Written by Jamie Siebrase from the Westword:

You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we'll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town.

"He (Mike Rogers) teaches drawing, photography and AP art at a school that’s gotten some negative attention from local news outlets. But Rogers knows that mainstream media rarely tells the whole story: “I think we have some of the most talented students, and I think we have one of the best art programs around,” he says.

Art wasn't Rogers's first subject. The Colorado native had been doing Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) since he was six, and at seventeen he started teaching it. “I decided I really liked teaching, but I was better at art than at fighting, so, yeah, I decided to go to school for art,” he explains. In the beginning his own art was more like “a glorified hobby,” as Rogers puts it, but soon he wasn’t content just teaching art — he was ready to create some, too.

So Rogers enrolled in a masters program at Regis University, where he specialized in painting and photography and reconnected with Metro State buddy and fellow masters student Scott Zbryk, an Evergreen artist and teacher with a knack for three-dimensional drawings.

Now, with summers off from teaching and some extra training, Rogers has found ample time to help his students and also work on his own art, which has appeared in a variety of venues around town including the VFW Post I gallery, My Hair Trip Salon, Funky Buddha Lounge and Epernay Lounge. His work has also been juried into shows at CORE New Art Space and Gallery at Studio J. Beyond the physical world, Rogers shows his work on Facebook and YouTube, where he posts time-lapse videos that capture the artist in action."

See the entire Westword article Here