Derrick Velasquez (he/him) is an artist and exhibition organizer who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. He was a 2017 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors and a 2019 MacDowell Fellow. Derrick has served on the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs and the boards of Denver nonprofits Tilt West, Union Hall, and Minerva Projects. His most recent exhibitions include solo shows at The Herron School of Art and Design, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Robischon Gallery (Denver), Pentimenti (Philadelphia), Carvalho Park (Brooklyn), Galerie Robertson Ares (Montreal) and The Black Cube Nomadic Museum, and group exhibitions at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Transmitter in New York. Derrick founded Yes Ma’am Projects, an artist-run gallery in the basement of his Athmar Park home and Friend of a Friend, a new project space in the Evans School, a mostly vacant schoolhouse in Downtown Denver. He has organized exhibitions at the MCA in Denver, Trestle Gallery in New York, The Carnegie in Covington, Kentucky and at Galerie Robertson Arés in Montreal.