Stop Motion, Massive Rainbows and Joy: Art Events Around Denver This Weekend

Several art shows are opening this weekend around Denver, from Denver printmaker and animator Jessie Rodriguez’s stop-motion film-themed art show at Edge Gallery to Kaitlyn Tucek’s Rainbow (Desperate), which centers on an 18-foot inflatable rainbow, surrounded by paintings and ceramic works at Understudy.

Use this list to catch up on new exhibitions to attend and catch ongoing shows before they leave.

In Denver Arts News

• June First Friday Vendor Registration Is Open: Several spots are open for June First Friday in the Art District on Santa Fe, which is June 5. June, July, and September registration is $50 for regular spots (assigned randomly), and $75 for corner spots. August First Friday pricing is TBA. Register on the ADSF website.
• PlatteForum Is Moving: After five years in the ArtLab in Curtis Park and a studio/gallery in RiNo, PlatteForum has announced that it will be moving into the historic Smith’s Chapel, known to many as the longtime home of Inner City Parish, in the heart of the Art District on Santa Fe. PlatteForum will move to its new program space on May 5 and its doors at 910 Galapago Street will officially open on June 5 for a First Friday Grand Opening Event.
• ReCreative Denver Seeks Artwork for RePost Event: RePost is an anonymous art sale and benefit for ReCreative Denver. Artists donate postcard-sized works of art (four by six inches) in a medium of their choice. The artworks are hung in the store’s second-floor gallery and sold the night of the event for $25 each. Proceeds from the event support the mission and operations of ReCreative, an art supplies thrift store. Donations of artwork will be accepted through May 29, and can be dropped off or mailed to ReCreative Denver, 765 Santa Fe Drive, Denver Colorado, 80206. RePost will be from 7 to 10 p.m. on June 6.

Art Shows Opening Around Denver

The Cat and Dog Show
Opening reception: Friday, May 8, 5 to 9 p.m.; on display through May 24
Core Art Space, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
In this juried exhibition of artists from the Front Range and across the country, artists celebrate cats and dogs through painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, mixed media, ceramics, fiber and sculpture.

Flight Risks: Birds In Peril
Opening reception: Friday, May 8, 6 to 9 p.m.; on display through May 24
Edge Gallery, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Denver printmaker and animator Jessie Rodriguez will have a stop-motion film-themed art show at Edge Gallery in Lakewood. Flight Risks is a celebration of Rodriguez’s stop motion films in which she consistently places her bird characters in dangerously humorous and often depressing situations to drive plot and narrative. Her stop motion animations are created from linocut prints. Characters, background and text are made by hand by carving each piece out of linoleum, hand printing it onto paper and photographing them frame by frame.

Observer Effect
Opening reception: Friday, May 8, 6 to 9 p.m.; on display through May 24
Edge Gallery, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
In Anthony Porcaro’s debut solo show, Observer Effect, explores the boundary between truth and artifice in photography. “The work bridges the gap between the ‘artifice’ of contemporary photography and the ‘authenticity’ of 19th-century chemical processes,” Porcaro explains. “By using the Wet Plate Collodion process to capture meticulously staged miniature sets and digital composites, I am creating what I call contradictory objects. These works present an obvious fiction, yet they are validated by the organic textures of silver deposits—the historical markers of a truthful photograph.” Porcaro is an art educator at Arvada West High School and a member at Edge Gallery.

Western Federation of Watercolor Societies’ 51st Annual Exhibition
Meditation morning: Saturday, May 9, 9 to 10 a.m.; opening reception: Saturday, May 9, 6-8 p.m.; on display through June 27
Curtis Center for the Arts, 2349 East Orchard Road, Greenwood Village
Master watercolorists from the Western Federation of Watercolor Societies, which includes groups in several states including Colorado, will show off their work in this exhibit. Sign up for the Meditation event here.

A Room Happy
Opening reception: Saturday, May 9, 4 to 8 p.m.; on display through May 31
NKollectiv, 3485 South Broadway, Englewood
Artworks by Mary Lynn Baird and Michele Messenger mirror the delight they each find in the creative process as this exhibition puts a premium on highlighting their most smile-inducing, energetic works. Baird’s focus is printmaking, and Messenger specializes in encaustic, but they will also display the results of dabbling in one another’s medium, as well as a small gathering of papier-mâché animals to further infuse the space with happiness.

Extinction Burst
Opening reception: Saturday, May 9, 5 to 8:30 p.m.; on display through May 31
Valkarie Gallery, 445 South Saulsbury Street, Lakewood
Featuring the work of Cody Kuehl and Zachary Reece, Extinction Burst is a unique adventure
and collaboration. Kuehl’s sought-after paintings of new western visions are a feast for the imagination, while Reece’s work is highly detailed. Reece is a pointillist, composing geometric patterns over his subject, alternating stipples and circles, then using a stylus to build the image molecularly, one circle and dot at a time.

Rainbow (Desperate)
Opening reception: Saturday, May 9, 7 to 10 p.m.; on display through June 7
Understudy, 890 C 14th Street
In this solo show by Kaitlyn Tucek, Tucek creates a body of work that engages ideas of impermanence, fragility, and play, reflecting her ongoing interest in temporality and how meaning shifts through lived experience. The show centers on an 18-foot inflatable rainbow, surrounded by paintings and ceramic works that extend the artist’s visual language across scale and material.

Ongoing Art Shows Worth a Visit

Ecosystems
Through May 15
DAVA, 1405 Florence Street, Aurora
In conjunction with Mo’Print, DAVA students ages 3 to 18, and guest artists Faith Williams Dyrsten, Virginia Diaz Saiki, Kristin Smith and Johanna Mueller represent animals, plants, and their ecosystems to raise awareness about the importance of biodiversity through a variety of printmaking techniques.

Paper Works
Through May 16
Access Gallery, 909 Santa Fe Drive
Paper Works features twenty works on paper by Access Gallery artists in celebration of the gallery’s twentieth year in the Art District on Santa Fe. The exhibition brings together drawings, prints, and other works on paper that show where ideas begin. For many artists, working on paper is a starting point, a place to explore, experiment, and develop their practice.

Flor y Canto Youth Art Show
Through May 17
Chicano Humanities & Arts Council, 7060 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
This show featuring the artwork of local youth was curated by Felipe Dominguez, a CHAC Gallery member who works with art students around Denver. Come support the young artists as they celebrate Flor y Canto through their creative work.

Mindscapes: The Art of Discovery
Through May 17
D’art Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Mindscapes: The Art of Discovery is an imaginative exhibit featuring four artists: Daniel Bahn, Melanie Fischer, Claire Ibarra, and Betsy Kolt as they explore the “landscapes of the mind” through intuition and improvisation expressed in color, shape, and texture.

Nuestras Historias
Through May 17
Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive
Nuestras Historias/Our Stories is Museo de las Americas’ first-ever youth-curated exhibition, featuring work from young artists exploring themes of tradition, justice, identity and playfulness through embroidery, painting, drawing, ceramics, poetry and video.

YALLA and (UN)SEEN
Through May 17
RedLine Contemporary Art Center, 2350 Arapahoe Street
YALLA is a solo exhibition featuring photographs and ephemera from Brooklyn-based, Lebanese, Palestinian-American photographer Marwan Shousher, while (UN)SEEN challenges viewers to see Palestinians as complete individuals with a deep connection to their land, ancestors, and the traditions they carry, featuring photographs of Colorado Palestinian families taken by local artists.

New Work From Patricia Aaron, Michaele Keyes & Susan Rubin
Through May 19
Spark Gallery, 1200 Acoma Street
See Patricia Aaron’s Inspired, Michaele Keyes’s Joint Venture, and Susan Rubin’s Resilience at Spark Gallery. Aaron’s encaustic wax, inks, oils, acrylics, and textiles in Inspired trace an ongoing conversation between past and present — between ideas first imagined more than two decades ago, and those still unfolding. In Joint Venture, Keyes uses wood and other weathered materials gathered from forests, fields, stream beds, and alleys. Botanical artist Rubin’s Resilience explores the relentless persistence of the natural world as it provides a place to stand as we seek equilibrium in times of chaos.

Threaded Narratives: Weaving South Asian Identity in Colorado
Through May 23
Bus Stop Gallery, 4895 Broadway, Boulder
Threaded Narratives brings together artists from across Colorado whose work reflects a shared yet varied experience of identity. Through a range of practices, the exhibition highlights the presence and perspectives of South Asian artists within Colorado’s creative community.

We the People
Through May 24
The Gallery @ArtGym, 1460 Leyden Street
The journey of survival, resilience and triumph told through the eyes of immigrants from around the world comes to life through the lens of storyteller and photographer Walter Gallacher in We the People. What started as a podcast has evolved into an immersive exhibition that invites visitors to see the faces and hear the voices behind the powerful stories. The exhibition combines portraiture with audio.

The Stars Watch From Long Ago
Through May 30
Robischon Gallery, 1740 Wazee Street
The Stars Watch From Long Ago features work in film, collage, objects and prints by Stacey Steers, who will have an artist talk event on Wednesday, May 6. RSVP to debra@robischongallery.com by Tuesday, May 6, to attend.

Energy, Form, Flow
Through May 30
Pulse Visual Art, 3256 Walnut Street
This solo show featuring the work of Tom Ward is an ongoing exploration of how energy travels through both the natural world and human experience. Growing up in Southern California, Ward was immersed in environments defined by motion: ocean currents, shifting light, and the quiet complexity of living systems. Early fascinations with biology, from studying insects to watching fish glide through water, continue to echo through his visual language today.

Color as Light: A Restorative Experience
Through May 31
Alto Gallery, 1900 35th Street, Suite B
Color as Light explores color as light and energy through large-scale silk works from artist Christy Cattin’s Veils of Light series and introduces a guided color practice that invites visitors to engage with art through breath, intuition and visualization. Cattin is a Denver-based artist whose work explores color as energy, emotion and restoration.

Sculpting Sound
Through June 6
Leon Gallery, 1112 East 17th Street
Sculpting Sound features multiple new sonic artworks by local visual and installation artists that will become an “orchestra” for a series of new musical commissions to be performed by the musicians in The Playground Ensemble. The artworks and composers’ scores will be on display at Leon Gallery through June 6. General admission is $20.

35th Annual Governor’s Art Show & Sale
Through June 6
Loveland Museum, 503 North Lincoln Avenue, Loveland
The Governor’s Art Show & Sale is a six-week exhibition known as one of the largest juried fine art shows featuring exclusively Colorado artists. This year’s show displays the work of 65 artists, including ten making their first appearance at the show. Artwork can be viewed in person and online throughout the exhibition. Opening night gala tickets are $100, while general admission is $7 for Loveland residents, $10 for non-residents and free for kids under 12.

CHAC Gallery Members’ Showcase
Through June 20
CHAC Gallery, 834 Santa Fe Drive
This showcase is a multi-generational show bringing together CHAC artists ranging from emerging creatives to accomplished masters, highlighting pieces that are deeply connected to the essence of Denver. Each artist has chosen work that is the deepest expression of their voice.

SABO / UNSAVORYAGENTS: The Right Kind of Rebels
Through July 1
VFW Post #1 Denver, 841 Santa Fe Drive
Art created by veterans and SABO, the artist responsible for the “KAMALAS ILLEGALS” and “MIGRANT HOOKERS $20” art placed around the Denver Capitol about a year ago will be on display in The Right Kind of Rebels at VFW Post #1. The collection on display comments on current politics, history and events that have helped shape the collective American psyche. SABO says this is his first show in the Denver area, and he’s curious to see the reception of the work. “I don’t do landscapes, and I believe that if art is not political, it’s wallpaper,” SABO says. “I hope this opportunity catches the eyes of some other galleries who are open to displaying my more edgy works.”

Beyond the Western Horizon
Through July 31
Madden Gallery at Museum of Outdoor Arts, 6331 South Fiddlers Green Circle, Greenwood Village
Celebrate the “reimagined myth, memory, and the enduring spirit of the American West” with Beyond the Western Horizon, an exhibit featuring twenty artists and over fifty artworks depicting aspects of the American West, from people and animals to landscapes, through a variety of mediums. “We’re lucky to live in a state with stunning natural resources, strong light and Western lifestyles stimulating our many talented visual artists,” MOA founder and director Cynthia Madden Leitner says.

On the Walls at CSU: Posters from the 1970s
Through August 16
CSU Libraries – Morgan Library, 1201 Center Avenue Mall, Fort Collins
Colorado State University showcases campus life, design and activism through archival posters from the ’70s at Morgan Library. The exhibition features posters, exhibition panels and publications produced at CSU in the 1970s and preserved in the University Archives.

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