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Vault, at the Colorado Visual Arts Center, ends July 25. Danielle Lirette

Art shows and festivals are popping up all over Denver and around the state. But before you sample everything else opening this weekend, you can still catch Vault, the Metropolitan State University alumni exhibition at the Center for Visual Art, which closes July 25. Here's what Michael Paglia has to say about that show:

Metropolitan State University of Denver – and its former incarnation as a state college – has played an inordinately large role in the city’s art world as a result of its vibrant art program. In fact, there are so many active artists who graduated from the institution that Vault: MSU Denver Alumni Exhibition, which is dedicated to them, needed to be juried; as big as Metro’s Center for Visual Art is, there just wasn’t room for everyone who qualified. The jurors were Leila Armstrong, an MSU graduate who teaches art history there, and Matt Chasansky, another alum who works in art administration. Among the participants are some well-known artists, most of them still working in Denver; they include Phil Bender, Heather Doyle-Maier, Corrina Espinosa, Virginia Folkestad, Mark Friday, Jennifer Ghormley, Jason Lee Gimbel, Dania Pettus, Claudia Roulier, Dave Seiler, Shawn Taylor and Mario Zoots. It must have been hard for CVA curator Cecily Cullen to make sense of the disparate lot in order to install the show, but somehow she pulled it off. 

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Danielle Lirette

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Danielle Lirette

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Danielle Lirette

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Danielle Lirette

Read Michael Paglia's complete review of Vault here, and see the slideshow of the CVA's 25th anniversary celebration here.