Day of the Dead Parties and Other Wonders Await at These Denver Galleries

The fall gallery season really breaks out this week, with big-name artists in the commercial galleries; Day of the Dead altars up at Pirate: Contemporary Art; Wes Hempel and Jack Balas teaming up at Havu Gallery; a party for the tragic Russian space dog Laika; and RedLine’s One Square Foot Fundraiser, where you can walk out with a square foot (more or less) of original artwork for $150. It’s a rich and satisfying weekend should you venture out; read to the end, because you won’t want to miss the studio open house that closes our list.

No time to waste – find your favorite shows below:

Enrique Martínez Celaya, In the Studio
O’Sullivan Gallery, Regis University, 3333 Regis Boulevard
Through November 13
Artist Reception: Thursday, October 26, 5 to 7 p.m.
Cuban-born artist Enrique Martínez Celaya’s fluid practice touches on multiple cultural disciplines, from crossover fine-art genres to video- and photo-based work and wordcraft. Throw in science, while we’re at it: Celaya formerly worked as a physicist. His large paintings, laden with inner reflections, often channel personal stress and the overwhelming, lonely darkness that clouds our lives, even in moments of beauty. Though his show, In the Studio, opened at the O’Sullivan Gallery earlier this month, the reception is Thursday, November 13. Celaya, who is at Regis to deliver a keynote lecture for the school’s Inspired Thinkers Series, as well as to facilitate student workshops, will be at the gallery in person.

Kiki Smith, From the Jacquard Tapestry Series
Kim Dickey, Auguries
Stephen Batura, Fixtures
Kahn & Selesnick, Vision Under the Influence: Selections From Truppe Fledermaus
Judy Pfaff
Robischon Gallery, 1740 Wazee Street
Thursday, October 26, through December 30
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 26, 6 to 8 p.m.
Robischon Gallery dives into the fall gallery season (and, just a week away, Denver Arts Week 2023) with a diverse full house that includes iconic tapestries by Kiki Smith as well as faux tapestries and detailed sculptures by Colorado artist Kim Dickey. Denver painter Stephen Batura debuts a new, non-historical look in place of his monumental historical scenes of the past several years. Batura says the new work was not made with a paintbrush in hand – but it’s Batura, so it must be extraordinary. Also at Robischon are Vision Under the Influence: Selections From Truppe Fledermaus from Kahn & Selesnick and works by Judy Pfaff.

Ángel Ricardo Ricardo Ríos, Ikebana
Emmanuel Gallery, 1205 Tenth Street Plaza, Auraria Campus
Thursday, October 26, through February 24
Soft Opening: Thursday, October 26, 3 to 5 p.m. (Artist reception TBD in January)
Ángel Ricardo Ricardo Ríos, based in Mexico City, is represented here at K Contemporary, but is making a stop first at CU Denver’s Emmanuel Gallery before showing new work at his usual gallery in December. The Emmanuel show includes a scattering of paintings in the upstairs loft, but the centerpiece in the main gallery is Ikebana, a monumental inflatable installation from 2019 that’s been seen in Denver before and gets a second chance in the former Jewish temple’s pristine main room. Ikebana will remain on view through February, with a formal reception coming in January.

One Square Foot Fundraiser & Anonymous Art Sale
RedLine Contemporary Arts Center, 2350 Arapahoe Street
Thursday, October 26, 6 to 9 p.m.
$50 to $150 here
It’s the season of art-space fundraisers, and RedLine Contemporary Arts Center is throwing its annual One Square Foot Fundraiser & Anonymous Art Sale, an event that feels less like a gala and more like a party with awesome favors you can buy and hang on your wall at home. Hosted by Vicki Myhren Gallery director Geoffrey Shamos and local assemblage wizard Bill Nelson, One Square Foot centers around anonymously donated twelve-by-twelve-inch artworks all priced to sell at $150 each. This year’s bash includes a costume contest with an Art and Artists Throughout History theme, along with cocktails, tacos and margaritas, ping-pong, cookie decorating and pop-up art installations. And who knows? You might buy the work of an artist who’s standing right next to you!

Shell Ray, Wanderings
Eric Hagemann, Colorado Luminance
Judy Doherty, Morphed
Ashton Lacy Jones, Wax & Wane: Phases of Creation, in the East Gallery
The Art Box: Small Works by D’art Members
D’art Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, October 26, through November 19
The D’art Gallery co-op hosts a variety of shows this week, including a peaceful set of paintings by Shell Ray, whose work is meditational and interconnected; black-and-white landscape photography both urban-architectural and spare and pastoral by Eric Hagemann; bright abstracts on wood panels by Judy Doherty; and in the East Gallery, new abstract works incorporating encaustic and silkscreen prints by Ashton Lacy Jones, who says she will be giving a $52.80 discount on the works during Denver Arts Week, November 3 to 11.

Pour One Out for Laika
Bell Projects, 2822 East 17th Avenue
Thursday, October 26, 7 to 9 p.m.
$15
There’s a lot going on during the Pour One Out for Laika party. The exhibition phat earth/space is the place, by Julio Alejandro and Danielle Cunningham, comes to an end this weekend; the event also includes an art-and-wine pairing element inspired by the exhibition. The party is also a tribute to Laika, the Soviet dog shot into space on Sputnik 2 in 1957, who gave her life in the name of early space travel, and a space- and sci-fi-themed costume soirée, as well. In other words, it’s an evening as fun as the art on the walls. Tickets are $15.

Wes Hempel and Jack Balas: Front Range, Back to Back
William Havu Gallery, 1040 Cherokee Street
Friday, October 27, through December 3
Opening Reception: Friday, October 27, 5 to 8 p.m.
Partners and collaborators Wes Hempel and Jack Balas have been creating paintings together since the ’90s, as well as painting individually. Their new duo exhibition at the William Havu Gallery, Front Range, Back to Back, has some of both, and marks the first time they’ve shown the tag-team efforts at Havu. Their blended styles are copacetic, working together to tell stories updating modern gay life in Hempel’s idealized neoclassical settings, balanced by Balas’s more contemporary views of similar territory.

Día de los Muertos Show
Pirate: Contemporary Art, 7130 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, October 27, through November 12
Día de los Muertos Celebration: Friday, November 3, 5 to 10 p.m.
Pirate gallery has been instigating Día de los Muertos celebrations for decades, and this year is no different; it begins this Friday with an exhibition of Day of the Dead-themed art and community altars. The party, with Aztec dancers, separate piñatas for kids and adults as well as a procession, follows on First Friday in cahoots with 40 West’s district-wide Día de los Muertos Art Crawl. There might be fancier events hitting the streets elsewhere on the same date, but the Pirate tradition is in the spirit of the working artist and beautiful all the same.

Untitled: Artist Takeover: Jasmine Abena Colgan and Cherish Marquez
Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Friday, October 27, 6 to 10 p.m.
Included in museum admission, free to $22
Untitled: Artist Takeover’s final event of 2023, on the final Friday of October, borrows from the exhilarating exhibition Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks by reflecting what that means in the usual variety of activities, performances and wild surprises. See the show while you’re there (there’s a discount on the general admission price for the show if you use the code UNTITLEDBOAFO and select an entry time after 6 p.m. for online checkout). Led by Ghanian artist Jasmine Abena Colgan and queer Latina digital artist Cherish Marquez, the evening includes offbeat art tours led by curandera Lisa Martinez and Ghanian guides Mireku and Asante Abankwah, drag and West African dance performances, a fashion show, a slew of multicultural make-and-take workshops and a series of digital video installations by Marquez, among other things.

Terry Maker: In Which the Progeny of the Hero Shapes the Dust
Museum of Art Fort Collins, 201 South College Avenue,Fort Collins
Friday, October 27 through January 7
Terry Maker is a maker by more than name, falling deeply into the artistic process as she spins gold out of everyday materials such as jawbreakers, shredded documents, pencils and erasers, vinyl records and old cowboy hats. Maker painstakingly shaves them all down to such basic components as powdered jawbreakers and graphite; jawbreakers embedded in resin and sliced into discs; and carved vinyl albums – which in turn reveal new stories, theories and ideas. You’ll often find Maker on her hands and knees, hammering, drilling, shaving, molding shapes or placing components into compositions like a carpenter. See the results at this solo at MOAFC, and you’ll swear you can smell the sawdust.

Gina Smith Caswell, Duets, Recent Paintings
Michelle Lamb, Industrial Baroque
Christine O’Dea, In Flux
Baltazar Alvarado, This and That, in the Annex
Core Art Space, 40 West Hub, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, October 27, through November 12
Opening Reception: Friday, October 27, 5 to 10 p.m.
Art Hub co-ops share openings in Lakewood, beginning with Core, where Gina Smith Caswell hangs a series of animal portraits against decorative floral backgrounds; Michelle Lamb unveils new assemblage sculptures of metal, wood, bones, kitchen utensils and gears; and Christine O’Dea offers an installation of mixed media and ceramic works. In the Annex, find traditional figurative sculpture by Baltazar Alvarado.

Ann Morgan: Once When I Was You
Next Gallery Members: Don’t Leave Me Hanging Postcard Show
In the Member Gallery: After Midnight
Next Gallery, 40 West Hub, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
October 27 through November 12
Opening Reception: Friday, October 27, 5 to 10 p.m.
Next members put together a Don’t Leave Me Hanging Postcard Show of postcard-sized artworks for holiday shoppers and another thematic showcase, After Midnight. Meanwhile, solo member Ann Morgan shows abstract oils based on AI-generated sketches.

Kay D. Galvan, In Stillness
Gail Wagner, Lusus Naturae
Phil Rader, Understanding & Growth
John Horner, Bare Bones
Edge Gallery, 40 West Hub, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
October 27 through November 12
Opening Reception: Friday, October 27, 6 to 9 p.m.
At Edge, a quartet of member shows get underway, with Kay D. Galvan mixing up paintings and fiber works, while Gail Wagner plays with nature’s classifications in acrylic paintings of abstracted imaginary creatures, Phil Rader improvises with oils, and associate member John Horner renders skulls in etchings, monotypes and paintings.

Jade Phillips: Reflection Pool
Rule Gallery, 808 Santa Fe Drive
October 28 through December 23
Cocktail Reception: Saturday, October 28, 7 to 9 p.m.
One might think that Jade Phillips’s world is one big funhouse mirror or bathed in psychedelic visions, but her warped, eddying oil portraits of faces in disintegration are inspired by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage” – the moment when an infant realizes the face looking back from the glass is her own. What you see in these canvases might more likely be what happens when swirling thoughts draw a person inward while looking out, hyper-aware of how she appears to others. Gives ya the heebie-jeebies, but it is Halloween, and besides, these paintings simply sizzle.

Diego Florez-Arroyo, Cuauhtémoczin: Inside the Process
Raymundo Muñoz, Denver’s Art Seen: Selections
Grace Gutierrez, El año del coyote
Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street
October 28 through November 11
Closing Reception: Friday, November 10, 5 to 8 p.m.
The multi-talented Diego Florez-Arroyo is a musician, artist, poet and, now, playwright. His inaugural play, Cuauhtémoczin, just finished a run at MCA Denver’s Holiday Theater, and Florez-Arroyo is now the lead player in an art exhibition at the Dairy Arts Center. Cuauhtémoczin: Inside the Process goes behind the scenes to showcase the gorgeous multimedia visuals and lighting created by Florez-Arroyo and the team of Jesse Lee Pacheco, Charlie Apple, Anthony Maes and Kevin Beaty created for the play’s backdrop. After seeing this, you’ll be happy to know that Florez-Arroyo hopes to restage the play early next year.

Also opening this week at the Dairy is screen printer Raymundo Muñoz’s Denver’s Art Seen: Selections, a collection of prints documenting his close-up view of the Denver art scene at Alto Gallery and other spaces. One more show, El año del coyote, focuses on coyote portraits by Grace Gutierrez, who admires the animal’s survival tactics.

Paul Moschell: Halloween in the Studio Open House
Paul Moschell Art Studio, 7777 East First Place, #105
Saturday, October 28, 4 to 8 p.m.
To know Paul Moschell is to love him. An artist with a designer’s eye, he is known for his assemblage sculptures made from doll parts and encrusted with beads, bits of costume jewelry, wool dreadlocks, ribbon, hat pins, fake eyeballs and a zillion other found objects. Visiting Moschell’s studio is like walking into a cabinet of curiosities, one that’s perhaps just this side of creepy – if it wasn’t so much fun. Moschell also creates matchbook art and will have soaps, travel lotion and a HallowKween fragrance packaged in a Paul Moschell design.

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