Art Attack: All the First Friday Shows You Need to See

Over the First Friday weekend of March, Month of Photography marches on, women celebrate women, and 40 West hosts a Mardi Gras theme. You also have the chance to see new shows, and say goodbye to closing ones.

What to do first on First Friday? Check our list and see what catches your eye.
Month of Photography Denver 2023, March 2-5
Month of Photography in 2023 is a windfall of dozens of exhibitions large and small, traditional and experimental, classic and new as an unfurling butterfly wing. For the cream at the top, see Westword’s top picks of MoP’s riches, and visit the MoP’s full calendar at the website. But here are a few secondary suggestions for you from this weekend’s newest options:

Through April 2 at Art Gym, 1460 Leyden Street, Erin Dvorak Clark’s A River Flowing Upward explores the photographer’s attachment to the landscape and to water’s almost spiritual place as a necessary resource that ignores invented boundaries. She beautifully illustrates the intransigent nature of waterways as they indiscriminately flow through places both wild and developed.

Small Talk, a show hiding in plain sight at the Buell Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex through March 31, revisits pandemic times and the way artists in particular were forced to forge new pathways toward connection, speaking through imagery, collaboration and new avenues. Ten photographers find their way in this show curated by the Colorado Photographic Art Center’s Samantha Johnston and Pattern Denver co-founder Benjamin Rasmussen.
Photography and book arts have a close relationship, so it was natural for Spark Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive, to explore it with PhotoBookWorks 2023, overseen and curated by book goddess Alicia Bailey of Abecedarian Artist Books. The result is an international exhibition of artists working in a perfect marriage of art and craft, and is on view until March 26.

For Rectangled, a display in the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art’s Present Box lobby space through March 31, Rise Friedman used framed prints and photo-covered building blocks to create a hands-on parallelogrammatic interactive installation. Whatever the age, visitors are invited to rearrange the pieces with the eyes of a child building towers out of blocks. Go and have yourself some creative time. There will be a reception at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 9, at BMoCA, 1750 13th Street, Boulder.
Brian Fouhy has already made a name for himself by photographing urinals in familiar spots around town and publishing them in a book. But RedLine Contemporary Art Center, 2350 Arapahoe Street, has molded the series in somewhat of a mapped scavenger hunt called Where to Go Next…, in which seekers can visit certain urinals in person to see the real thing in conjunction with its photograph. Find out how to play along until April 3 here.

STORIED: Portraits in Photography fetes photography students at the Art Students League of Denver, who tangled with the art of portrait to make a personal statement. See the show at 200 Grant Street through March 27.
4: Richard Carter, Jody Guralnick, Charmaine Locke and James Surls
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 13th Street, 
Boulder
Thursday, March 2, through May 29
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 2, 5 to 8 p.m.
BMoCA greets spring with a look at four Colorado artists working in the Roaring Fork Valley, from Aspen to Glenwood Springs. The artists include Richard Carter of Basalt, who channels the Bauhaus influence of Herbert Bayer, from whom he learned firsthand as the artist’s assistant beginning in the early ’70s; Jody Guralnick, who mines visuals from microbes, fungi, plants and seeds — the building blocks of the natural world; Charmaine Locke, an artist interested in capturing the battling elements of the human psyche visually; and James Surls, a sculptor working in wood and steel shapes inspired by nature and the mysteries of human experience.
Brad K. Evans, A Series of Fugly Paintings
Susan Wick, Abstracts Now (2022-2023)
Taxi II, 3457 Ringsby Court, Suite 200
Friday, March 3, 4 to 8 p.m., and Saturday, March 4, 1 to 4 p.m.
In 2023, you might recognize Denver real estate rebel Brad K. Evans from his strident Facebook group Denver Fugly, or even from his role as cyclist/advocate and founder of the Denver Cruisers mass bike rides before that. But he started out as a dumpster-diving assemblage artist in the dark streets of what’s became LoDo and RiNo, though he hasn’t had a show in at least twenty years. Now Evans the artist is back, documenting the progress of Denver Fugly in bright blocks of color alongside artist Susan Wick, who pioneered RiNo with husband and enlightened developer Mickey Zeppelin, in an exhibition at Zeppelin’s Taxi II. This full circle is going to be fun.
Sue Coe: We Will Not Go Back
East Window, 4550 Broadway, Suite C-3B2, Boulder
Friday, March 3, through June 28
Lights on until 11:30 p.m. every day
Drop by the East Window in Boulder beginning March 3 to look in on ragged works by artist, activist and graphic novelist Sue Coe, whose visceral images are steeped in German expressionism and historical leftist protest art.

The Gift
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 30 West Dale Street, Colorado Springs
Friday, March 3, through June 18
Opening Reception: Friday, March 17, 4 p.m.; free, reservations recommended
The Gift, Workshop:  Saturday, April 8, 5 p.m.; free, space limited, register here
The Gift: Panel Discussion: Saturday, April 8, 7 p.m.; free, space limited, register here
The Fine Arts Center offers something different this spring: The Gift, an immersive installation with STEAM values, hatched from the mind of Dr. Natalie Gosnell, assistant professor of physics at Colorado College. It begins with a book telling the story of a pair of nearby stars whose close proximity causes the appearance of a single body when seen from afar. When one star begins to go cold, its energy transfers to the other, allowing the light to burn on through the ages. Meanwhile, high school students and educators from Colorado Springs School District 11 will create their own artistic interpretations over a six-week residency at CSFAC, which will go on display alongside the installation beginning March 17, in time for the official opening reception.

Babe Walls Womxn's History Month Show
Banshee House, 2715 Larimer Street
Friday, March 3, through April 17
Opening Reception: Friday, March 3, 8 to 11 p.m.
Babe Walls brings together forty women and nonbinary local and national artists for a Women’s History Month exhibition that raises the group’s DIY banner high at Banshee House for all to see and enjoy. See it on First Friday at the opening party with music by Erin Stereo, but come back on Friday, March 10, at 7 p.m., when the venue will throw a bigger celebration, with Babe Walls and refreshing cocktails providing the backdrop to live sets from Hex Kitten and DJ Simone Says.
Denver Digerati: Organic Abstractions
Evans School, 1115 Acoma Street, third floor (use 11th Avenue entrance)
Friday, March 3, 7 to 9 p.m.
Denver Digerati, the group behind Denver’s Supernova Digital Animation Fest (changing this year to the Digerati Emergent Media Festival), has taken residence in the Evans School Building near the Denver Art Museum, where it will be showcasing artist residencies. Maggie Mather and Austin Słominski will present a performance of work created using generative programming, along with an interactive installation, “Hall of Mirrors.” But that’s not all: The same night, RedLine is hosting a Satellite Studio Hop in the building from 5 to 8 p.m. Meet the artists and purchase art here and/or at the RiNo ArtPark’s studios, 1900 35th Street.
Colfax Art Crawl
40 West Arts District, West Colfax Corridor, from Lamar Street to Wadsworth Boulevard
Friday, March 3, 6-9 p.m.
March is when 40 West comes alive for the first of four enhanced First Friday Colfax Art Crawl family-friendly special events throughout the year. Celebrate Mardi Gras along with the art galleries, with a marching brass band circling the district tossing Mardi Gras beads, as well as food trucks and continuing and new exhibitions. New Month of Photography shows open at 40 West Gallery, where Red Rocks Community College’s Visual, Audio & Media Arts Art Gallery will hang student work; and CHAC Gallery, for the group show The Eyes of Photographers. Check the 40 West calendar for information on additional gallery shows open for viewing on First Friday.
Behnaz Ahmadian
Westward Gallery, 4400 Tennyson Street
First Friday Reception: Friday, March 3, 6 to 9 p.m.
Westward Gallery on Tennyson Street showcases Iranian artist Behnaz Ahmadian’s colorful, patterned folkloric canvases.
Robert Bell, Mile High Moon
RemainReal Fine Art, 901 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, March 3, through March 31
Opening Reception: Friday, March 3, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Robert Bell combines pinup imagery and Colorado legends and landmarks, using the moon as a unifying element, for his exhibition Mile High Moon.
Shepard Fairey, Heavy Metal
Black Book Gallery, 3878 South Jason Street, Englewood
Saturday, March 4, through April 7
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 4, 6 to 10 p.m.
Closing Reception: Friday, April 7, 6 to 9 p.m.
Black Book has works on metal surfaces from renowned street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey, whose activist posters have operated as a war cry for a number of social justice causes over the years. Find a visual preview on the website — though, like most art, it’s better in person. Black Book is open to the public at the opening and closing receptions, or by appointment.
Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism
Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Sunday, March 5, through May 29
The Denver Art Museum’s newest exhibition is based on the similarities between French Orientalism and art of the American West, both the product of the Western fascination with cultures, countries and landscape reined in by colonialism. Recurring motifs and mysterious, stereotypical interpretations by Western artists are trademarks from both movements, which you’ll see demonstrated in juxtaposition.
Women in Their Infinite Forms Art Strut/Reception
Venture X (third floor), Dairy Block, 1800 Wazee Street
Wednesday, March 8, 6:30 to 8 p.m.
The Athena Project brought back <i>Women in Their Infinite Forms</i>, a display of art by ten women artists in recognition of Women’s History Month, for a third year at the Dairy Block, where it’s already on view through the end of March. But the show’s special reception and pop-up gallery will fall on March 8, International Women’s Day, offering a chance to meet the artists and purchase the art, which benefits the Athena Project’s women’s art and theater incubation projects.

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