Whatever it is you like in art, you’re sure to find some of it here.
Rory Scott, Impermanence | One
The Digital Armory, 2565 Curtis Street
Thursday, August 25, 6 to 9 p.m.
Chicago artist Rory Scott’s animation project Impermanence | One operates as a visual diary of the last five years of her life in time-lapse portions, but filtered through the bottomless depth of augmented reality. Scott
says it’s a reflection on the importance single moments can hold when they eventually exact change in the future.
Banana Craze
Cultivate
Center for Visual Art, MSUD, 965 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, August 26, through October 22
Opening Reception: Friday, August 26, 6 to 8 p.m.
Food Justice Farmer’s Market: Friday, September 2, 6 to 8 p.m.
DesertArtLAB Artist Talk: "The Desertification Cookbook: Revitalizing Desert Wasteland through Land Art": Thursday, September 15, 6 p.m.
Cultivate Artist Talk: Thursday, October 13, 6 p.m.
Banana Craze Artist and Curator Online Talk: Wednesday, October 19, 11 a.m.
Food Waste Workshop: Thursday, October 20, 4 p.m.
Collaborative Dance Performance: Friday, October 21, 6 p.m.
All events free; register here
Back in full-speed action now that school has started, CVA has two fresh shows in the gallery, both group exhibitions intertwined with issues of food justice. The nine artists who participate in Banana Craze take on the political overtones of the banana industry in Latin America, where huge corporations tear apart communities while poisoning the water and the earth with pesticides. Cultivate homes in on food access realities, beginning with the inspiration of Sammy Lee’s molded-paper installation “Bolt Down: our narrative of food insecurity,” which enlightens the public through data collected by the Colorado Health Institute. It’s all food for thought, and will keep you thinking long after you’ve left the gallery.
Editor's Picks
Cody Hudson, What Is Time Stretching and When Would You Use It?
Maryam Yousif, Mishwar, in the Project Space
David B. Smith Gallery, 543 A Wazee Street
Friday, August 26, through October 8
Opening Reception: Friday, August 26, 5 to 8 p.m.
In the main gallery at David B. Smith, Chicagoan Cody Hudson is a literal shapeshifter as a painter. He constructs organic shapes into a kind of compact structure on linen, with sometimes totem-like results, while in sculptures, he simplifies the shapes. Hudson injects a little music theory into his practice, viewing the placement of these visual constructions as expressions devised in rhythm. San Franciscan Maryam Yousif, who is of Iraqi descent, updates the aesthetic of ancient Middle-Eastern artifacts with modern details such as handbags and ages-old symbols like the ubiquitous palm tree, signaling female qualities of strength and fertility. The pieces exude a certain childlike quality, as if they've been arranged on a toy-shop shelf.
Immerse yourself at the closing reception for SubterrAlien, an installation by Andy Linderkamp, Barrett Dodds, Greg Gisbert and Michael Lensen.
Courtesy of Understudy
Understudy, 890 C 14th Street
Closing Reception: Friday, August 26, 7 to 9 p.m.
SubterrAlien might remind you more of a museum diorama than an art installation, but there is a thin line — if any — that separates the craft of creating a transformative space. And when you throw in a soundscape, it’s a multi-disciplinary game-changer. A collaboration between jazz trumpeter Greg Gisbert and his lifelong friend, set designer Andrew Linderkamp, SubterrAlien imagines an early underground culture of cave-dwelling wall artists who could have then taken two rocks and smacked them together to create the first man-made rhythm. Along with Gisbert’s fellow musician Michael Lenssen and creature fabricator Barrett Dodds, Linderkamp and Gisbert have created something you’ve likely never seen before, and Friday night is your last chance to experience it in full.
D’art 3/Third Anniversary Celebration
D’art Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, August 26, 6 to 9 p.m.
Three years on Santa Fe Drive, with at least two of them deeply entrenched in a pandemic-driven world, is a true accomplishment for a new gallery, but the members of D’art took tough actions to put themselves on the map, mainly by hanging well-publicized, quality co-op shows and squeezing in lots of artist talks and events during each exhibition. That’s reason to celebrate; see D'art 3, the gallery's third-anniversary members' exhibition, before it closes Sunday and join in the party.
Sue Crosby Doyle and other members of Edge Gallery muse on gun violence in America for Thoughts & Prayers.
Courtesy of Sue Crosby Doyle
Edge Gallery, The Hub at 40 West, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, August 26, through September 11
Opening Reception: Friday, August 26, 6 to 9 p.m.
Edge members chipped in for this group show, a reaction to increasing gun violence in America, including the school shootings, police shootings, domestic terrorism and ongoing gun-control controversy that never dies. It might rile you up or make you want to cry, but that’s all the more reason to go see it.
Christy Lynne Seving, A Matter of Perspective
Catherine V. Carilli, Soar
Next Gallery, The Hub at 40 West, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Through September 11
Opening Reception: Friday, August 26, 6 to 10 p.m.
Next Gallery members Christy Lynn Seving and Catherine Carilli are up in the gallery this weekend. Seving, who works in encaustic and mixed media, found herself veering into a more abstract way of painting as her fiftieth year approaches, perhaps as a way to drop some artistic baggage toward a more explorational style. Carilli decided to take to the air for this turn, combining her show into three parts with new and old abstract paintings and a papier-mâché bird installation comparing the will of the bird to soar with the intuitive practice of an abstract painting.
Richard Neff, Purity of Form
Julie Vaught, Impermanence and Light
Core New Art Space, The Hub at 40 West, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, August 26, through September 11
Opening Reception: Friday, August 26, 6 to 9 p.m.
Richard Neff’s adventures in geometric abstraction bring a certain order to a room, but not without a few dimensional tricks of light resulting in the illusion of depth. Fellow Core member Julie Vaught takes a whole different direction, steeped in healing modalities, from somatic therapy to Tibetan Buddhist meditation, to relieve her contemporary feminine trauma. Just as she explores different ameliorating techniques, Vaught’s own adventure dives into multimedia, combining mixed media, paint, photography and video art.
"Desert ArtLAB Eco-Installation/Edible Landscape, Pueblo Colorado, Phase One (detail)."
Courtesy of the artists
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, 30 West Dale Street, Colorado Springs
Friday, August 26, through February 12
Public Celebration: Friday, October 7, 5:30 p.m.
The artist duo of April Bojorquez and Matt Garcia, who lead the interdisciplinary collaborative Desert ArtLAB, also play a part in CVA’s new exhibition Cultivate (see above), but they are central to CSFAC’s Chicanx Landscapes, too, which voices the food justice discussion from a Chicanx/Indigenous point of view, with an emphasis on ecological practices in producing food.
Viktor Frešo, Post Vintage
Melissa Furness, In-Habit
K Contemporary, 1412 Wazee Street
Saturday, August 27, through October 15
Opening Reception with Viktor Frešo in Person: Saturday, August 27, 3 to 6 p.m.
K Contemporary gives the love to gallery artists Viktor Frešo and Melissa Furness with exhibitions that showcase new directions for both. Post Vintage follows up Family Vintage, a personal descent into Frešo’s family history that was mounted last year at the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, focusing on the present shape of his living family members by adding found family objects to the continuing album. Furness presents a recent series of intricately painted, dense lace-like works in oil depicting garden spaces overgrown with weeds. She is, in her mind, comparing the impenetrable thatch represented in the series, which she calls "Romantic Overgrowth," to our own messy lives.
Summer Art Market 2022
Art Students League of Denver, 200 Grant Street
Saturday, August 27, and Sunday, August 28, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Admission: $5 (free for kids ages 12 and under)
Nothing says summer more artfully than the Arts Students League of Denver’s Summer Art Market, an urban outdoor lark for everyone, with works by 95 Colorado vendors for sale at affordable prices. In addition to the art, shoppers can grab food, beer and Sweet Action ice cream, and sit in on faculty art demonstrations on a variety of disciplines. Get your art on for only five bucks (ASLD recommends grabbing your tickets online in advance, or if you forget, bring cash to buy one at the gate).
Glens + Friends Art Market
1601 Glen Moor Parkway, in the Glens, Lakewood
Saturday, August 27, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
A stroll through the curvy-laned Glens neighborhood in Lakewood is always a delightful proposition, but you might not know about the enclave of artists who live and work in the community. The best way to get in on that secret is to hit the trail during the annual Glens + Friends Art Market, a combination art sale and studio tour with charm to spare.
Ben Shores, Sharp Noise and Loud Edges
Spectra Art Space, 1836 South Broadway
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 27, 6 to 10 p.m.
Free to $25
Tons of new, otherworldly urban art by Denver artist Ben Shores will hit Spectra this weekend, along with free sips by Ratio Beer Works, a meet-and-greet and live painting demo with Shores, and the usual ticket packages to receive swag or see Spectra’s current immersive experience Novo Ita: The Festival of Spirit, which includes a room created by Shores.
A portrait of Marina Graves by Chris Perez.
Courtesy of Mark Sink
RedLine Contemporary Art Center, 2350 Arapahoe Street
Sunday, August 28, 2 p.m.
Marina Graves, who passed away on July 29 at the age of 92, was a grand multilingual traveler, a seasoned cook and oenologist, and a singular and pithy Denver arts booster who helped found the first incarnation of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the Denver Invisible Museum and Month of Printmaking, fashioned after the biennial Month of Photography. Friends, admirers and members of the Denver art community will gather on Sunday afternoon at RedLine to share stories and remember Graves’s irreverent life.
Peter Henry Emerson, "The Old Order and the New," 1886, photogravure.
Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Sunday, August 28, through February 26, 2023
Have you ever found an old scrapbook or a pile of old photos of people you never knew? These images have a magnetic appeal that encourages made-up histories if you study them long enough. The beautiful captures in Other People’s Pictures will have that effect, with the added urge to review your own story, and the people, objects, places and memories that fill and prolong a sense of personal history. What do people think they want to remember when they snap a picture? How is it different in the age of cell phones and selfies? These are all things to consider while viewing this show.
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