Artspeak Radio with Rosario Hayner Fletcher, Secret Handshake Studio, & Darnell “Solo” Kirkwood

Artspeak Radio, Wednesday, January 4, 2023, noon – 1pm CST, 90.1 KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org

Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes Rosario Hayner Fletcher, Candace Holmes, and Darnell “Solo” Kirkwood.

ROSARIO HAYNER FLETCHER is an Intuitive Artist, Poet, Drumming, Reiki Master, Past life regressions, Akashic Records, & Oracle Reader. My name is Rosario, please allow me to share my story and passion in the paintings that have become an important healing and creation process in my life journey and growth. Like many women, I struggled with balancing family and work responsibilities until a life changing tragedy happened in my early 50s. Something so heart shattering, that it forced me to step back and re-evaluate my life, my purpose and my priorities.

As part of my healing process, I explored books on life after death, spent time with psychics/mediums, I enjoy playing my piano and creating songs, I love to garden and write poetry. I love to travel and have traveled to the Grand Canyon, and to Sedona, Arizona to be with the energies of the Vortexes. I also have found enjoyment in traveling to Mt Ida, Arkansas to dig and discover quartz crystals gifts from Mother Earth.

It was after coming back from my second trip to Sedona, that my passion for painting flourished. I have taken a few art classes -but most is self-taught. I love using acrylics with some mixed media but mostly acrylics on canvas. At a young age, I felt emotions deeply! I remember as a young child looking at a painting, feeling the emotions of the painting and getting lost in it. In my adulthood, I found there’s a name for this: Empath. I am very sensitive to energies around me. In most cases my paintings sometimes start as a vision but as it progresses, the completed painting turns into a story for the viewer to unfold.

During the creation, I find myself feeling colors, hearing the stories, and speaking my truth. My higher-self and guides channel with me as I paint. Painting feeds my soul like a sunrise on a cool summer’s morning, lifting fog over a river’s bend, the sun playing lights and shadows over canyons, or a bloom opening at a perfect moment.
My paintings are fragments of me, Rosario! My birth name my mom chose. Please join me in this journey as the paintings are shared with love and passion. As part of this journey, I hope a painting touches your soul and speaks to you.

CANDACE HOLMES-Secret handshake studios is an arts & crafts community workspace in beautiful kansas city. our mission is to help people explore their crafty side and to support more experienced makers in their creative growth.

we offer access to specialty tools and materials, as well as opportunities to both attend and teach classes. our space regularly hosts community building events, like art exhibitions and just plain ol’ fun parties. our public storefront will display (and sell, of course) all the cool handmade stuff our members make.
ultimately, we just want to support local crafters, and think we can do that best by providing:
• affordable access to specialty tools and on-hand materials
• access to work space conducive to creating projects that might be difficult to comfortably do and store from home
• opportunities to connect with other rad makers through classes and events
• the ability to sell work in a physical storefront
first and foremost, we are a community. we want our members to be a part of growing secret handshake studios into a space that best fits their specific needs. we hope you’ll join us soon, and we can’t wait to see what you make!
​ Come see us at 81 N. Mill St. Kansas City, KS
email us at [email protected]
call us at (440) 502-0593
www.secrethandshakekc.com

DARNELL “SOLO” KIRKWOOD is a self-taught LA based multidisciplinary artist that was born and raised in Kansas City, MO. Playing basketball in college for Lynn University and overseas in Denmark, produced essential tools that have been the foundation of his journey. After a career ending injury, he took his passion for storytelling and excelled as a model and actor in television and film. Working on projects such as Top Gun: Maverick, Young and the Restless, Hawaii Five-O and Bosch. Acting prepared him with vehicles of expression in his availability to be completely vulnerable and translate the energy of the moment. This understanding propelled him to continue one of his favorite forms of content creations known as art in limited-series form.
As an artist, Solo creates revelations through abstract intentional narrative works by way of a multilayer language of wisdom that he calls “F.E.E.L.” A process the artist describes as, “Creating art while being a vessel of (F)aith to possess the (E)nergy of (E)mpowerment through (L)ove. These revelations are delivered through conversations of life in experiences as well as being a vessel of ancestral communications. These conversations are intentionally continued through a language of glyphs created by Solo that encourage an interactive and immersive experience between the artist and viewer. Providing an unconscious mirror to many life experiences, empowers divine revelations. As a devotee of wisdom, Solo loves exploring these continued revelations, essential reminders of empowerment and the superpower of love.  That is why the energy of each piece derives from and is dedicated to the journeys traveled through the perseverance of both dreamers and visionaries against all odds.
Exhibit on view from 01.06.23 to 02.17.23, with an opening reception Friday, 01.06.23 from 5:00 – 8:00 PM.

Website: solotheartist.com

Habitat Contemporary Gallery
2012 Baltimore Ave
Kansas City, Mo 64108
816.308.3628

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