For this weekend’s 39th annual Colorado Black Arts Festival on the west side of City Park, Keisha Makonese is planning to bring about 50 of her original creations.
The 54-year-old wife and mother works out of a loft on the second floor of her home in Green Valley Ranch. During a recent visit, she sat near a table with about a hundred brushes. On her other side was another surface covered with dozens of pairs of dangling earrings made of brass and silver wire. On the walls were large abstract paintings – some with dozens and dozens of watchful eyes – and on the floors are stacks of collages of ballerinas, made with a range of materials. When asked why she is drawn to make them, even though she herself is not a dancer, she said:
“To me, [it’s] not only just the beauty and the grace and the poise. Behind that is the strength, the heart of work, the dedication, and that's what my ballerinas represent. And I do it in different skin tones, different aesthetics.”
Pointing at different ballerina iterations in different parts of the loft, she added, “Like that one's in wire, that one's in rope, that one's in feathers. But I love my ballerinas. And a lot of women gravitate to them for gifts, or they used to be a dancer or they know a dancer.”
Most of the ballerinas, earrings and large abstracts will end up in a moving truck, on their way to the festival, which she’s participated in regularly in recent years. At past events, she has shared her booth with her son, a black and white and analog photographer, but this year she’ll be solo.
Since temperatures are supposed to be high, she’ll also have a way to keep the 10’x20’ booth she’ll be renting cool enough to tolerate.
“I make it like a boutique. And I have tables, I have easels, and I have walls ... and then this year I'm actually going to bring in some cooling fans, some mist, and let everyone know, ‘You can come chill out with me.’” She’ll spend all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the festival, talking with potential clients and making sales.
She says she’s been making art since grade school.
“I think it really started in middle school, because then they introduced us not only to the painting, but then it would be woodwork and then the leather, and all these other different hands-on creativeness, and I thought that was exciting.”
She continued to take art at Montbello High School, from which she graduated in the late 1980s.
“That was the only class I didn't ditch,” she said. “They had an art honor society. I was in the art honor society class.”
After high school, she studied fashion at a design school but didn’t finish. She had several kids, married a man of Zimbabwean descent, worked in different artist administrator roles and made art in her spare time. She sells it for between $30 for the earrings to over $1,000 for large painted abstracts.
“I want to make art affordable for anyone to have an original piece. So some of my pieces start [low] ... and then I have pieces that go on up to 2,500 [dollars]. So I have a nice range.”
Her work has a few themes: besides large abstract paintings, multi-media creations of ballerinas, and asymmetrical wire earrings, she also has a new series of women, made on surfaces of different sizes, using different materials with flowers and leaves in their skirts. When asked if the greenery and blooms were real, she said: “No, they're silk. So not real leaves or anything because it's kind of hard to keep that fresh.”
The free event starts Friday and ends Sunday, and besides artists like her, there will also be food vendors, music performances, Nigerian drumming, and a Black-owned marketplace with about 80 vendors. She also hopes some of her regulars will show up.
“My goal this year: I hope to make eight to 10 [thousand dollars], but that's [from] being on it, promoting it, inviting people, telling 'em to come,” she said, adding that she can depend on selling the less sizable, less pricey pieces. “The smaller ones are the money makers,” she said. “
“I do have a following — people come and look for me every year and be like, ‘What you got this year? What ballerina you have? What's going on?’”
