This Weekend’s Best Art Shows and Events

Galleries haven't slowed for the holidays, and this weekend offers more giftable art markets, as well as shows of work by the late Clark Richert and a whole palette of local artists, from former ArtLab student interns at PlatteForum to the unhomed and other people seeking to set themselves straight through participation in RedLine's REACH program. The BRDG Project begins a long goodbye to its Northside space on Tejon Street, while design and print studio MATTER celebrates 25 years — and its plans to stick around for another 25.

That's a lot of art-making, and there is more still to discover. Our suggestions:
Clark Richert: Richert Space
Rule Gallery, 808 Santa Fe Drive
December 13 through February 15
Opening Reception: Friday, December 13, 6 to 8 p.m.
You don't have to be a math whiz to get lost in the off-kilter patterning that repeats throughout the late Clark Richert’s decades-long ouevre. It takes the viewer into a higher place, where science and art connect with inner revelations. In the exhibition Richert Space, the road to understanding the artist’s visual calculations begins with the central painting "The True Story of the Quasicrystal," painted in the ’80s, which gathers aspects of Richert’s life and artistic practice and its roots in Drop City, the Colorado artist community where geodesic domes once rose on the prairie. Rule’s show includes works from various periods: paintings, prints and drawings, both large and small.
June Glasson, Manifestations
Marcos Lucero, El mundo invisible
Visions West Contemporary, 2605 Walnut Street
December 12 through January 31
Opening Reception: Friday, December 13, 6 to 8 p.m.
Visions West showcases two artists into 2025: June Glasson, who examines the concept of “women’s work” through iconography flavored both by higher ideals in a democratic society and female fury, and Marcos Lucero, a Mexican surrealist whose folkloric world explores the connections between animals and humans.
DeMOCKracy
Circle
BRDG Project, 3300 Tejon Street
December 13 through December 29
Opening Reception: Friday, December 13, 6 to 9 p.m.
Co-founded by fine artists Michael Dowling and Brett Matarazzo three years ago in a borrowed temporary space in LoHi’s Zang Building, the nonprofit BRDG Project champions original art using bold ideas in multi-disciplinary programming that includes performances of music and dance. In August 2023, it settled in a new location on Tejon Street, an 8,000-square-foot space with three spacious galleries. But despite throwing numerous fundraisers and attempting to market studio spaces, BRDG can't afford the rent and is now looking for a way and place to rebuild (more info here). Two exhibitions —the political group show DeMOCKracy, a visual treatise in reaction to the election and its aftermath, and Circle, a showcase for artists who stepped up and gave a little extra toward keeping the BRDG Project open — debut this weekend, but the future of the gallery after that remains unknown.

MATTER’s 25th Annual Print & Collage Sale
Friday, December 13, 6 p.m. to midnight
Matter & Friends Art Market
Saturday, December 14, and Sunday, December 15, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Shop at MATTER, 2114 Market Street
MATTER’s traditional holiday print sale and party hits a milestone of 25 years in 2024, a remarkable moment for the indie screen-printing and graphic design business led by letterpress maestro Rick Griffith. And it’s so much more than that: MATTER is also a bookstore and gift shop, a gathering place and a voice for all people, where once a year Griffith throws a party with gorditas by the MAIZ food truck, fish-tank mojitos, desserts by Crema, live music, fresh prints to buy and, this year, even more surprises. Neatly dovetailing with the end of MATTER’s 25-Hour Print-a-Thon (details here), this should be the party of the quarter-century. Can’t get enough of MATTER? Come back on Saturday and Sunday for the super-cool Matter & Friends Art Market.

Light Interruption
Space__Space, 7464 Arapahoe Road, Suite B3, Boulder
Friday, December 13, 6 to 9 p.m., and Saturday, December 14, noon to 4 p.m.; free
The new Boulder gallery Space__Space was founded by new-media artist/curator Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe to focus on experimentation and media art technologies in shows that pair work by emerging and established artists. The current exhibition, Phones Are Heavy, opened in November and continues through January 11, but will also serve as the background for Light Interruption, a looped presentation of video works by Boulder artists Adina Glickstern and Devon Narine-Sin, and New York-based artist Flora Wilds. The program begins Friday evening and remains in the gallery through Saturday.

ArtLab Alumni Exhibition
PlatteForum, A.I.R. Annex Gallery, 3575 Ringsby Court
December 13 through January 18 (closed December 23 through January 5)
Opening Reception: Friday, December 13, 6 to 8 p.m.
After more than twenty years of operating on a mentor-student platform pairing vetted artists-in-residence with high school students in the internship program ArtLab, PlatteForum looks at the ongoing achievements of past ArtLabbers by mounting the first-ever ArtLab Alumni Exhibition. Four young PlatteForum graduates — Axel Leonhardt, Emmanuel Balderama, Jayden Lynx and Zaida Sever — offer a range of artworks that center on the themes of food made from scratch, charcoal drawings based on images of crime-scene photos, “cracking the egg” as a metaphor for self-discovery, and paintings based on experimentation with materials, patterns, textures and colors.
Architects of Change: Shaping Futures Through Art
RedLine Contemporary Art Center, 2350 Arapahoe Street
December 13 through January 6
Opening Reception: Friday, December 13, 6 to 8 p.m.
RedLine REACH Core Artists — citizens dealing with mental health challenges, homelessness and recovery who gather at the art center for weekly open studio art sessions, as well as professional development workshops, skill building, mentorship, portfolio development support and earned income opportunities — are in the spotlight in the exhibition Architects of Change: Shaping Futures Through Art.
Joshua Porter, Nomen Oblitum
Naked Ray Gallery, 811 28th Street
December 13 through January 3
Opening Reception: Friday, December 13, 4 to 8 p.m.
Painter and Denver newcomer Joshua Porter paints the denizens of grotesque fantasy worlds, from suffering humans to miserable creatures hiding in the shadows; he's facile in execution with a vivid imagination. With the dull colors, his places don’t look inviting — but they make some sense at a Friday the 13th reception. Check him out at Naked Ray through the beginning of January.

37th Annual AOSF Holiday Exhibition
Artists on Santa Fe, 747 Santa Fe Drive
Through December 30
Artist Reception and Holiday Celebration: Friday, December 13, 6 to 8 p.m.
Artists on Santa Fe’s annual holiday show opened early in November and runs through December 30. Now that it’s truly the season, you’re invited to join resident artists at a reception in the gallery and on three floors of open studios, where you can shop for artful and handmade gift-ready artworks.
Tiny Art, Big Ideas
Spectra Art Space, 1836 South Broadway
Opening Reception: Friday, December 13, 3 to 10 p.m.
RSVP at Eventbrite
Spectra’s huge tiny-art show is back for another year, with original works no larger than six inches square by more than 200 artists. That’s variety! And, as if you need another motive to hit Spectra on opening night, a portion of the night’s proceeds will benefit the Second Wind Fund, an organization that offers treatment services for children and youth at risk for suicide.