Keep reading to get a grip on this weekend's arty goings-on.
Celebrating Colorado Women
Jantzen Gallery, Art & Design Center, Arapahoe Community College, 2400 West Alamo Avenue, Littleton
Through October 27
Artists’ Talk and Slide Presentation: Thursday, October 17, 4 p.m. (reception follows, 5 to 7 p.m.)
The Women’s Caucus for Art Colorado surfaces again with a tribute to women artists living and working in our state, this time with a focus on the organization’s eleven-artist mural team. Each artist has painted a travel-ready, mural-sized portrait honoring an exceptional past or present Colorado woman artist for the touring exhibition. The works are rendered in a uniform format, with black-and-white likenesses set off by brightly colored backgrounds. On October 17, a talk and slide projection with the muralists at 4 p.m. will reveal the stories behind each mural subject; a reception follows.
Lauren Fuhr, Horizons: The Art of Natural Landscapes
Bell Projects, 2822 East 17th Avenue
October 18 through December 1
Opening Reception: Friday, October 18, 6 to 10 p.m.
Bell Projects is on a roll with landscape shows, and the latest is Horizons: The Art of Natural Landscapes, a subtly beautiful body of work by Lauren Fuhr. Where the former duo highlighted bright greens and blues, Fuhr favors the palest earth tones and muted patches of blue skies behind towering cloud banks touched by sunlight. This one is restful and easy on the eyes.
Krista Lavonas, Contained
NKollectiv Gallery, 960 Santa Fe Drive
October 18 through November 10
Opening Reception: Friday, October 18, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
When metalsmith Krista Lavonas isn’t seeing pediatric patients, she’s pounding away making gorgeous jewelry in her home studio. Lavonas gets a showcase in October and November at NKollectiv, where she’ll show engraved silver lockets, as well as pendants and rings fitted with small boxes that open and close to hold a personal treasure. Also notable is her use of hand-picked gemstones and delicate polished fossils. In other news, the artists of NKollectiv have announced that the gallery will be leaving Santa Fe Drive in January for the more affordable climes of downtown Englewood, much like Mutiny Information Cafe.
Entre Dos Mundos: A Celebration of Life and Death
Hecho en Westwood Galeria, 3929 Morrison Road October 18 through November 17
Third Fridays en Westwood: Friday, October 18
Muertos en Westwood Street Festival: November 1-3
Third Fridays en Westwood/Closing Reception: November 15
The Westwood Creative District along Morrison Road is gearing up for Día de Muertos during its regular Third Friday festivities with the debut of Entre Dos Mundos: A Celebration of Life and Death, a community Day of the Dead art show that debuts in the Hecho en Westwood Galeria and runs through mid-November, as well as during the upcoming three-day Muertos en Westwood Street Festival, from November 1 to 3 (and beyond). The fest will be quite a production, with differently themed celebrations each day, including a Mexican cemetery reenactment, complete with marigolds, candles and pan de muerto offerings. Online galleries of the art show will also available; click here and here for a sneak peek.
Zombie Art Walk
Tianguis de Westwood, 3950 Morrison Road
Friday, October 18, 5 to 9 p.m. (trick-or-treating 5 to 7 p.m.)
While waiting for Día de Muertos to rise, Morrison Road will be hopping, with a Third Friday nod to Halloween just for the littles. It starts with trick-or-treating and vendor-browsing at businesses and galleries on Morrison Road (including Cultura Chocolate, BuCu West Gallery, Ana Marina Studio and Arturo Garcia Fine Art Gallery), followed at 7 p.m. by a screening of Hocus Pocus at 3950 Morrison Road (BYO chairs and blankets). BuCu West is also hosting fortune-telling, pumpkin decorating and zombie face painting, along with the current art show, Bountiful Florals Under the Harvest Moon, by Jeanette Salzburg.
Día de Muertos Festival
Breckenridge Arts District, 136 South Main Street, Breckenridge
Friday, October 18, and Saturday, October 19
Get your mountain air and a taste of Día de los Muertos during Breck Create’s annual weekend art fiesta at various locations in the ski town’s arts district. It all starts off with a reception and gallery talk with artists Vicente Telles, Santiago Vera Ovalle and Alberto Palma for Santos y Simbolismo. The exhibition includes works by Telles, a New Mexican santero carver who remixes the centuries-old craft to address updated themes, Ovalle’s ecologically themed encaustic paintings and Palma’s surreal politicized imagery. A candlelight vigil and the Aztec dancers Grupo Huitzilopochtli follow. The fun continues Saturday, October 19, with afternoon cultural art workshops, live music and dance, a Mexican Cultural Center Market full of handmade imported goodies, and in the evening, a party with music, food and a community altar. See a complete schedule here.
Dagmar Nickerson and Phyllis Rider, Fire and Ice
Sync Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
October 17 through November 10
Opening Reception: Friday, October 18, 5 to 9 p.m.
Sync Gallery members Dagmar Nickerson and Phyllis Rider pair up under the overarching theme of Fire and Ice, with Nickerson providing the fire in hot-wax encaustic and shellac-burned works studying the inside-out stories of fossils and Rider cooling things off with ice-cold imagery of glaciers at work carving valleys and canyons.
Maki Teshima, Botanical Stories
Understudy, 890C 14th Street
October 19 through November 24, Thursdays through Sundays, noon to 6 p.m.
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 19, 4 to 8 p.m.
Japanese mixed-media artist Maki Teshima's work is based in natural dyeing practices nearly as old as civilization — boiling plant materials, soil and food waste to create dyes, which she then uses to color diaphanous textiles. Whether the final product is an artwork or a functional piece, Teshima follows essential, nature-based techniques to dye, paint, print or sew — or some mixture thereof. The installation, Botanical Stories, that Teshima has created for Understudy makes full use of the small space, with textiles draped ceiling-high and catching airy sunbeams. The artist will demonstrate her simple dyeing technique, and Gwendolyn Hope Gussman of the Holdtight Dance Company will perform within the installation at 5 p.m. at the reception. Guests can also pick up one of Teshima’s limited-edition hemp cotton T-shirts.
Justas Marcink, Weapon of Choice
SP_CE 13, 3157 South Broadway, Englewood
October 19 through November 30
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 19, 6 to 10 p.m.
Artist Talk: Tuesday, October 22, 7 p.m.
Closing Reception: Saturday, November 30, time TBA
Justas Marcink opens a show called Weapon of Choice this weekend at SP_CE 13 in old Englewood. Marcink’s work presents as a visual pantomime, packed with semiotic symbology set off simply by contrasting backdrops of sheer color. The effect is powerful: The shadow objects standing out from the background — a set of garden shears, a medieval morning star, an empty balaclava and so on — signal danger and psychological weaponry. Hear more from Marcink at an artist talk on October 22, or visit in person at the closing reception on November 30 (see details above); otherwise the gallery is only open by appointment (call 720-588-3679 or email [email protected]).
Los Fantasmas Artist Collective / #notwhite collective: Collective Dreaming
Yolia Artspace, 901 Englewood Parkway, Suite 112, Englewood
Closing Reception and Art Talk: Saturday, October 18, 5 to 7 p.m.
Free Workshops: Saturday, October 19, 1 to 7 p.m.; Sugar Skulls and Ofrendas: 1 p.m., Memory Tiles: Exploring Family Traditions and Cultural Connections: 2 p.m., The Intimacy of Touching Through Photography: 3 p.m., Somatic Abolitionism, 4 p.m.
The collaborative exhibition Collective Dreaming between Denver’s Los Fantasmas and Pittsburgh’s #notwhite collective comes to an end this weekend, but not without a full afternoon of free hands-on workshops (info above), followed by a closing reception and art talk. Give them some love, and check out the newish Yolia Artspace on Englewood.
A mixture of work by four artists express energy and flow at Room 220/Neufolk in the Evans School.
Courtesy Room 220/Neufolk
Room 220/Neufolk, Evans School, 1115 Acoma Street
October 19 through November 2
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 19, 6 to 10 p.m
Artist Talk: Sunday, October 27, 5 p.m.
Closing Reception: Saturday, November 2, 6 to 10 p.m.
Room 220/Neufolk, an artist-run gallery in the Evans School Building for the last couple of years, closed its previous show, calling it the last show in that space, as the developers who own the magnificent school are ready to renovate the building for commercial enterprises. But gallery co-founders Max Kauffman and Brandon Opalka will manage to squeeze in another last exhibition, Conduit, before vacating the space for good. Four women artists — Sarah Darlene, Erin McAllister, Alina Orav and Kelley Schei — will blend their practices in fiber, watercolor and sculpture to demonstrate the power of art to channel personal expression into a shared state of flow during the gallery’s two-week reprieve.
Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].
