You might have guessed there’s more — lots more — listed below, and it’s all exciting.
Brandon Opalka, "Mesa Trail."
Brandon Opalka
neü folk/room 220 gallery, Evans School, 1115 Acoma Street, Room 220
September 14 through September 29
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 14, 6 to 10 p.m.
Last Evans School Open Studio: Sunday, September 29, noon to 6 p.m.
Since moving into Room 220 at the Evans School artist enclave, Max Kauffman (neü folk) and Brandon Opalka (room 220) have been trading separate curational efforts in the space, with a focus on introducing both emerging and influential artists to crowds coming through. Sadly, that’s all changing, as developers had given dozens of local artists a sweet deal on studio and gallery space in the beautiful old Golden Triangle building while development plans were still being finalized. Now that that has happened, it’s time for everyone to move on. As a coda on a good run, the curators of neü folk/room 220 are giving themselves the last show slot for Lately, a showcase for the two, who are both fine artists in their own right. Kauffman’s work often centers around magical buildings festooned with decorative symbols, and Opalka decorates surfaces with hot colors and energetic embroidery, spray paint and airbrush that reference the landscape and personal spaces. After the reception, Lately will be on view by appointment until September 29, when the entire Evans School artist community will host its last venue-wide open studio and market. Where will they all end up afterward? RedLine, which helped facilitate the Evans School’s temporary deal, is good at hunting for satellite studio space, and there have been rumors flying about other new alternatives. Time will tell.
Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas From the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Through January 12
Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas at the Denver Art Museum unveils the later-life triumphs of a pioneering Black woman artist who returned to painting after 35 years as a junior high teacher. Thomas became a cornerstone of the Black artist community in Washington, D.C., during the ’40s, but it was not until she retired in 1960 that she began creating the abstract paintings she’s remembered for. Rendered on canvas in contrasting fields of brightly colored shards in patterns inspired by natural phenomena and music, her late work dazzles the senses. As a companion to the exhibition, the museum is offering three fall courses exploring Thomas’s work that will unfold monthly from September to November; registration is $25 per session (students with ID free), with live or online options. Learn more and register here.
CHAC Gallery, Día de los Muertos Art Show
Armory Performing Arts Center, 300 Strong Street, Brighton
Through November 5
Artist Reception: Saturday, October 26, 4 to 9 p.m.
CHAC members ante up Día de los Muertos art annually at the Armory Performing Arts Center for Brighton’s Hispanic community. But while the show opens this week, the jackpot doesn’t come until October 26, when the center hosts an all-ages reception and party, with Aztec dancers, face painting, sugar skull decorating, vendor booths, food trucks and live music.
Ninth Digerati Experimental Media Festival: Decode Recode
Thursday, September 12, through September 22
In its ninth year, the Digerati Experimental Media Festival is going low-key and right to the point over ten days of intimate screenings, conversations and collabs with Denver Startup Week and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. On Sunday, September 15, there will be a dip into performance and shop talk with Debora and Jason Bernagozzi of Signal Culture, a Colorado-based residency for experimental media artists. This is the first in a series of half-hour documentaries that examine the uncharted territory where performance and tech are changing the world. And in between it is the meat: lots and lots of mind-blowing film and video, hybrid animations, and multi-disciplinary visuals with music. Find a complete schedule and register here.
Faculty Exhibition, Myhren Gallery
Thursday, September 12, through November 24
Ex-Faculty Exhibition, Davis Gallery
Thursday, September 12, through October 11
2121 East Asbury Avenue, DU Campus
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 12, 5 to 8 p.m.
The University of Denver’s Myhren and Davis galleries start off the school year with a pair of art faculty showcases: one for those currently working, and the other for former faculty making waves outside of DU classrooms. What makes all of them good teachers? Imagination, familiarity with contemporary trends, mastery of techniques and mediums and the ability to nurture students, as well as their own work.
Alhamdu | Muslim Futurism runs through next May at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
Photo: Diane Valero, courtesy CSFAC
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 30 West Dale Street, Colorado Springs
September 13 through January 11
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 6 to 8 p.m.
The arts collective MIPSTERZ takes on futurism as it might unfold with new Muslim creatives taking the reins to fight political and personal marginalization. The group’s traveling exhibition Alhamdu | Muslim Futurism, opens this weekend at CSFAC with the goal of exposing the voices and stories of diverse people working under the veil of Muslim culture. This version is personalized for Colorado with the inclusion of regional artists and special interactive components created solely for CSFAC. Multidisciplinary, with a barrage of installations, paintings, sculpture, digital media and more, Alhamdu mines worldwide resistance movements and the peaceful tenets of Muslim thought, looking forward to global understanding. You won’t see a clearer vision of a better world anywhere. Make the trip.
MJ Lindo-Lawyer's mural at 30th and Pearl Street in Boulder from a past Street Wise Mural Festival.
Photo: Peter Kowalchuk
Street Wise Festival HQ: 2510 47th Street, Unit G, Boulder
Roots Music Project (RMP and RMP B-Side): 4747 Pearl Street, Suite V3A, Boulder
The Spark: 4847 Pearl Street B4, Boulder
Dairy Arts Center: 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder
Friday, September 13, through Sunday, September 15
The Street Wise Mural Festival is back for its sixth year, inviting fans to enjoy its big enthusiasm and small-town flavor in the streets of Boulder. The hot spots are clustered around four locations (see above), where Street Wise will host free art and skate-deck exhibitions, mural tours, outdoor entertainment and an Art + Activism Market, as well as ticketed events, including a workshop on ledger painting with Indigenous artist Bruce Cook, and a panel on protecting beaver habitats with artist Lindee Zimmer and members of the Boulder Watershed Collective. Find a map of mural sites, the fest schedule and registration links here.
Homelands: Reconnection
Sacred Space Gallery, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder
Friday, September 13, through November 3
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 5 to 8 p.m.
In concert with Street Wise, the Dairy will host an opening in its Sacred Space Gallery, which is designated as a place for self-expression among Indigenous communities. Homelands: Reconnection pays tribute to members of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute tribes of Colorado — whose ancestors lived on land now occupied by the city of Boulder — with art by Colorado-based Native artists.
Rachael Delaney, “She Can Be Prickly,” thread, gold-plated sewing needles, plexiglass.
Rachael Delaney
BRDG Project, 3300 Tejon Street
Friday, September 13, through October 6
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 6 to 10 p.m.
The community answered, and the resulting show for the BRDG Project’s first-ever call for entries will be unveiled this weekend, with 150 works by fifty local artists. The exhibition, Seed, has been mounted on the concept that, as self-help author James Clear has said, “All big things come from small beginnings” — as expressed by art. Here’s a show you’ll leave with that feel-good glow.
Smoke & Mirrors
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 13th Street, Boulder
Through January 12
Artist and Fabricator Panel Discussion: With Trey Duvall, Collin Parson and Joel Swanson, Thursday, October 24, 6 to 7:30 p.m., $10 to $15 at Eventbrite
Optical illusions and other tricks of the eye aren’t new in contemporary art or even in past centuries, wherever trompe-l'œil raised its grinning face. But they don’t get old, and in the present, artists are still finding new ways to twist the viewer’s perceptions, using refracted light, digital technology and surprising mediums like the smoke Doug Spencer incorporate into his drawings or Amy Hoagland’s imagery distorted by the placement of strapping tape or glass tubing video between the camera and the subject. The public will even have a chance to join artist Drew Austin in a workshop where participants will make mylar plant forms that reflect sunlight, shadows and rainbows on the walls. Visual games like these can bring a sense of experiential fun to run-of-the-mill art-viewing.
Nexus
Walker Fine Art, 300 West 11th Avenue, Unit A
Friday, September 13, through November 2
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 5 to 8 p.m.
A fine lineup of six artists share art in the new exhibition Nexus, opening this weekend at Walker Fine Art, headed up by Martha Russo, a new and important addition to WFA’s gallery stable. The artist is known for immersive mixed-media installations of shapes steeped in nature and executed in clay and porcelain, found detritus, wood, paint, manmade materials and whatever fits. Also in the gallery, find Melanie Walker’s photo-based works, often imprinted on diaphanous fabric or paper, falling from the ceiling in yardage or large discs and casting shadows in the light. Look for Sabin Aell’s mixed-media wall installations, pieced together with imprinted plexiglass shapes that fly across the expanse in free contours and, in this show, industrial materials and leather. Also included are abstract forms derived from nature by Rob Mellor and Heather Patterson, and spherical collages gone wild in a primordial soup of random life forms by Angela Piehl.
99 Pieces of Art
Access Gallery, 909 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, September 13, 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Access Gallery’s popular fundraising event, 99 Pieces of Art, is back in session on Friday the 13th, but there’s nothing spooky about it: As always, the focus is on 99 ten-inch-square donated artworks, most by local artists, including the young adults with disabilities who benefit from Access’s art and job training programs. All the artworks are for sale for $99 each at the event, as long as they last, but general admission is deliberately inexpensive at $12.50 and includes food and drink. Access has also added a membership option this year for $99 that comes with year-round perks. Reserve tickets at Eventbrite.
Cholas y Vatos
Art Contained Del Sol, 3058 West 55th Avenue
Friday, September 13, through October 26
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 6 to 9 p.m.
Art Contained Del Sol, a backyard shipping-container gallery in northwest Denver, pays homage to the proud people of the barrio, who outrun stereotypes and think for themselves as they maneuver their way through life.
Erica Podwoiski, Blue Whispers, in the Main Gallery
Samara Johnson, Somatic Alchemy, in the South Gallery
Firehouse Art Center, 667 Fourth Avenue, Longmont
September 13 through October 6
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 6 to 8 p.m.
Firehouse Art Center’s Art Walk on Main
Main Street between Third and Longs Peak avenues, Downtown Longmont
Saturday, September 14, 4 to 8 p.m.
The Firehouse Art Center has packed this weekend with things to go just up the road in Longmont, beginning with its monthly Second Friday celebration with new exhibitions to see. Summer resident artist Erica Podwoiski will unveil the culmination of her time spent working at the center in Blue Whispers, a shadowy collection of cyanotypes capturing imagery of moths in the Main Gallery, while Samara Johnson, who uses natural fibers, including wool, horsehair, quills and bones, in her mixed media constructions, takes over the South Gallery. Also on view will be pop-up of floral paintings with artists Laura Caruso and Megan LeSage in Studio 64. On Saturday, Firehouse takes over Main Street with an all-out Art Walk party, with live entertainment, food truck fare, an art market and downtown shopping, as well as doubling up with the Chalkmont chalk-art event.
A collaborative work by Meghann and Kevin Haase, “Bliss,” acrylic, resin, concrete, reclaimed wood and metal.
Meghann and Kevin Haase
Aestus Mechanica: A Solo Exhibition by Meghann and Kevin Haase, in the Annex Core Art Space, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
September 13 through September 29
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 5 to 10 p.m.
Core reveals the results of an open call-for-entries in Margins, a show of works that asked entrants to share art on the theme of Margins, whether physical or conceptional. Printmaker Joe Higgins juried the exhibition, offering a wide degree of definitions. Meanwhile in the Annex, the composite artist team of Meghann and Kevin Haase shares collaborative mixed-media works: Meghann handles the painting mediums, while Kevin hammers out the metal hardware.
Faith Williams Dyrsten: Goodbye, Grass!
Mark Brasuell: Markieren Markieren
Edge Gallery, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
September 13 through September 29
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 6 to 9 p.m.
Edge members Faith Williams Dyrsten and Mark Brasuell display, respectively, a visual diary of cardboard composting of a front yard and its effects, and a new body of expressive, mostly black-and-white abstract paintings exploring the subconscious roots of abstraction. In step with Goodbye, Grass!, Wild Ones, Jeffco Chapter, will host a seed giveaway at Edge from 3 to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 22.
Tamara Mahoney, Sacred
Rebecca Yaffe, Wayfinding
Next Gallery, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
September 13 through September 29
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 5 to 10 p.m.
Tamara Mahoney and Rebecca Yaffe share themes of self-actualization in solo member shows at Next. Mahoney does so in figurative paintings of women—together or alone—and Yaffe offers collages of layered patterns and shapes representing the journey of finding oneself.
Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].
