Whether the drive is long or short — or to be postponed — there’s no reason not to see art this weekend. Here’s where to go:
Block Party and Grand Opening Celebration
Ridgway Space to Create, 675 Clinton Street, Ridgway
Thursday, June 22, 4 to 7 p.m.
RSVP at Eventbrite
Granted, this would be a perfect way to spend a late afternoon/early evening if you are visiting the faraway paradise of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. But it’s a significant nod to the state’s designated Creative Districts, which pop up in spots both urban and remote. Ridgway’s will celebrate its first ten years by cutting the ribbon on the new Artspace Space to Create artist community, which solidifies the town’s FUSE Creative Main Street project. It’s a big deal. Should you find your way to Ridgway in time, have a peek at the new development and enjoy music, food, art, poetry and high-flying aerialists at the opening bash. If not, It will be there to see when you are.
Deborah Bryon, Life on Life's Terms
Gary Manuel, In and Out
Annalee Schorr, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, in the North Gallery
Spark Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, June 22, through July 16
Artist Reception: Friday, June 30, 6 to 9 p.m.
Last Look: Sunday, July 16, 1 to 4 p.m.
Spark packs in three member solos when shows change this week, with showcases for Deborah Bryon, who explores what it’s been like to return to the politically divisive outside world after COVID; sculptor Gary Manuel, whose mixed-media works combine wood, metal, recycled materials and fiberglass; and a series of mirrored Mylar Plexiglas paintings and cubes with geometric patterns by Annalee Schorr. Note that the formal opening reception is on Friday, June 30.
Winyan Tate (Wind Woman): Selected Works by Arthur Short Bull (1991 - Present)
RedLine Contemporary Art Center, 2350 Arapahoe Street
Friday, June 23, through August 9
Opening Reception: Friday, June 23, 6 to 9 p.m.; free food and drink; $5 donation for non-members
RedLine continues its Roots Radical exhibition series with the work of Oglala Lakota Arthur Short Bull, who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation but now dwells in beautiful La Veta, Colorado. Winyan Tate (Wind Woman) focuses on the recurring character of Wind Woman, who symbolizes the decimation of Indigenous life and traditions, including references to Wounded Knee. His interest in this history rises from his heritage, as it was preserved by his ancestor Amos Bad Heart Bull, who fought with Crazy Horse and later recorded his tribal story in a ledger book. Short Bull continues the storytelling through his own watercolor paintings and poetry.
Unwavering: First Annual Alumni Exhibition
Rotunda Gallery, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design,
1600 Pierce Street, Lakewood
Friday, June 23, through September 1
Opening Reception: Friday, June 30, 4 to 7 p.m.
RMCAD’s first alumni exhibition (destined to become an annual event) has been a long time coming, considering that the school has been around since it was founded by Philip J. Steele sixty years ago. For a start, the show will honor ten 21st-century graduates — some who have taken the fine-art path, while others launched their own commercial-art businesses. But they all exhibit excellence in the follow-through, which is why you should see this show.
Brian Cavanaugh, Blossom and Decay
Leo Franco, Castle
Guest artist: Bruce Thorn, Letters From Distant Galaxies
Pirate: Contemporary Art, 7130 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, June 23, through July 9
Opening Reception: Friday, June 23, 6 to 9 p.m.
Pirate’s first summer opening branches out in all directions. Brian Cavanaugh contributes mixed-media sculptures of human bodies made from organic plant materials over a wire armature (think Arcimboldo, only wild and weedy); Leo Franco brings new wood sculptures as modernist constructions; and guest artist Bruce Thorn goes overboard as a storyteller with Letters From Distant Galaxies, a tale of telepathic intergalactic love rendered in small oils and on vintage hubcaps. That will be a sight to see.
Deborah Abbott, What is on your plate? (Body and Soul)
Maria Valentina Sheets, Air Uprising
Core Art Space, Hub at 40 West, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, June 23, through July 9
Opening Reception: Friday, June 23, 5 to 9 p.m.
Several shows are debuting at the Hub at 40 West, including double solos at Core. Deborah Abbott's fun wall assemblages for What is on your plate? are meant to encourage good-natured self-reflection. Meanwhile, glass-art maestra Maria Valentina Sheets’s kiln-fired glass paintings take up more contentious issues on the theme of anarchy. Incidentally, Sheets has recently been commissioned by Judy Chicago to create a stained-glass version of her painting “Queen Elizabeth.”
Alane Holsteen: The Call of Beauty
Kelly Pierce: Works on Paper
Edge Gallery, Hub at 40 West, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, June 23, through July 9
Opening Reception: Friday, June 23, 6 to 9 p.m.
Edge opens two solos, including paintings of flora by Alane Holsteen and a collection spanning twenty years of pop art and other works in reaction to two decades of news stories, from 9/11 to the present, by Kelly Pierce.
Matt Lay, Monomyth
Rebecca Yaffe, Signal to Noise
Edge Members, Contrast
Next Gallery, Hub at 40 West, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, June 23, through July 9
Opening Reception: Friday, June 23, 5 to 10 p.m.
At Next Gallery, Matt Lay’s Monomyth references Joseph Campbell’s version of a hero’s transformative epic journey as it might relate to our own lives, while Rebecca Yaffe’s monoprints are immersed in design, pattern and mastery of medium, free of philosophy. Contrast is a group show by gallery artists.
RiNo Summer Art Market
RiNo ArtPark, 1900 35th Street
Saturday, June 24, noon to 4 p.m.
The RiNo ArtPark will be hopping when the RiNo Summer Art Market drops in on Saturday, with live DJ spins, Crazy Golf, a noon family storytime at the Ragland Library and a sweet duo of food trucks. Concurrently, ArtPark’s new Truss House performance stage will be offering tours and Good Bones, a dance theater work by Odd Knock Productions (4:30 and 7:30 p.m.; tickets, $20, at Eventbrite). But — no surprise — the art is the highlight of the afternoon, with work by more than thirty queer artists to celebrate Pride.
Yard Art artists are ready to sell new works.
Courtesy of Yard Art Contemporary
100 Gaylord Street
Saturday, June 24, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday, June 25, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Yard Art is making one big statement this summer with a huge, two-day outdoor art sale sporting a lineup of twenty local artists, some familiar from past Yard Art events and some new names, too. A group of young musicians from New Cottage Arts will perform live beginning at 3 p.m. Saturday, if you like to listen while you art.
Jonathan Solter, Illuminarium
Threyda, 878 Santa Fe Drive
Saturday, June 24, 6 to 11 p.m.
Tickets: $25 here
Threyda will fête Bay Area psychedelic visionary artist Jonathan Solter, a live painter and muralist whose specialty is inspired by higher dimensional travel, ancient civilizations and animism, with a one-night ticketed party offering a signed print and free food and drink for the $25 entrance fee. Solter is hanging solo works and others created in collaboration with Seth McMahon for the event.
buffalo soldiers: reVision
Fort Garland Museum & Cultural Center, 29477 Highway 159, Fort Garland
Saturday, June 24, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Free on opening day; $5 to $7 (free for kids eighteen and under) thereafter, RSVP here
Fort Garland may be a hike from Denver, but the region has a history that goes back centuries, including one not everyone knows about: Beginning in 1866, the 9th Cavalry Black regiment of the nation’s first Buffalo Soldiers was stationed at the fort. Ironically, the soldiers, many of them former slaves, were utilized at the front line of the Indian Wars.
Their story will be reinterpreted through art created for buffalo soldiers: reVision, a new exhibit opening this weekend at History Colorado’s Fort Garland Museum & Cultural Center. The show was organized by Chip Thomas, aka Jetsonorama, a physician and artist known for wheat-pasting buildings with Native-inspired photos for his Painted Desert Project, which began in Navajo Nation, where he practiced medicine and has since spread to other Indigenous enclaves. Thomas enlisted artists Esther Belin, Mahogany L. Browne, Rosie Carter, Gaia, Andre Leon Gray, Theodore Harris and Tom Judd to help him tell the Buffalo Soldier story through a new lens. One could hope that this show will travel to the History Colorado Center in Denver one day, but we suggest heading straight to traditional Ute territory in the San Luis Valley area to check it out as soon as you can.
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