The ten biggest culture stories of 2022 got straight to the art.
Tattoo Shootings and Recovery
On December 27, 2021, a shooter killed five people: Sol Tribe Tattoo & Piercing owner, muralist and activist Alicia Cardenas; Sol Tribe employee and yoga teacher Alyssa Gunn-Maldonado; Lucky 13 Tattoo & Piercing employee Danny Scofield; Michael Swinyard and Hyatt House employee Sarah Steck. Gunn-Maldonado's husband, Jimmy Maldonado, was injured but survived. Mutual-aid relief efforts were quickly mounted to support the survivors and the families of the victims. While the tattoo community was overwhelmed by grief still felt today, tattoo shops quickly held fundraisers to share art and memories, and businesses near Sol Tribe, including Hope Tank, collected VISA gift cards to help Sol Tribe employees. And in September, artists Jodie Herrera, Jaime Molina and Jher painted a mural of Cardenas at 27th and Larimer streets, next to a mural painted by Cardenas herself.
Mutiny Information Cafe Saved — Twice — by Community
Denver arts enthusiasts showed the strength of community once again when Mutiny Information Cafe was seized by the City of Denver for unpaid sales taxes in September. The coffee, book and record store has been beloved by authors, artists and other creatives since Matt Megyesi, Jim Norris and Joe Ramirez bought the spot in 2013 from Jack Jensen, who was running a bookstore there called Mutiny Now! But 2022 started with some bad luck: Megyesi was hospitalized with near-fatal health scares in January, and in July, the store was damaged by vandals. To cover the tax bill, Norris turned to GoFundMe, and the community pulled through. Within 24 hours, Mutiny had raised enough cash to pay the outstanding amount of $42,126, and then some. It reopened its doors only six days after being seized.
BookBar Announces Closure
While Mutiny was saved, the literary community sustained another blow when BookBar owner Nicole Sullivan announced that she would close her wine bar and book store in January 2023. The place has been a go-to haunt for local authors since it opened in 2012. Sullivan is keeping the building at 4280 Tennyson Street, and while the sale of books is ending, BookBar's side businesses — the small indie publisher BookBar Press and its charitable endeavor, BookGive, which provides books for free to children — will continue.
The Immersive Scene Is Booming
Denver has gained national recognition for its immersive scene, particularly after Off-Center co-founder Charlie Miller got David Byrne, of Talking Heads fame, and Mala Gaonkar to stage their immersive extravaganza, Theater of the Mind, at York Street Yards. It's been so successful that the stay was extended until January 22, and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts promoted Miller to its executive board. Other national immersive shows dedicated to everyone from King Tut to Monet to the Bridgerton cast landed in town, too. But nothing beat the action coming from local creators.
Control Group Productions transported audiences to the post-Apocalypse world with The End, and OddKnock Productions mounted an office-culture parody called From on High in the abandoned IMAC warehouse in RiNo. Spectra Art Space produced a new Spookadelia, the Beacon hosted more installations by locals, and Camp Christmas returned. And in November, the Denver Immersive Gathering brought arts insiders to the city for a three-day immersion in all we have to offer.
Meow Wolf Recognizes Denver Unions
Speaking of immersive arts, Meow Wolf employees in Denver made a splash when they announced their unionizing efforts on July 5 in a statement posted to the Meow Wolf Workers Collective, which operates under the Communications Workers of America Local 7055. Meow Wolf Denver responded with an email stating that it "recognizes and respects" the employees' right to organize, while adding that Convergence Station already met many of the demands that were made by the Santa Fe union, which was ratified in March. Much of the action paused after Meow Wolf co-founder Matt King unexpectedly passed away that month, but in August, Meow Wolf Denver announced that it had recognized two nascent unions in Denver — one for security workers and one for operations workers.
Left to right, Phamaly's Annie Sand, Miranda Ireland, Trenton Schindele, Madison Stout, Matty Umbriaco in Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Michael Ensminger Photography
In 2021, theaters struggled to return to fully in-person shows. But the theater was back in full force this year, in time for Su Teatro and Fort Collins's OpenStage to celebrate their fiftieth seasons, Curious Theatre its 25th, and Boulder's Motus Theater its tenth. There was action off the stage, too: Five founders of the Phamaly Theatre Company, which casts people with disabilities, received a much-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award at the Colorado Theatre Guild's Henry Awards in July; and the Denver Actors Fund, which financially supports local theater folks in medical emergencies, passed the million-dollar mark in contributions. Malinalli vs. Malinche
While 2021 featured two dueling van Gogh immersive exhibitions, 2022 saw two exhibits on the historic figure La Malinche, a Nahua woman who was enslaved by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés to be his interpreter, as well as the mother of his children. The first, Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche, debuted at the Denver Art Museum with more than sixty works of art spanning five centuries, including 21 by contemporary Chicano artists, to exemplify how Malinche's story has shifted through the years; the DAM also partnered with the Latino Cultural Arts Center to showcase an old tapestry depicting Malinche's story with Malintzin: Unraveled and Rewoven at Next Stage Gallery. But Maruca Salazar, former director of Museo de Las Americas, had learned of the DAM's plans early on and was disappointed that more space wasn't being given to current Chicano artists — so she came out of retirement to mount a show in response at the Museo, this time using Malinche's Indigenous name, Malinalli. Malinalli on the Rocks opened at the Museo in March, just a month after La Malinche, and displayed works from local Chicano artists in a myriad of mediums, including a piece by Alicia Cardenas, to whom the show was dedicated.
A Social Club Announced in Five Points
Three longtime local creatives announced their plans to create a vibrant hub of art, music and wellness with Society Denver at 3090 Downing, a large building at the edge of Five Points that got its start as a church, then became a restaurant and briefly held a swingers' club. If Iman Haidar, Crystal Wiggins and Corey Jacobs hit their goals, Society Denver could be one of the city's best venues when it opens next year. The lineup of proposed offerings include live music from local, national and international acts; yoga and meditation classes; body work; workshops; galleries for artists; healthy, soulful food; and even an apothecary and elixir bar.
Denver Artists Join the NFT Craze
NFTs aren't just a tease to the Denver artists of Galaktic Gang, an art collective that creates non-fungible tokens with art from the likes of seminal psychedelic artist Chris Dyer. The Gang sold out of Dyer's art in five days: 5,555 tokens. But they weren't the only ones jumping on the new artistic trend, in which artists are able to keep royalties on their work long after the initial sell. IRL Gallery became a key player in this year's fifth annual ETHDenver, the longest-running cryptocurrency conference — dubbed the "Super Bowl of cryptocurrency" — that was mounted at the Sports Castle and other spots in town both virtually and in person for ten days in February. Annie Phillips, the founder of IRL, was the art steward for the event, and showcased many NFTs at her gallery for the conference.
New Art Collectives Abound
Galaktic Gang isn't the only new art collective in Denver. Below the Concrete is keeping the DIY spirit of past collectives like Rhinoceropolis alive with its queer-focused art shows, which it debuted in the spring with a house show filled with fine art from local transgender and queer creatives. Meanwhile, Denver Digital Landgrab hit the ground running with renegade augmented-reality art, organizing Manifest Dystopia, an exhibition of art around town revealed by QR codes. And comic book creators Karl Christian Krumpholtz (a frequent Westword contributor), Eddie Raymond of Strangers Fanzine & Publishing and Jeff Alford of Wig Shop formed the Colorado Comics Collective, proving that even funny business can get serious.
