Kollet Hardeman, Artist
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Transcript
This is a transcript from The Floridaville podcast. This transcript was created using artificial intelligence so it may not be an accurate account of what was recorded.
Rosanna Catalano 0:30
This is the Floridaville. Get to know the people behind the Florida names you know. I'm your host Rosanna Catalano. On this episode we get to know Kollet Hardeman. She is a self-taught artist who is known for celebrity drawings and dramatic renderings of fish and animals. But she's probably best known for her murals. In Tallahassee alone, there are about 70 pieces of wall art scattered throughout the city. Kollet's strong personality is reflected in her bold art. We are live Video Streaming today's episode remotely. I'm in my home office in Tallahassee, and Kolet is speaking to us from her home in Tallahassee as well. Welcome to the show.
Kollet Hardeman 1:10
Hi, thanks for having me.
Rosanna Catalano 1:12
I came to know your art by driving through downtown Tallahassee. There is the Rosie the Riveter mural, the ceiling smashers and so many others. Do you have a favorite?
Kollet Hardeman 1:24
They each hold a moment in time for me. The most recent one is probably the deepest meaning right now. It's the Justice mural with seven civil rights activists on Annabel Diaz law firm, downtown and that one fits the time that we're in right now.
Rosanna Catalano 1:40
That's a beautiful piece. I've seen you post that on your social media channels. Absolutely beautiful. And you have quite the following on social media tell us how you became so popular.
Kollet Hardeman 1:49
Oh god.
I you know, it started very organically. I only, I knew that videos were working. So I posted time lapse videos of me doing the renders but only showing my hands because I was still scared of social media and skeptical of showing who I was. Because I wanted the art to be the focal point and not me or who I was. And it started very organically. People liked the videos, and they were like, wow, you did all that in two minutes. No, it took two hours. But you know, it started a conversation. And I built confidence. And I started to post all of my artwork. And then I found like minded people that enjoyed what I was posting, and they would invite their friends and we would do act of kindness giveaways, I would give away shirts, if you posted that you did an act of kindness I would do. I painted the soup kitchen with 60 Kids I did a co-host of that with fun metallic kids. And so it just started to gain momentum by inviting people in.
Rosanna Catalano 2:53
Yeah, that's nice to have something very inclusive to work and to work well. If people wanted to see your work and follow you on social media, where should they go?
Kollet Hardeman 3:06
artwork in me, I have a live stream into my studio. At least normally about six days a week I'm painting in my studio. So you can actually talk to me and see me in real time. I simulcast that on four channels to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch, under KolletOriginals.com on all of those. But if they're wanting to see my murals, I created an app, it's Kollet Originals, and it's free in the Google app and iPhone Play Store Apple store. You can find a map of all of the murals that I painted around town and you can post a selfie of you at the mural, a selfie spot so it just depends on what your what your look what you're looking for. If you were to find me, I'm on Facebook, you want to find a murals that app will help you kind of look for them.
Rosanna Catalano 3:48
Oh, that's so fun. I'm going to try that. I've always wanted to see you sort of all your apps, I mean, all of your all of you murals.
Kollet Hardeman 3:55
All of the ones that will not get you in trouble to go see on the map. There's a school, there's a church, there are some little kids bedrooms, you're not gonna find those on the app. But if they're publicly accessible, I put them on there. Because a lot of my friends from high school and college and just growing up, they would come back to visit us. And they asked me for this master list. And with the master list constantly growing, I use an app development company to kind of just add them into the map and take over the reins for that for me. So now my friends who come into town can just kind of look and see okay, and you get a notification. There's hotspots on there. So if you drive by, I think it's a mile and a half is the geo fence around them, you'll get notified that you're close to a Kollet Originals mural as well. So I will enjoy you either through Facebook, the app, you'll know I've been there.
Rosanna Catalano 4:45
I like the geo fencing. That's a nice touch. So although you were born and raised in Florida, and currently live here, I know there are some big changes on the horizon for you. Can you tell us what you have planned?
Kollet Hardeman 4:58
Yeah, actually July 6, oh god, I panic every time I look at the date because it's getting closer, July 6th. I am relocating to Austin, Texas. I will be a woman of Two Cities at that point, because my mother will stay here and I have contracts in December and July that I'll come back to fulfill here. So I'll be splitting time between Texas and Florida at that point.
Rosanna Catalano 5:23
Well, I'm gonna pause right here and we're gonna take a quick commercial break and we'll come back and ask you a bit about your childhood.
Commercial for Rocket Ship Consultants 5:33
This episode of the Floridaville is brought to you by Rocket Ship Consultants. Let us help you launch your career, your business, your podcast, or your live stream. Follow us on Facebook and on Instagram and visit our website at www.rocketshipconsultants.com. So Kollet, were you artistic as a child?
Kollet Hardeman 6:01
I was um my dad wanted me to be an athlete so I my main focus was on basketball and track. Outside of that when I had downtime it was always a book a pencil. Normally pencils pencils are what I gravitated to my dad was color blind. So anytime I got into painting, it wasn't as successful I didn't get that pleasure that I would get when I did a black and white so I focus more on those and I think it carried on through school just taking the art elective classes I made sure that if you had a chance to choose an elective that it was that not choir band, I wasn't a big band person.
Rosanna Catalano 6:40
Did art serve a different purpose for you besides just drawing when you were a child?
Kollet Hardeman 6:46
Yeah, so I had a troubled childhood.
My my dad was an alcoholic and it just became a very toxic family environment. So art became a refuge. It also became a way to defuse the bomb. So if you have somebody that's kind of chaotic or sporadic or very volatile, have you you go up to them and you're five years old and you show them a pretty painting, all of a sudden, it's like a light switch went off and he changed. So mom and dad are fighting and you present your artwork. So it was therapy for me. I also saw it as a way of calming for others. At that point, I was able to recognize that it was a good deflection. So art has always been present in that form for me.
Rosanna Catalano 7:30
I did some research on you before this interview, and I know that you lost your dad in an accident when you were a teenager. How did that loss impact your life?
Kollet Hardeman 7:42
Um, I wasn't expecting to get emotional with that one. It was hard. Dad was homeless when he passed away. And it was his second day on a job and he walked onto a construction job. And it was a second day and he fell eight feet three inches off of a scaffold and died. He had an alcohol induced seizure. Because he was trying to get clean and trying to better his life, get a job and make things right. And so when you look at the accident, as profound as it was, and then you dissect what actually happened and how his story was, when it happened, where he was at in life and what he was trying to accomplish. I it pains me to this day, as we'll talk about later, I'm sure I have seen addiction. In every facet in every role, I've been the wife to an addict, the daughter to an addict, and I've been asked and so it troubles me because you know, there's always what could I have done differently? Could I have shown him a different picture that would make them drink Could I have painted his favorite musician, whatever it is, but dad's loss paying me deeply still does to this day.
Rosanna Catalano 8:52
I'm so sorry to hear that story. I just can't even imagine. What advice would you give to someone who's witnessing a loved one succumbing to an unhealthy addiction?
Kollet Hardeman 9:07
This is not a popular opinion. And every I used to when I came out about being clean when I was a year clean two years clean. I used to have a lot of addicts reach out to me. And now more than ever I get the family of addicts reach out to me and my advice to them is all the same. If you love an addict, and they are hurting you, they have not hit rock bottom because they know that you will help them. You have to grieve an addict. Like they're dead, and you have to continue to live your life. And at that point that addict knows they're on their own and they have to make a decision because we can't identify when our rock bottoms are. But as long as for instance me if I knew I could lean on my mom if I knew I could hurt my mom enough for her to help me if I could love her enough if I could somehow influence her to dig me out of whatever trouble I gotten into At this point than I was not at rock bottom, I always had a lifeline. So when I talk to people who have addicts in their life, I give them permission to live permission to go on and be happy. Because my decision should not influence yours, you should live the best life that you are capable of, regardless of mine. And so a lot of moms that I speak to and I tell them, it's, it's okay to live. You didn't do this to your addict. It's a mental disease. I firmly believe that it's, our minds are broken. We have OCD, and we're obsessed with something. But it's nothing that you did do us. So I mean, a lot of moms are filling out a big hug and kiss it away. Like somehow they can get their baby back and by all means they can. We can't hold our hands through it. So like I said, it's not a popular opinion, but you have to sever ties with addicts so that they're pushed to do better
Rosanna Catalano 11:01
That's got to be incredibly hard and difficult for a family.
Kollet Hardeman 11:06
It absolutely is a you know, my mom did this with my dad. And so I saw it then when I went to rehab, I didn't have any visitors I didn't have family come and rescue me I didn't have them bring me You know, these little gifts, putting money into the till for me to buy things I was on my own. And something about that was it made me feel alive again, like okay, call it you. You really got to muster up and fix this, you know, and so, in order for me to reach my full potential, I had to walk that journey alone, and I think it hurt me then. But at least I was feeling something I was numb for so many years. The pain of not having my mom or grandmother around made me feel alive in a very sick way. It was feeling something and so So I wouldn't have changed their presence during my rehabilitation at all. I needed to go through that to feel that. I can't say that I'm not a doctor. So I'm not going to even say what I think will fix anybody. But I do know that if, if they were close with me, I would have felt enabled and kept going.
Rosanna Catalano 12:23
So you've been very open about your prior addiction. And can you let people know? I guess a little bit more about your addiction and how severe it was?
Kollet Hardeman 12:35
Sure. So I lost my dad when I was 16 and I dabbled in drugs. Back then it was ecstasy, cocaine, things like that.
I didn't know how to be normal. Mind you. I grew up in a toxic environment. So I didn't know how to be quiet. I didn't know how to not yell. I didn't know how to fit in. And so those things were crutches. For me to feel social and later in life after you go through the college partying phase and you you play you dabble in drugs and you do the 70s hippie thing and all of that, you know, and you try to acid, which I find out now mind you is not normal for everyone. But later in life I had my daughter through a Syrian and what ended up happening and transpiring over the next three years is I have four abdominal surgeries and opiates were introduced to my life. And those were game changers to me. It was not like cocaine. It was not like alcohol. They were here when they weren't, it was it's a lot. It was synthetic heroin. And it was like a warm hug. It was the best thing ever. It made me feel whole and happy for once. And so I leaned into it and when it being a strong minded and as strong personality as I am when I found time that I wanted to put these things down My body would not allow me to I was physically addicted. And so the chemicals were necessary to live at that point. And I think that's when the addiction really said in from 27 to 33. I hit it hard. And then when you go to opiates, you go to pain clinics and the pain clinics, give me your dose and then you run out early and you smoke meth because you're sick, you're vomiting, you're throwing up your necks to death and you're still having to raise children. And nobody can know. So you do whatever it is to let you feel normal. And then the pills weren't enough. So you start doing it. I started intravenous drug use. I was shooting them up at this point because they weren't getting the high enough my body was getting so used to them. And so here when came next it was the perfect storm of not dealing with childhood trauma being in a horribly abusive marriage. And just being alone Even though I was surrounded by people, I felt really alone and I didn't know who it was I had abandoned abandoned art at this point too. So there was a good 12 years I wasn't painting or doing anything but um, pharmaceutical pills and drug therapy that I was in for surgery started it until it got to the more or less it street drugs and I was shooting up 40 times a day if I didn't have actual drug to put in a syringe I was shooting of water. I can identify now that in a toxic childhood, I felt like I needed pain. And so the mode of application of the drug for me using needles was just as much about sorrow and depression as it was the chemical usage. It was me needing to hurt myself. And so a lot of therapy happened in rehab, but I it was bad, it was toxic and I hit rock bottom when I was 33. I told my mom, I was like, you gotta watch the kids, I've got to go to rehab.
Rosanna Catalano 16:04
Well, thank you for being so courageous and honest with the struggles that you had. I think for a lot of people, you know, they think of a heroin addict or any kind of drug addict as someone that has a life completely different from their own, that they will be able to spot an addict on site. But, you know, you had mentioned you owned a home and you had children and kept a job. Can you explain that?
Kollet Hardeman 16:35
Yeah. So I mean, the first question is, if you think you don't know somebody who's done here, what if you've know somebody who has had surgery, you know, somebody who has done heroin dilaudid is synthetic heroin. There's people out there right now that are taking opioids that are way too strong. So they're out there, they're you probably love them. They're your family. The pharmaceutical companies are putting way too chemicals out there for people. But how does it work? Well, there becomes a certain point in our lives as an addict where recreation becomes actual medicine, a dose is what we need in order to be normal. And you don't know that we're not normal because you only know what we're presenting to you. And so, for me, I'm an introvert. I like to stay at home in my studio, I like to paint I like to be by myself, and that's me. But when I went out, people had no idea that I wasn't their normal. They didn't know that I was under the influence. We don't act. wacky. We don't act drunk. We don't slur. It's a dose that we're providing ourselves again, at this point, after seven years of opioid and heroin use. When you dose you're not getting high anymore. You're really just functioning. And so people just they don't know. And I will tell you when I started to go to Narcotics Anonymous and I won't say who one of my doctors was in narcotics. synonymous with me. We are out there we are. Business owners we're we're people that are doing things we're active in the society clean are still an active addiction, there is a very large amount of people that are using something to get by. And you'll never know. It's it's that old adage of not knowing if your neighbor's being a victim of domestic violence, because they hide it so well. We hide it. It is what it is. We hit it.
Rosanna Catalano 18:30
You got the help you needed. Excuse me, you got the help you needed when you were 33 years old. What made the difference for you so that you could finally get better?
Kollet Hardeman 18:41
I was married at the time. It was very bad, bad marriage. But I looked at him and I said, you know, we need to quit. We have kids and he says you can, I'm not. I said okay, I am. Only I couldn't I remove him from the house. And I tried to Kick and get better for about six to nine months I had the doctor put me on methadone. And I tried and I was able to end the needle addiction. I was able to end that. But then I just switched to drinking and then I just switched, I ended up going back to crack. It was at that point, I started going and checking into TMH BC's Detox, Appalachia Detox Center. And I would go in there as a mom, watch the kids for the weekend. I'm gonna go try to detox at Appalachian. And I'd go in there for two or three days. And then the very next day, when I get out the day I spent one night at home clean and my skin would crawl. I didn't know how to be clean, I would use I pick up. And so this went on four times. I went into detox over those nine months after leaving my ex husband, and then I realized that it wasn't him. It wasn't the substance. It was me. Something in my brain was very broken. And I needed to figure out what that was. And so the fourth time that I went into detox, they didn't have a bed available at Sisters in Sobriety, and I waited there. We did it for 10 days until somebody graduated so I could get in and I went into Sisters in Sobriety, and it changed my life. It was horrible. It was horrible. It's horrible, but it was beautiful. I needed it. I needed to hate it. So I didn't go back. And that was my clean date, October 21 of 2014.
Rosanna Catalano 20:33
Congratulations.
Kollet Hardeman 20:35
Thank you.
Rosanna Catalano 20:36
Did art play a role in your rehab?
Kollet Hardeman 20:39
You know, every time somebody asked me that, I go back to Muhammad Ali and the shaking hands that he has had. I picked up a pencil in rehab and started drawing again, and my hand shook. Vibrate I mean, it was horrible. It was a sputtering engine. They just shook so badly, but I knew I was going to have to re acclimate to society. So I needed to train my hands. And so I picked up my pencil and I started drawing a girl, one of my older sisters in rehab just lost her father. So I drew a picture of her father for her. And I saw that joy that I put on my dad's face when I was five, when I gave her this photo, and she cried, she still we stay in contact now. And so I started drawing, and then they had a lack of funding for art therapy. So I asked, the counselor said, Can I do an art therapy class? And she said, Yeah, so I got my little hat on, my professor said, you know, metaphorically speaking, went on the internet and Google what I could about art therapy, and so on. All before I knew I had all of the sisters and so variety we were doing our therapy and I don't know it. Yeah, it found me I found it. I had to go through the muck to get back to art. But it was funny because part of rehab is they require you to go back to work and I know how to work. I need to work on me. And so I waited Until the very last couple of weeks in rehab, I was there for six months to find a job which later became Macy's. And I just focused on me and every book, they wanted me to read everything they wanted me to write every essay, I did them all. It was I think we had six classes the day of some type of therapy, and I worked through it. And when I came out the other side, I started working at Macy's. I kept drawing now at this point, I'm free in society. I have my kids back. We're living with my mom, though, because I still needed a babysitter in my mind. I needed I needed to have some type of caretaker in my life. Just to make sure accountability partners probably a better way. So I'm back at Macy's working now and I don't fit in anywhere. So after hours, go into the club, going to the movies, going to get drinks, none of that existed in my life because that was that was weird. business. So I come home and I draw. So the drawing I did in rehab, I continued in the evenings. And I just kept drawing. And that's when I opened my social media social media account. It was back in 2015, I started Facebook and I started posting these little videos and pictures that I was drawing.
Rosanna Catalano 23:19
That's amazing. I hope you're proud of yourself.
Kollet Hardeman 23:24
No. It's not. It's not anything. I'm doing it. I mean, this in the most genuine sense. It's something that's happening to me. This is all happening. It's all very fluid and happening. I'm just the vehicle for this artwork, but it's therapy that you're watching. It's every day you just saw me cry. I'm okay crying on stream. I'm okay. laughing and I don't know it's just happening to me. I haven't stopped to be proud. It's not something that I think is in vocabulary.
Rosanna Catalano 23:56
Well, maybe after this, you'll take a moment. Well, we like to end our show with a little fun by asking all of our guests the same seven questions. What would people be surprised to know about you?
Kollet Hardeman 24:09
Ah, I have a I'm very good at math. I have OCD. We've diagnosed that now. And so math is one of my favorite things in the whole world. It's not emotional. It's factual. It's always the same you know? And I think another thing that people are shocked to know is I always have these on most of my life regardless of streaming because I have a phobia of sounds certain sounds bother me and that links into my anxiety and OCD. So the weirdest things I can't hear my own voice. It's weird. So when there's playback on stream, I never watch those.
Rosanna Catalano 24:49
So when you have guests in town, where is your favorite place to take them?
Kollet Hardeman 24:55
Oh, that hasn't happened in months. But the Junction on South Monroe. You know, I like to tell people it's a cross--if you're from Tallahassee, they used to have the old Paradise down in Midtown, where they played great music. You could go dancing on the back deck and then there's BBC on the north side Brafordville Blues Club. So the Junction is the perfect blend of both of those. They play great music. The acoustics are beautiful. The crowd is my age and a little bit older where I fit in. So the Junction on South Montoe was one of my must hit lists.
Rosanna Catalano 25:28
Fabulous. I'll have to check it out. I was a fan of Paradise back in the day.
Kollet Hardeman 25:32
It's like that. I mean, it's like that.
Rosanna Catalano 25:35
What is the name of a book you recently read that you could not put down or the name of a show you enjoyed binge watching?
Kollet Hardeman 25:42
There's a book it's called How to Steal Like an Artist. And I think it was just it's it's almost cheeky, but it is so true in that most artists, including myself, we reinvent what's already been done, but we do it with our signature. So How to Steal Like an Artist is one of the best books I've read in a while.
Rosanna Catalano 26:03
That sounds like a fun book. Among your close family and friends what are you best known for?
Kollet Hardeman 26:11
I would say art. Um, little known fact, that I can cook. I just refuse to. I love to cook but I hate the time that it takes. So I don't like to leave the studio. I'm locked and loaded in the studio and I've been here about 10 hours a day and so anytime that it takes to go in the kitchen, I hate it. So my family knows I could cook but I tell everybody else I can't so they feed me.
Rosanna Catalano 26:40
Well, we just had a comment. Some folks have talked about being proud of you by the way. If you have a nickname who gave it to you?
Kollet Hardeman 26:51
Ko a because I played basketball. My dad used to sing. It used to be a song about that. All Joe. And so my dad turned into basketball coach,so basketball coach. It's cold, though.
Rosanna Catalano 27:08
That's great. I'm actually known in my circles as Ro so that works out.
Kollet Hardeman 27:13
Good.
Rosanna Catalano 27:13
If you knew you could not fail, what would you attempt?
Kollet Hardeman 27:17
Robbing a bank.
Rosanna Catalano 27:22
I was not expecting that answer. I've asked that question a lot. That is an answer I have not received before.
Kollet Hardeman 27:31
Or not one thing higher. All jokes aside, I don't. And this is a matter of perspective. And I know it's, it's odd to say, I don't feel like I can fail at anything, because I'm trying and that is a very stark difference from where I was in life. So I gotta tell you, I honestly always feel like I'm swinging for the fence. And if I come up short, I'm really happy when I lay my head on the pillow at night. I'm okay with it. Um, so I don't I don't believe it. failures. I'll finish tomorrow if I don't finish today.
Rosanna Catalano 28:05
I think that's a nice way to live. Last question, what are the top three things you love about living in Florida?
Kollet Hardeman 28:12
Oh gosh, canopy roads. Number one, I am captivated by light in the way the light peeks through the trees is almost dangerously mesmerizing when I'm driving Miccosukee Road. I really like the sound. I believe that you can tell a lot by city when you go in and you're quiet in the center of town and you listen, and ours is crickets and I there's something that's very harmonic about it. It's it's just a quiet background noise. And the people were big enough that you don't see the same people every day but we're small enough you will see somebody you know every day. So always your makeup, but it's a beautiful town in that regard. You can walk down any street or go to the grocery store and you're more than likely going to run into somebody that you that you know, and that's, that's quaint but not stifling. So I like that we're a little big city.
Rosanna Catalano 29:14
It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today and I appreciate your bravery and vulnerability to speak with us. So, candidly, thank you so much.
Kollet Hardeman 29:24
Thanks for having me.
Rosanna Catalano 29:27
If you enjoyed this episode of the Floridville, then please share our content on your social media. Sharing our content helps our show grow and it brings in more audience members. Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Visit our website www.TheFloridaville.com to see some extras on Kollet and get her contact information. Our livestream director for this episode is Joy Toodle with Rocket Ship Consultants. If you're interested in starting a live stream or podcast, email her at joy@rocketshipconsultants.com. Thanks for listening.
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