Roll Into an Arty Weekend

It’s a big weekend for a wide swath of art exhibitions, festivals and events. Highlights include the Arvada Center devoting its galleries to art from, and inspired by the culture of, the San Luis Valley, with a forty-year survey of valley native Emilio Lobato; the first Digerati Emergent Media Festival traveling new avenues; and nine members of Denver’s old guard bringing back memories at 931 Gallery. Plus, skateboarders at the Denver Art Museum.

Take advantage of the relaxed DIY Rocky Mountain vibe and explore more new shows below:

Emilio Lobato: A Mi Manera: A 40-Year Survey
Latitude 37°: Art of Southern Colorado
Colcha Embroidery of the San Luis Valley
Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, Arvada
Thursday, September 14, through November 12
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 14, 6 to 9 p.m., free, RSVP here
Colcha Embroidery Workshop Series: Saturdays, September 16, September 30 and November 11, 1 to 3 p.m., $150, register here
The Arvada Center’s fall exhibitions take us to the San Luis Valley and the New Mexico border, beginning with Emilio Lobato: A Mi Manera: A 40-Year Survey – a long look at the abstractionist’s practice over decades – in the main gallery. Lobato grew up in the southern Colorado town of San Pablo, in the border region where his Spanish-colonial family first settled 300 years ago. He is well known for his paintings, pottery and assemblages that, while modern in composition, are visually rooted in the symbols, culture, history and landscape of his heritage.

The group show Latitude 37°: Art of Southern Colorado continues this cultural thread in the upper gallery, with a contemporary overview of artists working in the region today. In the Theatre Gallery, the poignant exhibition Colcha Embroidery of the San Luis Valley honors a tradition practiced in southern Colorado and New Mexico for centuries. Curated by Adrienne Garbini of the Range, an art space in Saguache, Colcha Embroidery showcases a style of pictorial handwork using natural hand-dyed wool thread on cotton or linen fabric, with works by 35 women working in the San Luis Valley over generations, including the 2019 NEA Heritage fellow Josephine Lobato, who grew up in the Valley but now lives in Westminster. The exhibition also includes nine works first purchased and shown by the Arvada Center in 1982, of note because the Center will repatriate these works to the artists and families of artists after the show. 

Digerati Emergent Media Festival: Welcome to the Here and Now
Sie FilmCenter, 2510 East Colfax Avenue, and other downtown and central Denver locations
Thursday, September 14, through Sunday, September 17
Find a full schedule and RSVP for events and screenings here
The Digerati Emergent Media Festival, formerly the Supernova Digital Animation Festival, gets a proper debut over an extended weekend of screenings, parties, performances, talks and tours, all under the watchful eye of director/curator Sharifa Lafon. If you’re looking for the next wave in multimedia, consider this an excellent, international, animation-focused companion to July’s Month of Video. Central to the fest are a series of themed screenings at the Sie FilmCenter, and most events, curated in sync with the overarching theme of “Welcome to the Here and Now,” are free or pay-what-you-can.

Cut + Paste: A Conversation on Collage With Rory Padeken and Mario Zoots
The Vault, 3758 Osage Street, #102
Thursday, September 14, 6 to 8 p.m.
Free, RSVP here
Denver collagist Mario Zoots stands tall in the cut-and-paste fine-art niche, of which he is a scholar as well as a practicing artist. Zoots will sit down with Rory Padeken, the Denver Art Museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, for a discussion of the genre at the Vault, where his collage exhibition Tangerine Dreams is currently on view.

Conversation With Nora Abrams and Colorado Women to Watch Artist Panel
Center for Visual Art/MSUD, 965 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, September 14, 6 p.m.
The five women that MCA Denver’s head honcho Nora Abrams nominated for inclusion in the exhibition A New World: Women to Watch 2024 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., are the basis of the lineup in the state-centric Colorado Women to Watch, CVA’s powerful current exhibition. That’s just one good reason why Abrams will join the artists in a panel conversation elaborating on the exhibition. Evidence: The in-person presentation is sold out (there is a wait list available at Eventbrite); register here for a link to attend virtually.

Costa Rica: Long Live Peace and Labor
Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, September 14 through January 28
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 14, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., RSVP here
In the U.S., we view Costa Rica as a place for rainforest treks and lazing on sunny beaches. But the Museo’s newly opening exhibition takes the more complicated view, cycling it through a combination of contemporary art and ancient artifacts from the museum collection that together present a rounder understanding of the Central American nation, where diversity, a peaceful political stance and modern thinking are all part of the picture.

Jean Herman, Along the Way
Phyllis Ryder, Shaping Souls and Finding Space
Sync Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, September 14, through October 15
Opening Reception: Friday, September 15, 6 to 9 p.m.
Jean Herman, a “fabric painter,” stitches and collages cloth, paint and oil pastels into landscapes and figurative works, while fellow Sync gallery member Phyllis Rider paints or prints abstract paintings and monotypes, with an active sense of motion and bright streaks of color lending interest.

Barbara Baer, Woodland
Katie White, A Flower’s Teeth
Spark Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, September 14, through October 8
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 16, noon to 5 p.m.
Barbara Baer’s works often dangle and flow, catching light and swelling in the breeze, free and easy. Her new exhibition at Spark, a sculptural installation called Woodland, addresses the order of a hardwood forest in the midst of unordered wildness in fabric, paper and wire, while she shows suspended tabletop sculptures such as “Bramble,” a fan-like blue fabric structure. In contrast, gallery member Katie White’s latest work is rendered in the simplest of compositions using thick wool elements.

Spotlight: Inside Collections Care and Conservation
Clyfford Still Museum, 1250 Bannock Street
Friday, September 15, through May 5
Curatorial Tour with CSM conservators James Squires and Pam Skiles: Wednesday, September 27, 6 to 7:30 p.m., $5 (members free), register here
The Clyfford Still Museum’s coming exhibition shifts full focus onto ongoing conservation of the Still’s vast collection, rather than on one small spotlight on conservation placed within the larger show. Also the first complete chronological installation in more than two years, Spotlight: Inside Collections Care and Conservation offers a whole new way of looking at how art museums work and why paintings require restoration, while also utilizing an interesting selection of artworks from Still’s ouevre. As noted above, an exhibition tour with museum conservators James Squires and Pam Skiles on September 27 will give viewers a more complete picture of what’s involved in a comprehensive show of works from throughout the artist’s career.

Katie Caron, Neuron Forest 2023 Open Studios Preview Exhibition
Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder
Thursday, September 14, through November 11
Opening Reception: Friday, September 15, 5 to 8 p.m.
Few people spend much time musing about the intricate miniature worlds that lie just beneath our walls of skin. But Katie Caron not only thinks about the interconnected workings of the human body; she studied them – in this case, neurons, the complicated circuitry that sends messages from the brain to the rest of the body – before building the installation of fiberglass and tree branches. In advance of Boulder County’s 2023 Open Studios Tour in October, which mark the event’s 28th season, the annual preview show will also open this weekend at the Dairy, speaking to the breadth of variety offered by artists residing in the county. Learn more about the upcoming tour here.

Nine
931 Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, September 15, through October 15
Opening Reception: Friday, September 15, 5 to 9 p.m.
A nonet of artists gathered together for Nine, an exhibition with a whole gamut of mediums represented, including drawing, painting, mixed media, collage, printmaking, assemblage and sculpture. The artists – Bill Ballas, Phil Bender, Leo Franco, Andy Libertone, Tom Linker, Janice McDonald, Katharine McGuinness, Phillip Potter and Ron Zito – need no introduction to people who’ve been around long enough to have experienced the extended history of the Denver scene and co-ops, but a lot of you newbies might not have a clue. This will be a solid show. 

Megan Bray, No Wisdom Here
Bug, Thievings
Pirate: Contemporary Art, 7130 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, September 15, through October 1
Opening Reception: Friday, September 15, 6 to 10 p.m.
Speaking of co-ops, there’s another batch of openings this weekend in 40 West. At Pirate, associate member Megan Bray will display a body of lighthearted paintings with the look of collage, while Bug is planning another pointed installation called Thievings. Bug’s visual social comments are never boring.

Gayla Lemke, Sneetches on Beaches: Ceramic Sculpture
Alta Hope
Edge Gallery, Hub at 40 West, 6501 West Colfax Avenue
Friday, September 15, through October 1
Opening Reception: Friday, September 15, 6 to 9 p.m.
Ceramic artist Gayla Lemke welcomes fall with a new exhibition of stacked, textured totems and spheres in strong colors, humorous pink “Money Pigs” and other surprises. She’s joined by abstract painter Alta Hope, who keeps it minimal in black and white, with occasional bursts of color.

Chuck McCoy, Passing Through the Hues and Objects of the World
Elizabeth Ansley, Current Frequency
Core Art Space, Hub at 40 West, 6501 West Colfax Avenue
Friday, September 15, through October 1
Opening Reception: Friday, September 15, 5 to 10 p.m.
Artists’ Talk: Sunday, September 17, 1 p.m.
Chuck McCoy works on understanding his diagnosis of macular degeneration through Passing Through the Hues and Objects of the World, a series designed to imagine the deterioration of vision over time. He says the title is based on the first line of Walt Whitman’s poem “Eidólons,” noting that the word “eidolon” describes a phantom, and he found that evocative of phantom visions, or the state of seeing things that aren’t real. McCoy, who also suffers from aura migraines, adds the peripheral visual distortion they cause into the equation. The result is a collection of therapeutic digital inkjet prints imitating what he knows of the deteriorating eyesight that comes with MD, overlaid in the corners by mists of ghostly rainbows. Fellow Core member Elizabeth Ansley’s solo also comprises more inward-looking therapeutic threads in paintings mirroring feelings related to processing trauma and moving on.

A Decade: Virginia T. Coleman
Dolla B: More Shit That Can Kill You
Broken: Member Gallery Exhibition
Next Gallery, Hub at 40 West, 6501 West Colfax Avenue
Friday, September 15, through October 1 (Broken, through October 22)
Opening Reception: Friday, September 15, 5 to 10 p.m.
Virginia T. Coleman uses her member slot to look back over ten years of developing a singular sculptural vocabulary related to the poetic sensibility of paintings. The steel sculptures she’s created over time are composed to interact with the spaces around them. See if you can feel it. Meanwhile, Dolla B. has fun in her concurrent solo, More Shit That Can Kill You, a cartoonish set of works that ironically comment on the serious subject of death and dying as an alternative to living in difficult times.

Evans School Open Studios
Evans School, 1115 Acoma Street (use the 11th Avenue entrance)
Saturday, September 16, 8 p.m. to midnight
Denver Digerati and artists of the Evans School building team up Saturday for a festive open-studio night that includes a Digerati Emergent Media Festival party, following a full afternoon of four separate screenings at the Sie FilmCenter and a 6 p.m. LED Screen Walking Tour to view blown-up digital animation in downtown Denver. The evening soirée includes two looping video programs curated by Faiyez Jafri, an exhibition of NFTs from the collection of Laleh Mehran and Chris Coleman and sound performances by Denver Digerati resident artist Raquel Meyers, with emergent media moguls Ryan Wurst and Phillip Stearns chipping in. Now, that’s a full night of arting, and it’s all free.

Art on the Green
Curtis Center for the Arts, 2323 East Orchard Road, Greenwood Village
Saturday, September 16, and Sunday, September 17, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Anyone seeking an outdoor art fair this weekend would do well to head for the the Curtis Center for the Arts in Greenwood Village for the two-day Art on the Green, where 100 artists will be selling art in the adjacent park. The festival also serves up food trucks, live entertainment and hands-on activities for all ages, and when the sun gets too hot, it’s easy to slip inside the indoor gallery to see the center’s current exhibition, Wanderlust: A Collection of Artists, from the Cherry Creek Art Gallery.

Å káta: The Art of Skateboarding
Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Sunday, September 17, 2 to 5 p.m.
Desert Rider: Dreaming in Motion, which closes September 24 at the Denver Art Museum, inspired a spinoff in Å káta: The Art of Skateboarding, a collection of skate decks decorated by Indigenous artists with a hand from Walt Pourier (Oglala Lakota) of the Stronghold Society, a nonprofit serving youth with empowering programs combining skateboarding, arts and athletics. On Sunday afternoon, the DAM will host a celebration with live painting demonstrations, skate video screenings, a hands-on activity allowing visitors to add designs to a giant skateboard facsimile (or a smaller take-home version) and live music by DJ Tito. Midway through the event, a skateboard performance will move outside onto the Kemper Courtyard for a dance finale with drummer Steve La Pointe. And don’t forget to check out the Å káta Community Spotlight skate deck collection.

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