hands off our liberties for freedom & justice for all. Hands Off is held closed with a magnet. Guests are invited to pull the green ribbons to open the sides and free the figure within from the hands that seek to enclose them.
Deborah Goldbaum Kelly is a Longmont-based artist with a visual-spatial learning disorder. Based on childhood messaging, she had convinced herself that she couldn’t “do” art, but an “accidental phone call” changed her trajectory. Her teacher for a soul-based art class said, “What you perceive as a limitation is actually a gift,” and, with those words, Deborah took the leap. Embracing art as a form of play, she founded Playful Days Decor. Deborah is an artist with the Firehouse Art Center, Left Hand Artist Group, and the NoBo Art District. She also contributes to fundraising efforts with Artists in Action.
I am Hank Brusselback. My work is on bufflecake.com which shows artist books, paintings and sculpture. I have been doing art for 50 years, got MFA at CU, shown work in Maine, Massachusetts, California, and points in between. Much of my focus has been political. Brad Armstrong and I did a book that reacted to the election of Trump the first time, CLOWNS DANCING ON A TANK.
Terri Krause / Tkrausearts is a Colorado-raised artist known for her spontaneous, organic approach to creation. Her latest work, Forgotten Out Loud, emerged from a deeply personal shift in process. Originally conceived as a collage for a writer-artist collaboration, the piece transformed when Krause abandoned the inauthentic direction and returned to her canvas with instinct and intention. What followed was a powerful vision: a burning flag, layered over textured backgrounds, and surrounded by stark truths. Along the edges of the canvas, facts highlight marginalized groups too often overlooked. At the center, a figure—wrapped in words from a poignant poem—stands in for all those forgotten in plain sight. Forgotten Out Loud is both a reckoning and a remembrance, a call to see what’s long been ignored
Casa de Yuste Mosaics is a mosaic art studio located in Boulder, CO that uses Mexican inspired Day of the Dead figures to address political and social issues of our time. This time. We are women based and women run often borrowing from our own life experiences to address themes that matter to us. These 2 nichos, shadow boxes, shaped in the form of coffins, are only 2 of a series of 24 nichos. Using iconic imagery from the Statue of Liberty in Day of the Dead form standing in front of an American Flag to a coffin shaped wooden frame, they all represent death to American values of liberty, justice and equality for all.
Sara Beardsworth – I am a retired philosophy professor, trained in the UK and living in the US for 27 years, the last 5 of them in Colorado. As a philosopher, I sought to teach students how to practice the “life of the mind” in concrete ways, through knowing political modernity, asking after the possibilities of ethical life, and studying the psychological problems of the day. In recent years, I have enjoyed the visual expression of my love of the rocky mountains in watercolor painting, as well as some figurative pieces in what friends have called a folk art style. In resistance work I bring something of those earlier endeavors into my creative attempts. Whilst the content gives shape to the chaos, cruelties, and utter threat of this period, the moments of painting themselves allow me some quiet time, a meditation in the midst of it, a way to work with the anger and the hope. I’m grateful for the shared reality of a show, an event, that is part of the fight of our lives.
Devon is a professional, Denver-based MFA actor and content creator. She uses performance, satire, and a little holy side-eye to expose the absurdity of our political, religious, and social systems both on stage and online.
“Originating from Denver, Colorado, Radiance Bukari is a vocalist and spoken word poet, using her art to emphasize the importance of expression through language and sound in the BIPOC community. Her artistic themes include racial identity, the black female experience, and self-acceptance in a world under the technological microscope. You can find her teaching tie-dye around the city with Radical Creations and working with Sacred Voices, empowering BIPOC youth to find and use their unique creative voice.”
Oak Chezar is a poet, essayist, and novelist— all political writings. She has published 3 books of radical work. She’s worked her whole adult life towards the decimation of Patriarchy.
Pedro Senhorinha Silva is the Director of The Liberation Comedy Project, a non-profit project that has the mission of drawing people closer to one another by positively exposing the comedy in the conflicts that distract us from deeper relating across differences. Prior to his foray into standup, Pedro served as a pastor for over a decade and worked as a recruiter and served in the military for 8 years each. In those roles, he noticed many of the consistent patterns that lead to conflict and came to realize that community is the only enduring form of revolution.
Madeline (Maddie) Planer: I’ve picked up a lot of different hobbies, but I love the feeling of a brush behind my ear, paint on my hands, and my apron collecting loose colors. When I’m not painting, I’ll explore Colorado hikes, read till my eyes get sore, and lead volunteers on environmental projects. Painting helps me process emotions, interpret the world, and express my imagination.
