Art Attack: New Shows at MCA Denver Kick Off an Artful Weekend

Denver galleries and museums continue to show up with fresh content week after week. The next round starts with new summer exhibitions at MCA Denver, the final installment of the TAD @ T-Shop group show series in a taxidermy shop, and a new salute to octogenarian Colorado painter Dave Yūst at the Kirkland Museum.

And as always, there's more. Get started with this list:
Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe
Anna Tsouhlarakis: Indigenous Absurdities
MCA Denver, 1485 Delgany Street
Wednesday, June 14, through September 10
MCA Summer Exhibitions Opening Celebration: Wednesday, June 14, 7:30 p.m.; tickets: $20 to $75 here
While tickets for the opening celebration are scarce, the new exhibitions the party celebrates —Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe and Anna Tsouhlarakis: Indigenous Absurdities — will be around until September. Jackson’s interdisciplinary practice dips effortlessly into paintings, printmaking, video, photography, fiber and sculpture without missing a beat. Across the Universe, which is curated as an overview, manages to not only cover the artist’s complete ground, but also focuses on her powerful political voice: MCA’s Miranda Lash calls her “one of the most relevant artists practicing today.” Boulder-based Anna Tsouhlarakis, who refers to herself as “Greek and Creek,” explores her Native side in Indigenous Absurdities, commenting on how that part of her heritage changes her outlook on general American culture (she’s a member of the Navajo Nation). Also interdisciplinary as an artist, Tsouhlarakis blends video, performance, sculpture, photography and installation into her oeuvre, which is injected with Indigenous humor.

Some activities programmed over the summer by the museum include artists talks, an Indigenous comedy showcase and a musical performance by Grammy-nominated, NOLA-bred artist Adjuah, aka Christian Scott, who pushes the jazz envelope and invented an instrument called the Adjuah Bow, a double-sided harp modeled after the African n’goni and kora. It’s going to be a great summer.
Leon Benn, Dead Leaves
Justin Favela, Ghostin’
David B. Smith Gallery, 1543 A Wazee Street
Friday, June 16, through July 22
Opening Reception: Friday, June 16, 6 to 8 p.m.
David B. Smith Gallery is back from spring art-fair hopping with a pair of new shows. In the main gallery, Leon Benn brings new work for Dead Leaves, another round of mind-expanding views of nature — in this case, plants and pollinators — created using dye, oil sticks, and oil and acrylic paint on linen, leaving behind shadowy, blurred indicators of constant motion. In the project room, Justin Favela, who just opened a monumental room-wrap display at the Denver Botanic Gardens, is back with more of his tissue piñata-paper creations. This time, Favela, known for building life-sized paper lowriders, instead creates a dreamy lowrider interior based on a renowned pink 1964 Chevy Impala lowrider named Gypsy Rose.
Jason Appleton
Seidel City, 3205 Longhorn Road, Boulder
Opening Reception: Friday, June 16, 6 to 9 p.m.
A body of dot paintings, grids, Picasso-inspired figure drawings, elegant line doodles and other works by new modernist master and former Pirate Jason Appleton are on view and on the block at Seidel City. The gallery’s trove of Appletons is more than worth a look: They are appealingly alive with color, witty, and meticulous in execution and conformation.
TAD @ T-Shop 3
Terrorium Annex, 3611 West 49th Avenue
Friday, June 16, 6 to 9 p.m. (one night only)
Artists and curation partners Donald Fodness and Tobias Fike will mount the third and last free-ranging TAD @ T-Shop show at the Terrorium Annex, a local taxidermy outlet. Boasting a blowout artist lineup of Shayna Cohn, Chrissy Espinoza, Risa Friedman, Hillary Frey, Giddy Galore, A Grix, Christopher M. Lavery, i.martonis, John McEnroe, Rebecca Peebles, Leo Rivera and Matthew Smith, TAD @ T-Shop 3 is a tribute to letting creative people have their way, with several references to the art of taxidermy, interactive audio and hand-built clay works among the responses to the organic/inorganic theme.
CHAC Gallery: Foods and Cultures
Oz Gallery, Thornton Arts and Culture Center, 9209 Dorothy Boulevard, Thornton
Through August 25
Opening Reception: Friday, June 16, 6 to 8 p.m.
Community Workshop: Saturday, July 8, 10 a.m. to noon
CHAC branches out again at Thornton Arts, with a group show about the intrinsic role of food in world cultures. In the meantime, back at CHAC proper, 1560 Teller Street in Lakewood, artist Cal Duran will lead Weaving Portals: Ojo de Dios, a hands-on workshop for all ages, on Saturday, June 17, from 1 to 3 p.m. The fee is $25.

And if you haven’t heard the news, CHAC will soon be turning a new page and returning to the La Alma/Lincoln Park neighborhood and Denver's Art District on Santa Fe in the fall. The Chicano-centered art gallery moved around after losing its longtime space on that street in 2018, eventually ending up in Lakewood’s 40 West. But the Aztec gods must have heard CHAC’s plea to return to its cultural home turf: A building has been gifted to CHAC on Santa Fe, so not only is the gallery moving back, but now it owns its own digs, as well.
Natalia Roberts, Between Waking & Dreaming
Art Students League of Denver, 200 Grant Street
Thursday, June 16, through July 16
Opening Reception: Friday, June 16, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Interdisciplinary dancer/photographer Natalia Roberts mixes up two singular talents for Between Waking & Dreaming at the Art Students League of Denver, as the culmination of an artist residency that began last November. Storytelling figures heavily in Roberts’s photographs for the exhibition, which depict life through a diverse selection of dancing bodies together and alone.
Johanna Morrell and Kristy Smith: Recent Works
Sync Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, June 15, through July 16
Opening Reception: Friday, June 16, 5 to 9 p.m.
Sync rolls into the summer with solos by members Johanna Morrell, who riffs on the concept of serenity with joyful abstracts painted on plexiglass, and Kristy Smith, whose broadly brushed gestural abstract paintings bolster an intuitional thread through both shows.
Libby Barbee: Landscape Reconstructed
Alto Gallery, RiNo ArtPark, 1900 35th Street, Suite B
Saturday, June 17, through July 1
Opening Reception/Satellite Saturday: Koko Bayer: Mini Piñata-Making: Reception, Saturday, June 17, noon to 4 p.m.; piñata activity: noon to 2 p.m., free

Saturday is a busy day at Alto Gallery, with an exhibition opening for Libby Barbee’s Landscape Reconstructed, and a free mini-piñata-making demo and workshop with activist artist Koko Bayer, presented as part of a summer Satellite Saturday series co-hosted by Alto and RedLine, with support from the RiNo Art District. Barbee shows a body of collage-based works enhanced with paint, paper and internet images, many of them created from satellite photographs of Earth from the Landsat satellite program. With others, Barbee creates mountain landscapes, relying on aerial photographs and inspired by photographers of the U.S. Geological Survey and painters of the Hudson River School. All in all, the manipulated imagery lends an ironic pallor to the perceived majesty of the landscape and human intrusion on pristine nature.

Flux Fest Pottery Pop-Up and Market
Flux Studio & Gallery, 377 South Lipan Street
Saturday, June 17, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Free
Flux Studio, a working functional pottery studio that also offers popular classes on the potter’s wheel (currently waiting-list only), invites the public to come on down to the Athmar neighborhood for a fun day of live demos, music, tacos and shopping for both pottery and antiques at the neighboring Eron Johnson Antiques.

Art of Food
2474 South Jackson Street
Saturday, June 17, 5 to 8:30 p.m.
Tickets: $65 to $95 in advance
Access Gallery and Slow Food Denver are hooking up for an Art of Food fundraiser that benefits both nonprofits. Before the party, Slow Food visited Access to offer cooking classes to the gallery’s talented crew of young people living with disabilities, who created food-themed works of art. See and purchase the art, browse a silent auction and savor the resulting slow food dishes inspired by Access artwork; note that the $95 VIP ticket includes access to a wacky printmaking station that uses food materials as a medium.

Summer Art Garage
Union Hall, The Coloradan, 1750 Wewatta Street, Suite 144
Saturday, June 17, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Hand-drawn comic books, paintings, beadwork and plants are just a few of the things you can purchase this weekend at Union Hall’s Summer Art Garage, a gathering of art and craft vendors hosted by the gallery. The free indoor market is a boon to local artists and small businesses; show your support by sampling their wares.
Us
Bitfactory Gallery, 851 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, June 16, through July 10
Opening Reception: Friday, June 16, 6 to 9 p.m.
Start preparing for Pride week at the opening of Bitfactory’s fourth annual Us show, an LGBTQ+ showcase with local queertrepreneur Christopher La Fleur and Raven Rohrig, whose work currently centers on two contemporary bodies of work: Intrinsic Illustrations and The Wisdom of Women.
Dave Yūst: Evidence of Gravity & Other Works
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, 1201 Bannock Street
Wednesday, June 21, through October 1
An Evening With Dave Yūst: Wednesday, September 13, 6 to 7:30 p.m.; tickets: $20 to $25 at Eventbrite
Fort Collins-based Dave Yūst will be feted by the Kirkland with a solo show as part of the museum’s twentieth-anniversary celebration. The exhibition combines Yūst works, including paintings, prints and posters from the Kirkland’s own Colorado-centric collection, paired with a show of newer works organized by the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery in Lindsborg, Kansas, lending a more complete view of the artist’s output over time. An educator at Colorado State University for nearly fifty years, the now-retired Yūst became friends with museum namesake Vance Kirkland after moving to Colorado. His abstract work combines colorful geometric and organic shapes, sometimes on circular and oval canvases. Tickets are on sale now for Yūst’s artist conversation in September; don’t miss out.

Athena Project, Artful Reflections
Union Hall, The Coloradan, 1750 Wewatta Street, Suite 14
Wednesday, June 21, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Free; RSVP required in advance, donations accepted

The Athena Project, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting and providing opportunities for women in the arts, has added a newish series to its platform. Called Artful Reflections, the monthly meeting is designed to create community between artists and non-artists, who are encouraged to present and discuss artworks informally in women-owned art spaces. The next session is on June 21.

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