See below where these and more worthy exhibitions are popping up this week, including a mess of co-op shows:
Rough Gems: Laugh Lines
Union Hall Gallery, The Coloradan, 1750 Wewatta Street, Suite 144
Through April 20
Union Hall’s last Rough Gems curatorial project of 2024, Laugh Lines, was assembled by artist and budding curator Zak Asburn, who crafted a good show for a couple of laughs. Some of the chuckles could be taken as queer in-jokes, as in the case of Eli West’s Among the Shrubbery; others, such as Betsy Rudolph’s series Shit That Can Kill You, take on world pollution issues with pure black humor. Yiwei Leo Wang compares the conspicuous consumption of social media to toilet paper, while work by Gabriel Hutchings, Carolina Maki Kitagawa Frisby and Nicholas Nakai Garcia deal with cultural identity, discrimination, victimization and colonialism. Funny, not funny? Sometimes we have to laugh to keep from crying.
Espiritu Hermosx/Beautiful Spirit: LGBTQIA+
Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive
Through July 14
The Museo’s Espiritu Hermosx/Beautiful Spirit: LGBTQIA+ also sticks to current events by inviting a group of LGBTQ+/Latinx artists to offer visual narratives of how they’ve managed — or not managed — to reconcile their cultural and gender identities. Curator Louis Trujillo, who chose a cross-section of local artists, also participates in the exhibition, which eschews stereotypes and instead presents art by individual human beings.
Todd Edward Herman & Jade Lascelles, All Things Born | Proximate Seams Book Launch/Pop-up Exhibition
Leon Gallery, 1112 East 17th Avenue
Through March 31
Leon opens its doors this week for All Things Born | Proximate Seams, an interdisciplinary art book project blending photography by East Window Gallery founder/director Todd Edward Herman and poetry by Jade Lascelles. The book launch comes with a four-day pop-up exhibition of Herman’s imagery with text. The gallery will have copies of the book at the Denver Small Press Fest on March 30.
NeDra Bonds, “60 Years After Brown v. Board of Education: Now What?” (detail), 2013, quilt.
NeDra Bonds
Fulginiti Gallery, 13080 East 19th Avenue, Aurora
Through October 31
NedRa Bonds learned the disciplined art of quilting from her grandmothers at the age of six, but didn’t stick with it until decades later when the activist faced an issue that struck close to home. Her neighborhood of Quindaro in Kansas City, Kansas, with historical ties to the Underground Railroad, was threatened to become a landfill by the city. That led her back to the thread and needle to create a history quilt she used in her opposing activism. Quilting then became her voice, both in decrying social injustice and as an ongoing visual diary. A collection of Bonds’s quilts from the last quarter-century, now on display at the Fulginiti Gallery at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; the gallery is open Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
12 x 12 x 12: Small Works
Center for the Arts Evergreen, 31880 Rocky Village Drive, Evergreen
Through April 27
Small art is often affordable art, and that’s at least one reason to visit the new exhibition at the Center for Arts Evergreen. The other reason? Variety: Ninety artists are represented in this showing of diminutive 2-D or 3-D art, sized roughly in the vicinity of one-by-one-foot.
Richard Anderson, Lakes & Rivers
931 Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
Through April 28
Opening Reception: Friday, March 29, 5 to 9 p.m.
This show by Richard Anderson — who says he wants to show only his gestures and signs of movement in his art rather than a persona — is anchored by a series of canvases over which he drags different hues of paint and collages the flowing background with cutouts from art magazines.
Alane Holsteen, Silent Spring
Nolan Tredway, Egregore Ecologies
Heather Hauptman, Fine Lines and Linens
Edge Gallery, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, March 29, through April 14
Opening Reception: Friday, March 29, 6 to 9 p.m.
At Edge, member Alane Holsteen contributes her recent bubbly waterscapes and landscapes in encaustic, pigment and ink, while associates Nolan Tredway and Heather Hauptman join in with an interactive series of human hearts representing participatory communication (Tredway), and embroidered textiles (Hauptman).
Camie Rigirozzi, Discovering Humanity Part II: The Fenced Farm
Lisa Korte, On Other Planets
Wendi Richardson in the Annex
Core Art Space, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Friday, March 29, through April 14
Opening Reception: Friday, March 29, 6 to 9 p.m.
In the same building in 40 West as Edge, Core Art Space showcases members Camie Rigirozzi, who uses mixed media collage and print media for her animal imagery, and Lisa Korte, whose work appears abstract, but actually imagines alien lifeforms and their possible methods of communication and art. In the Annex, find images of Colorado flora, landscape and animals by Wendi Richardson.
Madeleine Dodge, Finding the Field
Robert St John, Remix: Projects at Spark 2014-2024
Printed Page IV in the North Gallery
Spark Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, March 28, through April 21
Artist Reception: Saturday, March 30, 1 to 5 p.m.
Last Look: Sunday, April 21, 1 to 4 p.m.
On Santa Fe Drive, the long-lived co-op, Spark Gallery, has member shows by Robert St. John, who recaps work from his shows at the gallery over the last ten years, and Madeleine Dodge, whose show, Finding the Field, comprises smart textural paintings on steel and prints on aluminum composite sheeting. In the North Gallery, the national juried exhibition of contemporary artists' bookworks, Printed Page IV, serves as a last-minute Mo’Print show juried by Amanda Clark, dean of the library at Whitworth University, and curated by book-arts master Alicia Bailey of Abecedarian Artists’ Books.
Some of this work is jaw-dropping good.
Mo’Print: Heads of Hydra: Katie Caron, Kevin Baer, Reed Weimer
Bardo Coffee House Broadway, 238 South Broadway
Through May 31
Artist Reception: Saturday, March 30, noon to 2 p.m.
Heads of Hydra, a loose collective led by the anti-curatorial team of Dave Seiler and Richard Alden Peterson, have a new Mo’Print entry up at the South Broadway Bardo Coffee House. See work by selected artists Kevin Baer, Katie Caron and Reed Weimer at the informal Saturday opening, or stop by almost any time, day or night — Bardo is open from 6 a.m. to midnight 365 days a year.
Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].
