Art & Our Masks: A Conversation with Jahna Rae

We were just across the street from City Park, sitting on a couch in Jahna Rae’s cozy living room. Down the hall, her dog Rooster was barking up a storm—no doubt on high alert with a member of the press lurking about—but, after a few minutes, we became deeply immersed in the conversation.

In this interview, the painter, illustrator, and muralist opens up about her art, while contemplating the influences of the Denver scene, both positive and negative.

Denverse Magazine: How did you get your start? What inspired you to pursue art when you were young?

Jahna Rae: I mean, growing up, my parents didn’t really like us to be in front of a screen a lot. They had us do other things, like play outside and make art, right? My father is an incredible artist, and so I picked up my love of art from him. And my mom’s very crafty, too. I also think being a young kid with undiagnosed ADHD, I just gravitated towards art. I felt like it was a peaceful space for me and like a really nice way for me to get ideas in my head out on, onto some sort of surface, you know? There was a kind of escapism to it.

DM: What is it like to compare yourself as an artist now to when you were young? Is it embarrassing for you to look at older works?

JR: You know, actually, more recently I’ve been looking at some of my old stuff, and I feel like I had a little bit more of that childlike playfulness to my work, and there were a lot of different mediums that I would use, different surfaces. And so sometimes I look back and I’m like, man, I want to get playful like that again.

Somewhere along the way, I became a little bit more rigid. And I think that happened when I kind of fell into my art career out here. I found a niche. And now it’s a good time for me to explore and try different things that I haven’t tried before.

DM: You’re a working artist, and, as a working artist, you have to balance art as art and art as commodity. How do you draw those lines? How do you negotiate that pressure of needing to satisfy a market demand for certain kinds of art and needing to be true to yourself?

JR: Yeah, there are always gigs that are just more about making money than they are about expressing myself through my art. But I always carve out time to make little sketches and write down ideas. And then I’ll have the free time and the drive to do it. Sometimes I need breaks from making anything. So I think carving out that little bit of time for myself has been the most beneficial.

Recently, the thing that has put pressure on what I make is me falling into this pocket of, like, “black art.” That I was expected just to make black figures or black portraits, which I do a lot of. And that started because I wanted to learn more about my ancestry and stuff like that. And it caught the eye of the community. I love that part of it. That’s been great. But I feel like, at my core, I do a lot more than just black art, and I don’t want to be defined as just that. I think part of it is also on me for not really pursuing other avenues and other places in Denver with my work. I think a lot of that has fallen in my lap.

DM: At the same time, it must feel very gratifying to see your work out there in the marketplace and know it’s doing well. When was the first time you actually got paid for your art? Do you remember that?

JR: The first time I actually got paid for my art was after I moved out here. So I moved out here in 2017, but it was 2021 when I did the Babe Walls mural festival. They gave us a small stipend, and I was, like, “Holy shit, this is great!” Looking back at it now, it wasn’t a lot of money. But to me, it was a tremendous amount for my artwork because I’d never received anything over like 100 bucks, you know?

DM: There seems to be this recurring theme of masks in your work. The mask is an interesting symbol. On the one hand, it can represent deception–of others, of oneself. But in traditional folklore and rituals, the mask can also represent the desire to commune with other worlds, with the spiritual, for instance. Are you having a dialogue with the idea of a mask? And if so, what is that dialogue, do you think?

JR: Yeah, I actually did a painting called “Masks,” which was like a mask and also a more realistic portrait. I think that people tend to put on an act of who they think they should be and who the world wants them to be. And we get so scared of removing that mask and showing our true selves that we miss all the beauty that comes with being authentic, you know? And I’m interested in these more abstract faces right now because I want to break away from the idea that it has to be tied to a gender, which makes it like a very specific message, I think.

DM: As an artist, do you find yourself especially burdened by an expectation of how you’re supposed to act?

JR: People are always surprised when I tell them I’m shy. I’m an introverted, shy person. It takes me a minute to warm up, but people are always like, “Oh, you seem so confident and extroverted, blah-blah-blah.” But I have to go into the world like that. There is an expectation for me to talk about my art and for people to get to know me. Not that it’s a negative expectation. I do want to make connections, for sure. That’s a big part of what my art is about.

It’s a big theme in my art because I have struggled with it in the past. I don’t want to share this heavy thing about me or this less than perfect trait—because then maybe they won’t like me, or something like that. That was an insecurity I carried around for a long time. I think I’ve definitely shed a lot of that as I’ve gotten older. And so, you know, when I go to art events, I love talking to people, but sometimes it gets a little overwhelming. And then I’m comparing myself to others, and it just feels like I’m talking about work. I’ve worked for 40 hours this week. I’m tired of talking about work.

DM: How would you describe the Denver art scene? At its best and at its worst?

JR: So I recently did an artist talk with for the Colorado Black Arts Festival, and Moe Gram was there, and so was Adam Thomas. And something that we all agreed was more of a negative aspect of the art scene here is that things are very separated. Like, there’s the black art community, and then there’s the white male muralists, and then there’s the women’s art. Everything feels very separate.

At the same time, I feel like Denver has provided the most opportunity for me out of any city I’ve lived in. I’ve lived on the East and West Coast, and I’ve moved around a lot as a child, and I feel like Denver has put a lot of emphasis on the arts.

I know I’ve only been here seven years, but I know people who’ve been here longer have said that it was a very white male dominated field. And I think that there’s been a lot of strides to get away from that. But now it just feels siloed.

DM: What advice do you have for artists who are trying to make it?

JR: I think the biggest one for me was not being afraid to fail. And whether that was creating a painting that didn’t come out how you initially wanted it to or not getting accepted into a residency.

The biggest thing is to just try, because if you’re not trying, there’s no way you’re going to grow. And I think that that was kind of where I was when I first moved out here. I had my degree in art, but I had no connections out here. I didn’t know where to apply. So I just kind of didn’t for a long time.

It wasn’t until a friend sent me the application for Babe Walls, and I was, like, you know what? I’m just going to. I’m just going to try. I really didn’t think I was going to get into it because I didn’t have any mural experience.

And these are all personal, but the other tip is to find that childlike playfulness in your work. Because I think as you become older, life just weighs you down and you’re like, okay, I know how to do this one thin, so I’m just going to keep doing this one thing. And then it sucks all the fun out of it. It just becomes just work. And art shouldn’t feel like work. Inevitably, parts of it will. But when you’re in the act of painting or sculpting or whatever, that should be enjoyable. Whatever ways you can go about making it more fun—maybe that’s throwing clay at the wall or putting paint all over your body. Like just, just have a good time, right? Because then you can look back and be like, okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly what I envisioned, but like, damn, I had a good time doing it.

DM: You have your gallery art, but then you also do murals. Have you ever had a mural that was defaced?

JR: Not yet.

DM: Does that happen often? Have you heard from other muralists about that?

JR: Yeah. And it always sucks to see. Hopefully, in those situations, the artist gets commissioned to go back and fix it. But, you know, a lot of times they won’t have the budget to pay the artist to come back. But so far, none of mine have been defaced. But I have had a couple temporary murals that no longer exist. So that was kind of interesting.

DM: What is the relationship there between street art as an act of counterculture and more commercial mural making?

JR: I understand the traditional street artist graffiti work. Like, it’s still art. And for me, looking back at it, I would think, “Oh, it’s kind of shitty for someone to tag over someone’s piece of art.” But at the same time, it’s an artist sending their own message about it.

For example, if it happens in RiNo, I think a lot of that message is that this space has been completely gentrified. Because of all this artwork that’s here now, the prices have soared. It’s driven up rent prices and pushed people out of that space. And so I get the rebellious side of it, for sure. But, at the same time, it sucks for the artist who spent hours—probably in the beating sun and up and down ladders and covered in paint and dirty and tired—just to get something ruined, you know?

DM: Speaking of RiNo, what do you think distinguishes the good mural art from the bad?

JR: I always like seeing stuff that represents the people who live here. Art that shows that Denver is a diverse area and that celebrates the community here. Have I seen some art that gives murals a bad name? I mean, I can’t stand the ones that are just wings for people to, like, stand in front of. Those are kind of silly. I just think that there’s not really any passion or true meaning behind it. Maybe like the first one that someone ever did.

DM: The selfie gimmicks.

JR: Right. It’s just an excuse to post a photo of yourself on Instagram, right? And that actually takes away from the art itself.

DM: Yeah, agreed.

JR: I did want to touch on something about murals being temporary though. I did a mural for my residency with PlatteForum. And I just painted on one of their movable art walls. And the reason I wanted to do a mural is because I knew it was going to be temporary.

It was bright and colorful. You wouldn’t think of it as distressed, just looking at it. But the idea was this person being in distress and splitting from themselves. I took a video of me painting over it to show that emotions are temporary and that art can be temporary, too. I wanted that message to be sent through the piece. Everyone was like, “Oh my God, you’re painting over it!” But that was the point.

So sometimes when art is tagged—if someone just writes letters over the work and that place has the budget to bring the artist back to do another piece over it—that’s really cool. Like, this piece of art had a lifespan. It told a story and people remember it. And now it’s time for the next chapter.

Paul M. French

Denverse Magazine

Paul M. French is the founder and editor of Denverse Magazine.

Art & Our Masks: A Conversation with Jahna Rae

Paul M. French

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