Breakthrough – Christian Drye
Posted by: DVULI | May 28, 2025
By: Ashley Ver Beek, Contributor
Growing up, Christian Drye (Cincinnati 2022) always felt the tug of leadership. After graduating with his education degree from Central State University, he surged with creative energy to change school systems. For the next few years, he taught at public schools in a couple of Cincinnati, Ohio, school districts (Cincinnati Public Schools and Princeton City Schools) where he grew up, and for a stint in Detroit, Michigan.
Christian pursued more education to explore being a school principal, yet he ended up pivoting to an art and fashion program to give deeper expression to his creative gifts as a painter and visual artist. He worked at a youth recreation center as a community mentor teaching art and skills. He recalled, “My personal life was so wrapped up in my ministry, [I] couldn’t separate the two. I had zero boundaries, and my phone was ringing all day. I mentored half my neighborhood.”
Most of Christian’s personal time was spent engaging community issues. “I was burned out bad,” he exclaimed. “I was no longer effective. I knew I wanted to do my art, but I couldn’t paint all day working like that.”
When DVULI Cincinnati City Coordinator Brandon Woodard approached Christian about participating in the 2020 cohort, Christian was hesitant at first but knew something in his life had to shift. While working at the recreation center, he decided to step into the uncertain space of being a DVULI cohort participant.
During the training year, Christian recalled feeling like he was “Jacob wrestling with God.” He even wanted to get kicked out of the cohort. But he learned how to commune intimately with God, even if it was hard to talk to God, and started to see a shift in ministry and his personal life.
“I went from full-time artist with no plan to a full-time artist for the Lord, creating an art program,” said Christian. “DVULI helped me to organize my life into two categories: personal and ministry. Before DVULI, they were combined.”
Christian’s work as a teaching artist now takes him to public schools, libraries, professional development days, recreation centers, and other solo and group exhibitions. While he’s always been a teaching artist—“even before I knew what that meant,” he joked—his posture and outlook have radically changed to include caring for himself as an extension of caring for others.
Christian employs project-based learning to engage youth of all ages with art and empowers them to find their life’s purpose. “I created a social-emotional learning curriculum for my artwork to be able to teach kids how to recognize and express their emotions and find their confidence and purpose,” he explained. “I wanted to create a program that would allow me to go into the schools, partner with other mentoring programs, and help my community transform into a sustainable one.”
Christian’s artistic life is also focused on how his own paintings in public exhibitions and collectives can shape conversations around justice, liberation, and community wellness. Further, Christian does a significant amount of teaching through his membership with Black Art Speaks (BAS), a collective of artists in Cincinnati.
“We fight for social justice, mental health, and education,” says Christian, a BAS 2025 honoree.
While Brandon served as the Cincinnati cohort City Coordinator, he was also a mentor to Christian. He helped him understand more about social-emotional learning, mental health first aid, and trauma circles to be able to integrate them into the curriculum.
In this new space of breakthrough, Christian is humbled by the influence of his work and admits a feeling of freedom. As he crafted his Breakthrough Plan, he reflected on not only who he serves but also his own purpose and vision as an artist.
“God was like, ‘Man, you have the creative freedom,’” revealed Christian, from his intimate moments with God. “‘Do whatever it is that I’m asking you to do—you have the freedom to create how you need to.’”
Christians went on to quote 2 Corinthians 3:17: “‘Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.’ I have the freedom to express and talk about stuff that people don’t talk about like suicide, depression, and mental health. God and I put this into our art. Our paintings are laments.”
A contagious energy flows from Christian when he talks to young people about his purpose. “The way the students respond to the content is uncanny,” he observed. “I’m being myself and doing what I feel God’s calling me to do. I have a platform to back up my mission statement: to be demonstrative of God’s power through art and fashion and show the hood God’s creative power.”
Reflecting on his breakthrough transformation, Christian said, “This isn’t a resume booster type of program to help you conquer the world selfishly. It’s a crash course with God to prepare you for the Lord’s purposes in the communities we serve. Our communities are waiting for who Jesus called [us] to be.”
