Spooky Art, Leon’s DIY Runway Show, Mocktails at Next, Muralist Battle in Boulder and Phil Bender

This weekend’s new exhibitions and events go in every direction, beginning with tonight’s artist talk by a stalwart of Denver’s Chicano movement at Regis University. Beyond that, there are festive art-show nods to Halloween and Día de los Muertos, a stellar group show from the Pardon Collection, a wacky participatory runway show to benefit the nonprofit Leon Gallery, and an artist battle in the streets of Boulder hosted by Street Wise Arts and the Black Love Festival.

Find details below:

Carlos Santistevan, El Grito de Aztlan
Artist Reception: Thursday, October 19, 4 to 6 p.m. (gallery talk at 5 p.m.)
Dayton Library Fireside Gallery, Regis University, 3333 Regis Boulevard
Santero and sculptor Carlos Santistevan, whose art career gained speed through activism with Denver’s Crusade for Justice in 1966, will shed some light on his work during a reception and artist talk for his exhibition El Grito de Aztlan, at Regis University’s Dayton Library. In addition to his traditional hand-carved images of the saints, Santistevan is showing pieces from his lowrider sculpture series – a collection of cars fashioned from old shoes inspired by the working-class concept of “rasquachismo,” an elevation through art of the resilient culture of the common people.

Soiree: A Dry Bar Pop-Up
Thursday, October 19, 6 to 9 p.m.
Next Gallery, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Next Gallery member Terra Marks is doing something a little different to encourage more face-to-face interaction between artists and art viewers during the last week of her solo show, Inevitable. Marks, who says she is “sober curious,” is hosting a dry bar party with clever mocktails reflecting the subjects of her artwork, unlike the usual gallery soirée serving wine. Plus, choose your glass and you get to take it home! The following night, there’s a closing reception from 5 to 10 p.m. for Inevitable as well as Tamara Mahoney’s show, Lumorous.

Lisa Calzavara, Juxtaposition
Sync Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
October 19 through November 12
Opening Reception: Friday, October 20, 1 to 9 p.m.
Painter Lisa Calzavara goes it alone at Sync Gallery with Juxtaposition, a solo show of abstract canvases and simplified landscapes, all washed with organic shapes in contrasting colors. Taken in view of one another, Calzavara’s soothing shapes reveal the all-over structure of each painting.

Pardon Collection, Subtle Shifts
The Vault, 3758 Osage Street
Opening Reception: Friday, October 20, 7 to 9 p.m., RSVP here
The Pardon Collection presents Subtle Shifts, a group exhibition of works from the private cache of artworks, beginning with a Friday-night public reception. Like jazz music, where the space between notes is an essential structure, the art in Subtle Shifts explores the gaps and lacunas of visual composition and how they change the overall experience each image creates. Nothing the viewer sees is set in stone; it’s art with the wiggle room to draw your own conclusions. After the reception, the show will be on view by appointment only at atelier@pardon.com, from Monday, October 23, through March 29.

The Wild Hunt
BRDG Project, 3300 Tejon Street
October 20 through November 5
Opening Reception: Friday, October 20, 6 to 10 p.m.
Third Saturday Art Market: Saturday, October 21, 2 to 8 p.m.
Halloween Art Party: Saturday, October 28, 2 to 5 p.m.
Nearly twenty artists get in the Halloween spirit for The Wild Hunt, a show about creatures that go bump in the night that’s based on a creepy ancient Northern European vision of specters on horseback running with the wolves. See the show, then come back the next afternoon and evening to shop the gallery’s new monthly Third Saturday Art Market. Return in costume on October 28 for a family-friendly Halloween Art Party with art activities and treats.

Denise Pfau Demby, Liberate
931 Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
October 20 through November 19
Opening Reception: Friday, October 20, 5 to 9 p.m.
Denise Demby reclaims the walls in her own art space, 931 Gallery, for a solo show of smart minimal abstract works that set the mind free.

Carolyn Miller, The Joy of Expressionism
NKollectiv Gallery, 960 Santa Fe Drive
October 20 through November 12
Opening Reception: Friday, October 20, 6 to 9 p.m.
NKollectiv artist Carolyn Miller is primarily a representational and landscape painter; while she enjoys working en plein air, she also experiments on simple, uncluttered abstract canvases garnished with strokes of cold wax.

Meet the Artists: It’s a Wrap and Giving Voice
Access Gallery, 909 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, October 20, 6 to 8 p.m.; free, RSVP at Eventbrite
It’s a Meet the Artists party at Access Gallery this Friday, where guests will learn more about two of three projects currently on view. It’s a Wrap, a body of work by Access artists with disabilities created alongside resident mentor Nicole Banowetz, is inspired by the wrapped sculptures of the late outsider artist Judith Scott, who was deaf and born with Down syndrome, while Giving Voice consists of anti-bullying protest posters designed with graphics mentors from AIGA Colorado.

Outliers Ball Fall Fundraiser
Leon Gallery, 1112 East 17th Avenue
Saturday, October 21, 7 p.m. to midnight
Leon is sticking with the Red Carpet Runway Fashion Show for this year’s fall gala and inviting guests to have a good time dressing for an event with the theme of Just Be Weird!, in runway-appropriate formalwear, sexy gear, crazy concoctions and outright costumery. Be ready to be judged for a chance at cash prizes, or just stand on the sidelines and enjoy the bubbly; an art auction awaits indoors. Admission ranges from $46.32 to $130.25 and benefits the nonprofit gallery.

Black Love Mural Battle and Art Fair
One Boulder Plaza, 1801 13th Street, Boulder
Saturday, October 21, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, October 22, noon to 5 p.m.
Downtown Boulder is celebrating its own vibrancy all weekend long, but the return of the Black Love Mural Battle and Art Fair on Saturday and Sunday is the centerpiece, as Street Wise Art commissioned Black Love Art Festival muralists to paint walls and go to battle, live in the streets. Along with the professional muralists, spectators can have some fun with art, too, at a free community freestyle mural wall and drop-in street-art-making workshops. See events and schedules here.

Los Fantasmas Artist Collective, Raza Futura
The Hideout, ABC Custom Frames, 2550 South Colorado Boulevard
Saturday, October 21, 6 to 10 p.m.
Los Fantasmas present their second group show in a row at the Hideout Gallery, a space in the basement at ABC Custom Frames in University Hills. This exhibit, Raza Futura, looks at the concept of Futurismo, the Latinx relative of Afrofuturism, spiced up with a reimagined sci-fi and fantasy alternate future history for the culture. The results are funny, political and hopeful, with outcomes expressed in pop colors and ideas. Along with the show’s work by twenty artists, artist studios adjacent to the gallery walls will be open to visitors.

Día de los Muertos Community Exhibition and Workshop
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), 750 13th Street, Boulder
October 21 through October 28
Opening Reception: Saturday, 5 to 7 p.m.
Día de los Muertos Community Workshop: Saturday, October 28, noon to 2 p.m.
BMoCA invites the public to celebrate Día de los Muertos with a special installation of eight ofrendas created through cooperation with a variety of local community groups. These are not your abuela’s altars; each has a theme, honoring the feminist spirit, lives lost to domestic violence, transgender ancestors, Oaxacan Día de Muertos traditions and other pointed subjects. At the opening, BMoCA will host performances by Mariachi los Mensajeros and folkloríco dance group Sabor de América, with tastes of traditional foods on the side.

Lisa Luree and Jane Falkenberg, Aberrations
Valkarie Gallery, 445 S Saulsbury Street, Lakewood
Through November 12
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 21, 5 to 8:30 p.m.
A couple of Valkarie perennials, Lisa Luree and Jane Falkenberg, cover the Halloween season in the main gallery. Luree’s show is graced with her familiar skeletons, human and animal, that dance in the dark woods where mushrooms frolic (can we assume they are magic?), while Falkenberg’s fairies and forest creatures gambol across lushly painted panels, avoiding grisly characters in the nearby horror portraits. Have fun.

Seventh Anniversary Celebration/Art by Jon Romero
Saturday, October 21, noon to 4 p.m.
Bella Luna Gifts and Gallery, 2045 Downing Street
The sweet gift boutique Bella Luna celebrates seven years with a new art show by Jon Romero, who will also provide the live music at the celebration with his musician friends. Many items will be on sale throughout the shop; make a purchase and you’ll also get a free gift. Cross your fingers and you might get lucky and win a door prize, too.

The Tropical Paintings of Manabu Saito
Freyer-Newman Center, Denver Botanic Gardens, 1007 York Street
Sunday, October 22, through February 11
The Japanese botanical artist Manabu Saito was trained to be an industrial designer, working for Sony and Nikon before giving it all up to specialize in painting watercolor illustrations of tropical flowering plants in the early 1970s. Twenty examples of his luscious work, which has been widely published and even featured on U.S. postal stamp series, will go on display on October 22 for a period that overlaps with the DBG’s Orchid Showcase early next year.

Phil Bender, Quilts
Bardo Coffee House, 238 South Broadway
October 22 through November 30
Opening Reception: Sunday, October 22, 3 to 5 p.m.
Legendary and lovable Pirate gallery founder Phil Bender, one of the Denver co-op scene’s lasting figures, is mounting a solo show at the Bardo Coffee House outpost on Broadway put together by anti-curators Richard Alden Peterson and Dave Seiler of the Heads of Hydra collective. Bender, who says he creates his well-known found-object grids simply for the purpose of providing “visual pleasure,” will be present at the Sunday afternoon opening.

Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to editorial@westword.com.