Art Attack: Twelve of the Best Things for Gallery Lovers to See and Do This Week in Denver

What’s your fancy? A last summer drive in the mountains with a side of art? A tuneup for Denver’s digital-animation immersion festival? Engaging in French social traditions with artists? These are just a few of the opportunities this weekend holds for metro-area art lovers. Here are twelve suggestions:

Supernova DigiLounge
Next Stage Gallery, Denver Performing Arts Complex Galleria
Through November 23
Open Tuesdays through Fridays, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays, 12:30 through 7:30 p.m.
Supernova Launch Party: Friday, September 20, 7 to 9 p.m.
The Supernova DigiLounge officially opened earlier this week at Next Stage, a gallery operated by CU Denver’s College of Arts & Media that occupies a niche at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. The immersive space will serve as a home-base hangout and relaxation station for the upcoming Supernova Digital Animation Festival in the Denver Theatre District, and will host a September 20 Friday-night fest launch party where you try out Supernova before the intensive, ten-hour fest rolls out the next day. Even better, the DigiLounge will be available to theater-goers and music lovers at the complex through November 23. Take a load off and dive into virtual reality.

Trine Bumiller, This Land
Fifth Floor Western History Art Gallery, Denver Central Library, 10 West Fourteenth Avenue
Through December 12
Inspired by the patterns and textures of nature, painter Trine Bumiller is known for capturing details of the landscape in what she calls visual “distillations” of natural shapes, colors and forms. This Land comprises paintings and watercolors brought back from on-site explorations of national parks and monuments, and it’s perfectly placed in the Denver Central Library’s fifth-floor Western History Art Gallery.

Altar’d Continuum: Resistance and Empowerment in Sacred Spaces
Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive
September 12 through February 1
Thursday, September 12, 6 to 9 p.m.
The Museo heads in new directions with Altar’d Continuum: Resistance and Empowerment in Sacred Spaces, a group show that updates the tradition and spiritual power of altar-building in counterpoint to traditional works from the museum’s own collection.

The Unbearable Impermanence of Things
Vicki Myhren Gallery, 2121 East Asbury Avenue
September 13 through December 1
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 12, 5 to 8 p.m.
Curator Libby Barbee gathered work by fourteen artists who work concepts of naturalism and impermanence into their personal aesthetic for the Myhren Gallery’s fall show, which investigates how nature, always shifting, can never be fully captured, changed or put under glass. Expect beautiful observations that will make you feel like a small dot in the universe.

Pauline + Yuri’s French Apéro
Taxi Flight, 3575 Ringsby Court
Thursdays, September 12, 19 or 26, 5 to 7 p.m.
Tickets: $35, RSVP to pauline@pryzagency.com
Parisian artists Pauline Rolland and Yuri Zupancic, in residence at Taxi this month, will open their studio to guests on three Thursday evenings in September for a bit of French tradition – an apéro, or friendly get-together over drinks and bites – along with discourse about their work. The artists blend traditional art genres with video, installation, poetry and performance. That’s something worth talking about!

Heidi Jung, new works
Andrew Roberts-Gray, Analog
Michael Warren Contemporary, 760 Santa Fe Drive
Through October 12
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 5 to 8 p.m.
Andrew Roberts-Gray Artist Talk: Saturday, September 14, 10:30 a.m. to noon.
Heidi Jung brings a new batch of her beautifully drafted monochrome botanicals rendered on Mylar, many of them inspired by a January visit to Kew Gardens in London. They look a little like photographs taken by fairies and littered with stardust, but Jung would probably say they were the product of process and hard work. Andrew Roberts-Gray offers a completely different take on process by applying and scratching away at images, paint and other materials on plexiglass. He’ll give a talk on Saturday, September 14.

The Abstract Show
Sandra Phillips Gallery, 47 West 11th Avenue
September 13 through October 26
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 6 to 8 p.m.
In a nod to the Colorado Abstract shows at the Kirkland Museum and the Arvada Center, Sandra Phillips pulled four great abstractionists – Ania Gola-Kumor, Carroll Hansen, Sue Simon and Mel Strawn, all of whom have work represented in the aforementioned exhibitions – out of her stable for a closer look.

Sweet Tooth
The Storeroom, 1700 Vine Street
September 13 through October 31
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 7 to 9 p.m.
The Storeroom peep-in storefront gallery gets ready for Halloween season with Sweet Tooth, a drippy and spooky installation by Lares Feliciano and Bothe Kretsinger that might make you feel like brushing your teeth. It opens on Friday the 13th and runs through October 31. Tricks or treats?

Pictures From Russia, No Collusion
Seidel City, 3205 Longhorn Road, Boulder
September 14 through November 17
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 14, 6:30 p.m.
Photographers Christopher Makos and Paul Solberg returned from visiting Russia with a sack of photographs capturing Russian people going about the business of being people, regardless of the political climate. Meet the artists at the reception, which commences with a talk by Ukrainian arts advocate Luba Michailova.

Artist Panel Discussions: The Fulfillment Center
Jesse LeCavalier, “The Architecture of Fulfillment”
Black Cube Headquarters (BCHQ), 2925 South Umatilla Street, second floor, Englewood
Panel Discussions: Saturday, September 14, noon to 2:30 p.m.
Lecture: Saturday, September 14, 3 to 4 p.m.
Now that BCHQ is up and running, it’s time to discover all the possibilities of what it can be, beginning with a slate of panels with artists from the space’s inaugural exhibition The Fulfillment Center, followed by a lecture by Yale professor Jesse LeCavalier, author of The Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment. It’s also a day-after-the-opening chance to see the new show, which will remain on view in the warehouse space through December 7.

Grand Opening, Lumonics Gallery
Lumonics Gallery, 7 Healing Stars Oneness Center, 460 Gregory Street, Blackhawk
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 14, 7 to 10 p.m.
Regular Hours: Fridays, 6 to 10 p.m.; Saturdays, 7 to 10 p.m.; or by appointment
There’s gold – and now colors galore – in them thar hills: Lumonics, the light-art studio of octogenarian sculptor Dorothy Tanner, now has a satellite gallery in Black Hawk that might just shine brighter than a roomful of slot machines.

Gold Hill Arts and Crafts Fair
Main Street, Gold Hill, nine miles west of Boulder via Sunshine Canyon
Sunday, September 15, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
A drive up Sunshine Canyon to the old mining town of Gold Hill is your Sunday option for heading to the hills for art. Get your fix of old-fashioned booth-gawking during the town’s Gold Hill Arts and Crafts Fair, which is well-equipped in a folksy way with a bake sale, a rummage sale and a chance to chew the fat with Smokey the Bear.

Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to editorial@westword.com. For more events this weekend, find details in this week’s 21 Best Things to Do in Denver.