We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Huitziloxochitl Jaramillo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Huitziloxochitl, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
I work as Program Director for D3 Arts. My entire job revolves around planning meaningful events and creating meaningful projects for D3 to share with members of our community. This looks like curating art shows, booking independent local and traveling musicians, and coordinating events with the plethora of other creative performers and artists that live in Colorado. I am currently working on a series for D3 Arts called, “Arte Panorama”, where I invite 5-8 artists in Denver to create a mini mural. “Arte Panorama”, takes a different approach to a gallery setting by fully engulfing you in the artist’s stories. Each artist gets their own 8×10′ wall where they have full creative liberty over what they paint. Sometimes this is a political statement, sometimes it’s an opportunity to proudly display their heritage, sometimes it’s just cool shit. By inviting individuals into D3 to adorn our walls with their stories and messages, we create a vibrant community of artists that feel safe, seen, and are able to flex their creative muscles without any censoring. These exhibitions are open to all and spaces fill up almost immediately. While it started off as a different approach to a traditional gallery setting, I quickly learned that this opportunity is a lot more than just painting a wall to those involved.
The majority of artists that have participated have been younger queer or punk artists, like kids still in high school. I’ve felt enormous gratitude being able to work with young people who are into the weird subcultures and artists that I was into, and still am into. When I was a young artist who was obsessed with My Chemical Romance and The Cure, I was relentlessly made fun of by classmates and random people. My colored hair and septum piercing made me some kind of radioactive weirdo to the kids I went to school with. There weren’t any spaces available for me to go to make art and listen to the kind of music I wanted to, so I ended up sitting in the art room with my teacher during lunch and free periods. My art teacher’s room was my only safe-haven outside of my bedroom where I could nosedive into whatever creative project I was working on at the moment.
Now, with this building and this project, I’m able to provide that safe-haven for the next generation of young creatives. My heart overflows with pride and joy for the youth involved. Seeing them be able to stretch out and make a mess and be wild with their paint has been so rewarding. It feels like I’m healing pieces of myself that I thought would never see the sunshine again.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am Huitziloxochitl “Lala” Jaramillo (Weet-See-Low-Sow-Chee). I am 25 years old and I am a fourth generation Westwood resident, muralist, and the program director for D3 Arts; a non-profit in Westwood that focuses on providing a safe and sober place for BIPOC, alternative, and young people to create art and music. I am a sober person. I am the only girl out of five brothers. My life completely revolves around underground art and music. I’ve been painting and drawing since I could stand and I’ve been going to local DIY gigs since I was 16. Now I help run them with my organization. I fell into non-profit work because my dad (Santiago Jaramillo) is the founder of D3 Arts. He’s been building it up for the last 12 years, and passed the creative torch to me two years ago. We had been given the opportunity to inhabit a larger building (3632 Morrison Road)- and my job was to fill it with art and music and whatever creative forces I could find. The first year of operating D3 Art’s was all about renovation. Thanks to the previous tenants, our building was full of old car parts and dirt, and by no means suitable for any art programming. We covered the walls in murals and I asked some friends that play music if they wanted to host shows in the new space. From there, we snowballed into being one of the largest DIY community spaces in Denver, seeing up to 1000 people come through our doors a month. We have a screen printing shop ran by The Empress Denver, we curate monthly art shows and we also work with various sober houses and youth employment organizations across Colorado.
We’re very prideful of our neighborhood. My great-grandfather immigrated here from Mexico in the 20’s as an orphan, and we still live in the house he purchased by himself all those years ago. It’s a huge honor to be apart of the revitalization of our neighborhood. We love being able to serve Westwood youth and those in recovery. We are also avidly working against the gentrification that is trying to take place in Westwood. We refuse to let tourists and ignorantly wealthy people take away what we’ve worked so hard to create for our neighborhood. We refuse to let Westwood be a neighborhood that “used to” house a vibrant diversity of people. We refuse to see our neighbors displaced.
I know when you think of punk or alternative music spaces, you usually think of slamming beers and people punching each other in the face. While there’s still some of the second, D3 Arts is an organization that focuses on sobriety and recovery from addiction. Our building is an all ages, dry space 24/7. My dad has been sober for 17 years, and I am newly sober (five months) thanks to the work I do. Historically, punk and hardcore shows have been very dangerous spaces to be in. Especially as a BIPOC or femme presenting person. Eliminating alcohol and drug consumption from the live music equation helps our performers and show goers enjoy gigs while being fully present. It helps music and art lovers that are addicts in recovery, not feel triggered to use at shows. The youth bring the energy and the youth are who are going to keep this long history alive. They deserve a place to be without risk.
I make my own personal artwork on top of all of that. My smaller pieces usually cover working through traumatic moments in my life and are pen and ink illustrations. The murals I create are alongside my father. We paint traditional Aztec codices depicting scenes that are relevant to our work space. You can find our work at La Diabla, the Westwood Pocket Park, and at the Re:Vision “Plaza De Mexica”.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
My journey is very long and hard-fought. Being the only girl in a family comes with it’s own special set of challenges. No one in my family really knew what to do with me. I always felt that I was, “too much”, for everyone. Too loud, too weird, too different, even after I had found the community of punks that welcomed me in. I was left alone a lot and that led to me developing an eating disorder that nearly caused my heart to fail at 14 years old. That eating disorder once treated, turned into an unhealthy relationship with drugs and alcohol and I started drinking to cope with my confusion and my loneliness. Recovery was only possible once I was in the worst spaces, the almost dead spaces. The entire time I was in those spaces, there were individuals in the background who wanted to see me succeed. People I had met at a bar or at a show. People I would exchange hello’s with but was always kind of scared of because I could tell they knew how bad the use was. Once I was ready to leave the destructive place I had lived in for so long, they helped me learn that I can build a new world. I don’t work the steps, but my therapist and I joke about myself being a, “triple winner”. Meaning I am someone with a highly addictive personality, someone that’s codependent, and someone with an eating disorder. Thankful isn’t the right word for the feeling I have surrounding the disorders I developed, but they taught me very early on that an individuals mental fortitude has the ability to get us through a lot of very dark places.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
AUTHENTICITY!! I want everyone to be able to be whatever weird little artistic freak they want to be! I want my creative journey to show people that there isn’t a specific look to anything. No specific look to being a punk. No specific look to being an artist. No specific look to being a recovering fuck up. Art is art and I am exhausted with the social regulations that other artists impose upon each other. Make the art that speaks to your soul. Listen to the music that gives you goosebumps in your brain. Leave me the fuck alone and let me be a weirdo painter in peace!
Contact Info:
- Website: d3arts.org
- Instagram: @__badbean @d3artswestwood
- Facebook: D3 Arts | Huitziloxochitl Jaramillo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@d3arts8
Image Credits
CHON Liana Shinbein David Rendon John Flathman