2022 Winter Mentorship Gallery

The Colorization Collective worked with TeenTix to present a mentorship program for teen artists of color during the winter and spring of 2022. Teen artists in the program were paired with professional artists/mentors of color. We had two cohorts this mentorship: one cohort of writers mentored by Serena Chopra and one cohort of musicians mentored by AnthonyArlene!

Teens worked with their mentors and a cohort of peers to hone their craft and develop new work over a 10-week period. This digital gallery is a culmination of the work created during this program. Enjoy these teens' incredible artwork below!

Writing Cohort with Serena Chopra

Adrija Jana is a writer from India who loves to create poetry pieces inspired by their own experiences and social issues they are passionate about. Their work mostly revolves around period poverty, marital rape, and the freedom of choice. They are inspired by writers and poets like Margaret Mitchell and Rupi Kaur.

Breanna Burke is a writer from Kingston, Jamaica who mainly writes poetry and short stories that have been influenced by Caribbean culture and her experiences. She create art that encourages people to re-examine the small moments in life that ultimately make us who we are. Her work heavily features themes of identity, blackness and family, in particular the women in our families that raise us up. Her writing breaks barriers and holds an untamed power, resilience and freedom.

Akshita Kumar is a 17 year old BIPOC writer based in New Delhi. It wasn’t until she mastered the art of reading and introspecting that she started writing. She often intertwines emotions with materialistic aspects of life to give a sense of direction or rejection to the so-called ‘lifeless and selfish’ motives. Akshita’s motive as a writer is to create opposing senses in the reader’s mouth and embed words in body memory, so they literally feel the poem. Her work can be found in "The Global Youth Review," two issues of "The Write Order," and The Native Skin.

Shaliz Bazldjoo is a young writer in Cleveland, Ohio. She has been recognized by the Scholastic Writing Awards, the Virginia Poetry Society, and others, and she appears or is forthcoming in anthologies from the Cleveland Institute of Art and Lost Boys Press. She has attended or will soon attend programs at John Caroll University, Kenyon College, and the Adroit Journal, and she is an editor for the nonprofit magazine Polyphony Lit. Her work is often inspired by abstract, surrealist prose and themed around queerness or counter-culturalism. When she isn’t writing, she occupies herself by analyzing other people’s writing to a ridiculous and pretentious degree.

Trini Feng is a high school fiction writer and poet from suburban Illinois. She experiments with style and genre, writing anything ranging from the mundane to the speculative, sometimes even blending these two genres together in the same piece. She particularly wishes to uplift and provide a platform for marginalized voices, spotlighting stories and people who have been historically shut out. Her work has been previously published in Hooligan Mag, Outlander Zine, and Bluefire. She serves as an Executive Editor at Polyphony Lit, an international literary magazine for high schoolers, and a Co-Editor-in-Chief at Renaissance Review.

Additional cohort members: Nina Baeza, Sani Maphosa.

Mentor: Serena Chopra is a teacher, writer, dancer, filmmaker, soundscape designer and a visual and performance artist. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Denver, an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is a MacDowell Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, a 2011-2013 Redline artist in Residence, a 2016-2017 Fulbright Scholar (Bangalore, India), and has received a month-long artist residency at Understudy Denver for September 2020. She has two books, This Human (Coconut Books 2013) and Ic (Horse Less Press 2017), as well as two films, Dogana/Chapti (2018) and Mother Ghosting (2018). Serena was recently a featured artist in Harper’s Bazaar (India), Revry as well as in the Denver Westword’s “100 Colorado Creatives.” She has recent publications in Foglifter, Sink and Matters of Feminist Practice (Belladonna). In October 2020, Serena will be co-directing No Place to Go, an artist-made haunted house with Kate Speer and Frankie Toan. Serena is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Seattle University.

Music Cohort with AnthonyArlene!

Nathan Coppinger is an electronic musician from Washington who mostly makes high energy tracks, often involving unusual and experimental sounds. At the moment, they are working on several songs which may be classified as UK hardcore. Along with creating music on their own, Nathan has participated in the school band for seven years.

Nuvia Baeza is a Haitian American music composer based in Los Angeles, California. She strives to make projects that can communicate the intangible emotions of life with vigor and diligence. She comes to every project ready to commit as much time as necessary to properly prepare the art. She is a composer who specializes in music production and has a background in audio engineering, audio synthesis, and classical
composition. Her goal is to be a film composer who writes music for aspiring directors who aim to tell stories that haven’t been told before.

Zeppelin Andrew is a musician who enjoys playing old songs in a new way. Art feels like an outlet for Zeppelin's energy, creating peace through creativity.

Additional cohort members: Elijah Tuncap, Jai Kumar.

Mentor: AnthonyArlene! is a Seattle-based music producer and lyricist. He attended the Art Institute of Seattle in 2017 and built a home studio shortly after. Since then, he has been producing many of his own records and writing his own lyrics, mostly in hip-hop and R&B styles (although he is not limited to any particular genre). When not performing at spoken word events and amateur hip-hop shows, you can find him working with local organizations as a music production teaching artist.