But you’ll also find standout exhibitions. Try William Havu Gallery’s solo show by Tony Ortega, a member of the Havu stable for 42 years, along with copacetic additional solos by Michael Hensley and Max Lehman; score some miniature art at Abend Gallery; or share a moment at Alto Gallery with Max Kauffman’s homage to the beloved — and endangered — spots where Denver communities meet.
Here’s what we’ve got for you. Whatever you choose, it's certain to be festive and fruitful.
34th Annual Holiday Miniatures Mini Show
Abend Gallery, 1261 Delaware Street
December 5 through December 28
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 5, 5 to 8 p.m.
Abend Gallery’s representational bent takes a magical turn every year when the holidays approach and the venue transforms into a museum of the minuscule, with work by dozens of artists. The Holiday Miniatures Show rolls into its 34th year with a prodigious sleigh-full of tiny landscapes, still lifes, portraits, florals, animal art, street scenes and more, that sell for tiny prices compared to larger works.
CAE Annual Member Show: Omnium Gatherum
Center for the Arts Evergreen (CAE), 31880 Rocky Village Drive, Evergreen
December 5 through January 4
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 5, 4 to 7 p.m.
The year’s end not only brings art markets to co-ops and collectives — it’s also prime time for member group shows to pop up. CAE’s artist membership program is offered at different levels, starting with guaranteed participation in an annual show and rising in price to include use of ceramics and art studios and other niceties. It’s a nurturing plan that supports community and collaboration while ensuring art worth caring for on the walls.
D’art 360 Holiday Market
Cherry Creek Art Gallery: Art for the Holidays, in Gallery West
D’art Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
December 5 through 29
Opening Reception: Friday, December 13, 6 to 9 p.m.
D’art Gallery 360 and Cherry Creek Art Gallery, two new membership hierarchies operating within the overall gallery’s exhibition structure, add their own holiday-friendly art markets to the expanded space this weekend, taking advantage of the last First Friday. If the gift of art is what you’re seeking, the Art District on Santa Fe will have you covered; or visit D’art on December 13 for the official reception and utilize all your shopping acumen in one expansive gallery.
Emerging Vision: Biennial Student Show
Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC), 1200 Lincoln Street
December 6 through January 11
Opening Reception and Awards Ceremony: Friday, December 6, 5 to 8 p.m.
College-level student photographers will be honored at CPAC for Emerging Vision, a national exhibition juried by photographer, educator and TIS Books publisher Nelson Chan. The winners of Best in Show (who will be gifted a thirty-minute virtual portfolio review with Chan and $150 in custom printing from Digital Silver Imaging) and Runner Up (who will receive $150 in custom printing) will be announced at the First Friday reception, with ample time provided for viewing the wave of the medium’s ever-morphing future, as seen through the skills of 27 emerging photographers.
Tony Ortega: lmagenes de Nepantla
Michael Hensley and Max Lehman
William Havu Gallery, 1040 Cherokee Street
December 6 through January 18
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 5 to 8 p.m.
Artist Talks: Saturday, December 7, noon; RSVP to [email protected] or call 303-893-2360.
Havu Gallery bridges the old and new years with work by three artists, including Tony Ortega, a well-known veteran of the region’s Chicano-art community whose long-lived association with the gallery has lasted 42 years and counting. Ortega’s exhibition, lmagenes de Nepantla, continues on the theme of a show he recently curated for the Museum of Art Fort Collins, Nepantla, which remains on view there through January 5. A key to both shows, the word “Nepantla” refers to the sense of living between cultures and, in this case, in a city like Denver, which is home to a significant pan-Latinx population. Ortega’s celebratory works, modern communal scenes rendered in tropical colors rooted in Mexico, remain as moving as ever, brimming with life.
Also on view are works by gallery artists Michael Hensley and Max Lehman. Hensley’s mixed media incorporates the expressive style and street imagery of graffitists and muralists, while Lehman, a ceramic sculptor, plays with pop representations of pre-Columbian tropes. Learn more on the afternoon of December 7 during artist talks with Ortega (moderated by his wife and fellow artist Sylvia Montero) and Lehman (moderated by Bill Havu); details above.
Adam Geluda Gildar, Time After Time
Lane Meyer Projects, 2528 Walnut Street
December 6 through January 19
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 8 p.m. to late
The artist, writer, curator and karaoke nerd Adam Geluda Gildar, whose Gildar Gallery fired up the alternative scene on South Broadway back in the mid-teens, takes over Lane Meyer Projects at the Pon Pon Bar for a performance (and repeated events during the run). We don’t know exactly what the rest of the show entails, but a microphone is involved, which might signal a karaoke death marathon. Only one way to find out.
Max Kauffman, Spirit Monuments
Alto Gallery, 1900 35th Street, Suite B
December 6 through 28
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 6 to 10 p.m.
Max Kauffman, who’s been so busy curating local artists into shows here and there, says it’s been four years since he’s had an exhibition of his own, and his symbol-driven, life-affirming art on the walls at Alto Gallery deserves this welcome return. Spirit Monuments focuses on a return to Denver, where Kauffman found comfort in gathering places that felt like home — in particular, houses of music, movies and eateries like the Bluebird and Ogden theaters, the Mayan Theatre, the defunct El Chapultepec and others. But there’s also a silent homage tucked into Kauffman’s message for the places that have slipped away forever.
Rick Barcelow, Untethered
Bell Projects, 2822 East 17th Avenue
December 6 through January 12
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 6 to 10 p.m.
If you’re wondering how something as simple as a diaphanous length of cloth flapping freely in the breeze can evoke so many deep feelings, even artist Rick Barcelow, who has painted a series of such paintings for the exhibition Untethered at Bell Projects, has no solid idea: "Is it a wish we carry for ourselves? I don’t know,” he writes in his statement. The waving fabric is a mystery that might lead anywhere, but its image is downright majestic, especially when set against deep-blue skies in gradient shades.
Treasures: DAVA's Annual Holiday Show and Sale
Downtown Aurora Visual Arts (DAVA), 1405 Florence Street, Aurora
December 6 through January 3
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 4 to 9 p.m.
Closing Reception/New Year Sale: Friday, January 3, 6 to 9 p.m.
DAVA’s time-honored holiday show is a tradition pairing works by adult guest artists with student projects completed by various age groups — crocheted and sewn toys, stoneware and porcelain pottery and trinkets, jewelry and cyanotype greeting cards by high school students; T-shirts and ceramic portraits made with transferred digital images; textured pastry bags, wood ornaments and cast paper by middle-schoolers; ceramic coasters and bowls, funny face jugs, magnets and batik tote bags by grade-schoolers. All of it is for sale, making for a delightful gift-shopping spree on the first day; come back for the closing reception in January, and everything that’s left will be discounted to sell.
Pick up some original greeting cards at Access Gallery on First Friday and beyond.
Courtesy Access Gallery
Access Gallery, 909 Santa Fe Drive
December 6 through 21
First Friday Art Walk Reception: Friday, December 6, 6 to 9 p.m.; RSVP at Eventbrite
Meet the Artists: Friday, December 20, 6 to 8 p.m.; RSVP at Eventbrite
Access Gallery offers a holiday market similar to DAVA’s. In this case, the forty or more participating students are talented young adults with disabilities who’ve made wonderful gifts and stocking stuffers, including paintings, drawings, ceramics, stickers, original comic books and enamel pins. Can’t make the opening? Come back on December 20 for a holiday party with the artists (details above).
A classic image of La Virgen de Guadalupe by Carlos Santistevan.
Courtesy CHAC Gallery
CHAC Gallery, 834 Santa Fe Drive
December 6 through 27
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 5 to 9 p.m.; RSVP here
Both of CHAC’s gallery spaces — on Santa Fe Drive and in Lakewood’s 40 West — have new shows opening on First Friday that mine the religious, historical and folkloric sources still entrenched in modern Chicano culture. In the Art District on Santa Fe, the exhibition Santos Is Art in Celebration of Our Heritage honors new generations of artists in Colorado and New Mexico who carry on centuries-old traditions by hand-carving rustic santos, bultos and retablos and adding color created using natural materials from the Southwestern landscape.
Sign up now for a Mexican Tin Art Workshop during the Museo's First Friday Holiday Mercado.
Courtesy Museo de las Americas
Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, December 6, 5 to 9 p.m., and Saturday, December 7, noon to 5 p.m.
(Mexican Tin Art Workshop, 5:30 p.m. Friday, $15 to $20, register here)
Not far from CHAC, the Museo de las Americas will host a two-day Holiday Mercado with handmades, art, jewelry and other gift items created by local Latinx artists. It begins during the art district's First Friday art-walking festivities, including an optional ticketed Mexican Tin Art Workshop (details above), and continues the next afternoon.
The Holiday Show
Urban Mud, 530 Santa Fe Drive
December 6 through 22
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 5 to 8 p.m.
Urban Mud members — who have use of the building’s back-room clay studio, equipment and supplies — will load up the front-room gallery with handmade ceramic gift items both functional and purely decorative. After Friday's reception, the gallery will be open only by appointment through December 22; call 720-271-9601.
Honoring Our Lady de Guadalupe and Tonantzin
CHAC Gallery 40 West, 7060 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
December 6 through 27
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 5 to 9 p.m.
CHAC’s 40 West exhibition centers around imagery inspired by the mestizo reimagining of Catholicism’s Mary as entangled with the Aztec goddess Tonantzin, a Mexican earth mother figure.
Co-curator Bianca Dominguez, a participant in MSU Denver's MSU Denver Journey Through Our Heritage program, hangs with the art for Creating Sacred Spaces.
Courtesy Journey Through Our Heritage, MSU Denver
Genesis Art Gallery, Lakewood United Methodist Church, 1390 Brentwood Street, Lakewood
December 4 through January 4
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 4:33 to 9:06 p.m.
CHAC also manages to wind its way into a third holiday exhibition, Creating Sacred Spaces: Reconnecting to Identity & Culture, in collaboration with MSU Denver's Journey Through Our Heritage (JTOH) program and the Colorado Folk Arts Council. Curated by JTOH students Bianca Dominguez and Larysa Medina, the showcase encapsulates the mentoring work JTOH does with local middle and high school students, via MSU’s Chicano/Chicana Studies and Department of Africana Studies.
Grab a sketch journal adorned with photography by Edge member Eric Havelock Bailie at Edge's Cool Yule show.
Courtesy Eric Havelock Bailie
6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
December 6 through December 22
Edge Gallery: Cool Yule
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 6 to 9 p.m.
Core Art Space: Core’s Favorite Things: A Small Works Show
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 5 to 10 p.m.
Holiday Party: Sunday, December 15, noon to 4 p.m.
Closing Reception: Sunday, December 22, noon to 4 p.m.
Next Gallery: Winter Art Market
Opening Reception and Dessert Bar: Friday, December 6, 5 to 9 p.m.
40 West Hub co-ops Core, Edge and Next will all host receptions for holiday art markets on First Friday, making for a promising and festive gallery walk augmented by food trucks and a welcoming vibe. Other 40 West venues throughout the art district will follow suit, including Memento Mori’s always wicked and beguiling Krampus show and a gift show and sale at Mint & Serif. Knock yourself out.
FoolProof hosts a new series of exhibitions with a sculptural theme.
Courtesy FoolProof Contemporary Art
Iron Art Friends
Claire Jackel
FoolProof Contemporary Art, 3240 Larimer Street
December 6 through January 19
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 6-9:30 p.m.
FoolProof premieres a trio of new shows with a mostly cultural overarching theme of sculpture, inspired by gallery director Laura Phelps Rogers’s recent attendance at a national biennial metal-casting conference. Pearlsnaps showcases members of the Western Cast Iron Art Alliance, including Denver’s own Rian Kerrane, whose solid solo show is up at the Emmanuel Gallery through March 8, while Iron Art Friends further sources work by the national iron-casting community. Artist Claire Jackel has an installation in the back gallery, paired with 2-D work by Laura Stewart DeRosa and RedLine artist Devin Urioste.
Brady Smith, Sitting Together
Kin Studio, 4725 16th Street, Boulder
December 6 through January 30
Opening Reception: Friday, December 6, 5 to 7 p.m.
Denver artist Brady Smith presents intricate chair drawings and portraits of two friends communing at Kin Studio in Boulder. Smith opines visually on mental health through art practice and the healthy glow of human contact.
Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].
