{"id":128019,"date":"2020-10-21T16:46:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T22:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=128019"},"modified":"2025-02-20T16:24:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T23:24:45","slug":"representing-culture-through-art-shanah-leaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=128019","title":{"rendered":"Representing culture through art | Shanah Leaf \u201918"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Ever since Shanah Leaf ’18 was a child, she has been drawing and painting with the hopes of becoming a renowned artist one day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, with help from her Visual and Performing Arts Bachelor degree from UCCS, Leaf is establishing her artistic career by getting pieces into galleries and working on successful collaborations with other local creatives, as well as teaching art to K-8 students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have always been working toward a purpose,\u201d Leaf explains. \u201cFour hours a day, I\u2019d be drawing and all along I\u2019ve had people say, \u2018You\u2019re doing what you\u2019re supposed to be doing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaf\u2019s passion for art, and her unexpected foray into art instruction, was instilled by her immediate family, who are all either artists or teachers, or both. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s in my blood that I\u2019m supposed to be teaching what I\u2019m most passionate about,\u201d Leaf notes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In between honing her artistic talents and becoming a teacher, Leaf also developed a love for basketball that eventually netted her an athletic scholarship to UCCS. Once there, she was drawn to the immersive Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) degree program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With five educational pathways to choose from, the cross-disciplinary VAPA program allowed Leaf to try theatre and film while focusing on in-depth studio art classes that gave her the right balance of essential skills and critical feedback from peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re trying to challenge you,\u201d Leaf says. \u201cYou created something, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s working, so I learned how to find the meaning in other people\u2019s work and how to articulate \u2026 my work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaf also learned how to promote herself and complete professional exhibitions. In her junior year, she had her first-ever solo show at the UCCS Heller Center and, during her senior thesis show, she painted a 12\u00d716 mural of wild, colorful patterns inside the UCCS Gallery of Contemporary Art (GOCA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy show was about the idea of \u2018Automatic Drawing,\u2019 which is the most basic form of surrealist technique,\u201d Leaf says. \u201cThere\u2019s a repetition and variation of patterns to create a floral, \u2026 paisley design.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this show, Leaf was awarded grant money to paint three similar murals around the UCCS campus, including an entire wall of the Caf\u00e9 65 restaurant. This project, as well as a hands-on internship at GOCA, gave Leaf invaluable experience in organizing, managing, and marketing multiple art installations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUCCS definitely taught us how to prepare to be an artist,\u201d Leaf concludes. \u201cHonestly, they over-prepared me. I feel very comfortable walking into a gallery and talking about work in the  professional art world.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaf also got familiar with educating people about art during her internship by leading sculpture tours inside the cutting-edge UCCS Ent Center for the Arts complex, just north of campus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got to be there the very first semester it opened,\u201d Leaf says. \u201cIt is just an incredible space that\u2019s conducive to creatives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaf was about to stay at the Ent Center and hire on with GOCA, when a nearby school commissioned her to do a mural and asked her to teach kindergarten classes based on experience alone. Given her family connection to art and teaching, Leaf couldn\u2019t say no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy dad is an artist and art teacher himself and he\u2019s always encouraged that side of me,\u201d Leaf says. \u201cHe\u2019s who I credit for me being confident in my abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This confidence led Leaf to become a capable K-8 art teacher at Grand Peak Academy in north Colorado Springs, where she teaches a rotation of more than 700 students everything from art fundamentals to art history.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the biggest things I like about teaching is allowing students to find their own creative voice,\u201d Leaf says. \u201cAs an artist, you can see when it clicks for them in a piece; you can feel what they\u2019re trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaf\u2019s joy of working with kids has inspired her to obtain an Art Teacher License while creating more of her own content for a variety of different outlets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2019, Leaf has been asked to collaborate with local fashion company, False Ego, to design clothing for 303 Magazine\u2019s Annual Denver Fashion Week. She has also participated in a few pop-up exhibitions and maintains a working residency at Art111 Gallery & Art Supply in downtown Colorado Springs, where she is currently presenting hand-drawn portraits of empowered women of color, like herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy grandparents were born in Puerto Rico,\u201d Leaf explains. \u201cSo I enjoy representing minority cultures, not only because it\u2019s what I see when I look in the mirror, but because they\u2019re not represented enough in the mainstream art world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With each blank canvas, Leaf aims to represent inclusivity and diversity in a positive way that allows for more artistic accessibility. Soon, she will be completing a new design-based mural for Art111\u2019s building and feels grateful to be putting her UCCS degree to use doing what she was meant to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe only way I can get through is creating work for myself \u2014 for my own creative energy,\u201d Leaf concludes. \u201cI learned so much and I\u2019m definitely really appreciative of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since Shanah Leaf ’18 was a child, she has been drawing and painting with the hopes of becoming a renowned artist one day. (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":128020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,427],"tags":[370,369,414,86,102],"class_list":["post-128019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-alumni-stories","tag-alumni","tag-alumni-success","tag-arts-sciences","tag-college-of-letters-arts-and-sciences","tag-visual-and-performing-arts-department"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/leaf-ss.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-xiP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128019"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162229,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128019\/revisions\/162229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/128020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}