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First Friday, Día de los Muertos and the beginning of Denver Arts Week all collide this weekend. The Art District on Santa Fe and 40 West in Lakewood are both hosting Día de los Muertos activities, while other spots go glitzy for their civic night in the spotlight. Pick your poison from our list of ten events.
Hexus Collective, Altar(er) Hex
The Temple, 2400 Curtis Street
October 31 through January 3
Opening reception: Thursday, October 31, 7 to 10 p.m.
Public viewing on Saturdays, or by appointment
Semi-anonymous and veiled in mysticism, the Hexus Collective makes art driven by intersectional activism and a desire to give voice to communities oppressed by patriarchal capitalism. To that end, the band of artists has created an exhibition of empowering altars that speak to the season while being outwardly political about people forced to live on the edges of society. Explore your own “otherness” with the collective for a totally different kind of Halloween party.
Reconstructing Western Landscapes
Alto Gallery, 4345 West 41st Avenue
November 1 through 30
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 6 to 10 p.m.
We Were Wild, the wheat-pasting duo of Meredith Feniak and Risa Friedman, went entirely beyond the flat surface of their usual murals when faced with the opportunity to explore and intervene with the Hut, a battered but historic Park Hill home facing demolition. The resulting installation, Reconstructing Western Landscapes, includes artifacts, physical interventions and documentation inspired by artist Gordon Matta-Clark, but that doesn’t begin to tell the stories they uncovered in the abandoned house. Step into another world for a night at the opening.
Tom Linker and Cassandra Lillard, The Nature of Abstraction
Sandra Phillips Gallery, 47 West 11th Avenue
November 1 through December 7
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 6 to 8 p.m.
Organic meets hard-edge patterning at Sandra Phillips Gallery in The Nature of Abstraction, an art duel between joyfully composed works by Tom Linker and Cassandra Lillard’s geometric statements.
Merry Cox and Jamie Lang, Substructure and Narrative
Plinth Gallery, 3520 Brighton Boulevard
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 6 to 9 p.m.
The ceramic showcase Plinth Gallery closes out the year with a duo from Merry Cox, whose wood and wire sculptural constructions provide a perch for ceramic birds, and Jamie Lang, whose adobe wall tiles are overlaid with encaustic designs.
Barbara Gal, Old Men
Karen Kaiser, The Ides of Dystopia, The Meek Shall Inherit...??
Next Gallery, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
November 1 through 17
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 6 to 10 p.m.
Next artists Barbara Gal and Karen Kaiser use their member slots, respectively, to muse on important male figures through a series of handmade and altered books, and to explore the state of the world from an experienced grandmother’s point of view. Next and all the other galleries in Lakewood’s 40 West district will also be hopping with Día de los Muertos celebrations on First Friday.
Fall 2019 MSU Denver BFA Thesis Exhibition
Center for Visual Art MSU Denver, 965 Santa Fe Drive
November 1 through 30
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 6 to 8 p.m.
See what the kids in Metropolitan State University’s BFA program have been up to at this bi-annual exhibition at the Center for Visual Art, located in the Art District on Santa Fe, another hot spot for streetwide Día de los Muertos activities. Twenty-one young artists and designers will display culminating portfolios from their time at MSU, offering a peek at the future of local art.
November First Friday at GRACe
Globeville Riverfront Arts Center, 888 East 50th Avenue
Friday, November 1, 5 to 9 p.m.
Catch up on the happenings at the Globeville studio enclave GRACe, where more than 75 resident creatives of every stripe will host open studios, music, demos and a gallery show, to boot. It’s a great place to find local grassroots flavor during Denver Arts Week, and it’s never too early to start scoping out unique handmade holiday gift ideas.
In One Breath
Glovinsky Gallery, 800 West Eighth Avenue
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 6 p.m.
Artist Janet Glovinsky’s little off-Santa Fe gallery goes to the birds on First Friday with a show that encompasses disappearing avians and genocide — in one breath.
Trey Egan, Visible Levels
Daisy Patton in the Project Space
K Contemporary, 1412 Wazee Street
November 2 through December 7
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 2, 6 to 9 p.m
Trey Egan decorates the walls at K Contemporary with thickly swabbed painterly oil abstracts that represent a multi-sensory synesthetic response to the trance and dubstep music he listens to in the studio. Interesting stuff for interesting musical times: Drop by and groove to Egan’s rich colors and shapes. Daisy Patton's blown-up re-purposed photographic paintings keep things lively in the Project Space.
SLOP Tenth Anniversary Exhibit
Black Book Gallery, 3878 South Jason Street, Englewood
Saturday, November 2: VIP early bird shopping, 3 to 6 p.m., $45; general public, 6 to 9 p.m., free.
The Japanese artist collective SLOP makes some of the most stylist blown-glass pipes in the world, and they’ve been at it for ten years, specializing in the trademark Contemporary Undercover Pipe (C.U.P.) that appropriates a lowbrow, pop-cultural icon: a McDonald’s cup. Black Book helps celebrate with an exhibition of new work (perhaps something for Santa’s bag?), the release of a forty-page retrospective zine and other curated goodies.
Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to editorial@westword.com. For more events this weekend, find details in this week’s 21 Best Things to Do in Denver.
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