Art Attack: Valentines, Gallery-Hopping and Vance Kirkland’s Outer-Space Oeuvre

It’s a real occasion when the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art pulls later works by Kirkland himself out of storage and into the galleries, especially when the focus is on his explosive output of uncharted imagery from the cosmos (Vance Kirkland’s Cosmos opens Wednesday, February 15).

In other news, Valentine’s Day generates some shows and fundraisers, and around town and beyond, there’s a little bit of this and that.

Here’s where to find the art this weekend:
Jennifer Ghormley and Megan Morgan, Tomorrow
Valkarie Gallery, 445 South Saulsbury Street, Lakewood
Through March 5
Opening Reception: Friday, February 10, 5 to 8:30 p.m.
Jennifer Ghormley and Megan Morgan share the theme of Tomorrow with dual solo efforts. Ghormley’s mixed-media works based in printmaking explore how our human nerve endings connect us to the world as well as our physical beings. Morgan, a Valkarie member who invited Ghormley to show with her, takes a different mixed-media route, combining mediums both traditional and straight-from-the-earth, which are repurposed to represent growth in nature.
Bill Adams: One Man Show, Public Reception
Emmanuel Gallery, 1205 10th Street Plaza, Auraria Campus
Through March 19
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 9, 4 to 7 p.m.
CU Denver’s Emmanuel Gallery pays tribute to an alum of its College of Arts & Media: performative photographer Bill Adams. Adams inserts his own image into inspired, storytelling photo-collage works mounted on cardboard, which he then re-photographs — sometimes mixing metaphors from pop-culture with philosophical, political and art-history references all in a single work. It’s like finding the leprechauns in dioramas at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science while trapped in a house of mirrors. How many great minds and creatives through time will you recognize on the walls at the opening reception on Thursday?
Artist Talk With Regan Rosburg
Center for Visual Art, MSU Denver
Thursday, February 9, 5 p.m.
Free, RSVP at Eventbrite
Regan Rosburg, whose work is in the CVA’s current exhibition, Entanglements, will give a talk on her installation “dear future,” which reflects the show’s overall themes of the environment, its mounting destruction and what to do about it. Rosburg is known for projects that ask people to reflect on their relationship to nature and the planet, then documenting positive moves toward reparation through human intervention. She pulls it all together here.
Nancy Eastman, Stitched: Connecting Community Through Abstraction
Alicia Kim, Patricia Aaron and Diane Deyo, Textured
Firehouse Art Center, 667 4th Avenue, Longmont
Friday, February 10, through March 5
Opening Reception: Friday, February 10, 6 to 9 p.m.
Mixed-media artist Nancy Eastman, who incorporates natural materials, collage, fiber, yarn-wrapping and other mediums into her work, takes over the Main Gallery at Firehouse for a show that includes community art relating to Longmont’s history. Eastman led workshops with the public, who individually created works describing different aspects of the town’s unique environments; the culmination is a community “quilt” created by stitching all the responses together.

And in the South Gallery, Eastman curated the show Textured, which presents collaborative monoprints by Patricia Aaron and Alicia McKim that focus on the landscape of Wyoming, as well as masks and beaded works by Diane Deyo. Be sure to peep into the Studio 64 space, where Firehouse member Jill Rumley will have a pop-up of new works.
Sista Luna, Ashes to Ashes
Balefire Goods, 7513 Grandview Avenue, Arvada
Friday, February 10, through February 28
Opening Reception: Friday, February 10, 4 to 7 p.m.
Steamboat Springs-based mixed-media artist Sista Luna’s Ashes to Ashes gets metaphysical with themes of death, rebirth and transformation in delicately cross-hatched pen-and-ink drawings of growing objects as well as the detritus left behind after life ends.

Milagros del Corazon
CHAC Gallery, 1560 Teller Street, Lakewood
Saturday, February 11, 5 to 9 p.m.
RSVP online
Milagros del Corazon, one of CHAC Gallery’s most iconic and beautiful fundraisers, is a great way to take home an affordable piece of original art, for yourself or for a gift. CHAC artist members and others in the community contribute hand-decorated hearts for the annual exhibition and silent auction, each as distinctively different as a snowflake, but all filled with love.

Little Bit of Love Pop-Up
Spectra Art Space, 1836 South Broadway
Saturday, February 11, 3 to 10 p.m.
Free, RSVP required
Spectra sneaks in a little Valentine show just in time to pick up a little heartfelt gift or two, and is making it a party, as well, complete with free drinks by Ratio Beerworks, coffee by Ramble On Roasting, tarot and astrology readings with Jojo and Grace Noel, and gift-wrapping. A $15 or $20 donation also includes admission to the Spookedelia immersive experience and other perks.
Michael Camarra, Mystic Wasteland
Ryan Joseph Gallery, 2647 West 38th Avenue
Saturday, February 11, through March 8
Opening Reception, Saturday, February 11, 5 to 11 p.m.
The sought-after Brooklyn-based artist and designer Michael Camarra’s fantastical work drops this weekend at Ryan Joseph Gallery, where the exhibition Mystic Wasteland speculates on the downfall of contemporary society and the regeneration of life within nature.
Johanna Mueller, Printmaker
Saturday, February 11, through April 30
Thompson School District Student Art Show
Saturday, February 11, through April 16
Loveland Museum, 503 North Lincoln Avenue, Loveland
Greeley printmaker Johanna Mueller continues to fill the Front Range with her work, with a show that opened last week at Kuehl Fine Art Gallery at the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art in Trinidad, and now a show up north, in the Loveland Museum’s 12 Ft of Wall space. The printing press powerhouse, who specializes in Southwestern- and nature-based prints as well as mixed-media works, is popular wherever she goes. See it now, or wait until February 25, when New York/New York: The Avant-Garde From Mid-Century opens in the main gallery.
Vance Kirkland's Cosmos
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, 1201 Bannock Street
Wednesday, February 15, through May 28
Member Preview Day: Tuesday, February 14
You can’t go wrong when the Kirkland Museum chooses to showcase its raison d’être: to preserve the legacy of Colorado regionalist-turned-abstractionist Vance Kirkland. The spring exhibition, the first all-Kirkland show mounted by the museum in twenty years, Vance Kirkland’s Cosmos is a paean to the rise of Kirkland’s mid-century outer-space oeuvre and out-of-this-world dot paintings. Curated by founding director Hugh Grant and deputy curator Chris Herron, the show goes big by including large works you won’t usually see on view. Museum admission is $10 to $12 online.

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