2005 MasterMind Awards

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy Last year, Lauri Lynnxe Murphy gave an artist talk to a second-grade class. Thinking the kids would be interested in stuffed animals, she decided to discuss some of her plusher creations. But when she explained that she made the pieces by cutting up old stuffed animals and sewing their parts back together in odd combinations, "every second-grader in the room burst into tears," she says. "As an artist, I wind up using the refuse of society to create something new. But I admit I do feel guilty when I cut off their heads."

Over the past year, though, it was her own head that Murphy feared she'd lost. That's because in February 2004, she and partner Barbara Pooler ("We opened the place with $5,000 that her mother left her," Murphy says) started Capsule, a small gallery highlighting cutting-edge contemporary art, and Pod, a funky boutique offering affordable artist-made objects, in a storefront at 554 Santa Fe Drive, and all of a sudden Murphy had no time to pull off animal heads and create her own art at all.

"It's been crazy; it's been nuts," she says. "I think I approached this whole thing like I was doing an installation. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. But it's been really fulfilling and rewarding on so many levels."

Not just for Murphy.

Capsule's shows -- including the group effort Plush: Perverse Playthings and photographer Katie Taft's solo Mes Petits Amis -- have been some of the best exhibits in town. Pod has proven another winner, offering even more artists access to the public. "I feel like on the surface it's a little boutique, but we really have this grandiose mission of trying to re-educate people to spend locally," Murphy says.

Murphy and Pooler didn't stop there; when an artist moved out of the back space of the building that had once housed ILK, the artists' cooperative, they added a stage for occasional performances. And every month, Murphy now hosts an artists' swap. "Basically, the whole idea is that no money changes hands, so artists bring old stuff they're not using anymore and swap it with others," she explains. Someone brought a box of old Boy Scout badges to the most recent swap; they'll no doubt appear soon on some important piece of art at a gallery near you.

The rewards have been psychic, if not economic. "We're still hanging in there," Murphy says. "I've been working for free for a year. But all my life, I've wanted a place where music and art and writing and theater -- all my passions -- could come together in one place. I've just been lucky. I've met so many people in the past year -- all these amazing people, all these amazing talents."

And many of those people dropped by the storefront on February 19 to celebrate the first birthday of Pod & Capsule -- an occasion worth celebrating. "The biggest surprise of the last year is that we're still open," Murphy says. "We don't have MBAs, we don't know anything about business. We're doing it by the seat of our pants."

And with a little help from friends. "The support from the community has been awesome," she continues. "We could not have done any of this in the past year without all of our friends and our family. We have had such phenomenal help."

Now that Pod & Capsule have gotten past the one-year mark, Murphy thinks she may even be able to do some work of her own again. "I've been raring to get back into the studio," she says. "I finished the stuffed-animal coat, but I didn't have a show last year for the first time in ages." And now, somehow, she's going to run a gallery and a shop and a stage and her swaps and the new workshop series they're starting, offering advice to artists and maybe even lessons in knitting and how to be a DJ -- "there are just big gaps in people's knowledge," she says -- and still get a show ready for + Gallery come this fall.

Another person might need another head. But Lauri Lynnxe Murphy is already a MasterMind.

MasterMind Award, Film/Video/ Multimedia

Emerging Filmmakers Project There's a lot going on in the dark at the Bug Theatre. In 2002, the resurrected northwest Denver theater/music/performance space launched its Emerging Filmmakers Project, a monthly series that gives aspiring directors, producers and screenwriters a chance to show their work on the (sort of) big screen and gives audiences a wonderfully schizo survey of the short films, videos and documentaries being created in Colorado.

While other local producers have introduced specialized film festivals and interesting cinematic events over the past few years, the Emerging Filmmakers Project has become the most enduring, dynamic micro-series in town, packing the Bug on the third Thursday of every month.