First Friday: CHAC Comes Home for Día de los Muertos, and More Great Shows in Denver

The Chicano Humanities and Arts Council has been making art and preserving traditions for four decades, first on the Northside and then in Lincoln Park/La Alma, until rising rents and hard times sent the group on an exodus to Lakewood. Now CHAC is back, and will open its Día de los Muertos show on Santa Fe Drive. That’s the first thing to know on this First Friday of October 2023.

And there's plenty more to see and do in Denver this weekend. Keep reading for the best First Friday forays in and around town:
Life, Death and Rebirth: Vida, Muerte y Renacimiento
CHAC Gallery, 834 Santa Fe Drive
October 6 through November 17
Grand Opening Celebration/Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 6 to 9 p.m.
The artists of CHAC are coming home to Santa Fe Drive, and you’re invited to the party. The grand opening for CHAC’s new forever gallery space in La Alma happens just as the season segues into Día de los Muertos celebrations, a busy time for the city’s Hispanic community. The exhibition, Life, Death and Rebirth: Vida, Muerte y Renacimiento, curated by boardmember Sonia Del Real and Shay Guerrero, a painter of beautiful catrinas and pets that have crossed the bridge, will revel in that spirit visually and traditionally, while gallery-goers adorn a community altar with fond reminders of those who’ve moved on from life, enjoy servings of sweet pan de muertos and decorate sugar skulls; there will also be vendors and live music. Welcome back.
Sama Alshaibi: Silsila
Clara Hatton Gallery, 551 West Pitkin Street, CSU campus, Fort Collins
October 5 through December 22
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 5, 4:30 p.m.

Kimberly Chiaris: Shadowed Glimpses
Art Lab Fort Collins, 239 Linden Street, Fort Collins
October 6 through October 28
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 5:30 to 8 p.m.
The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins debuts a pair of new shows at different satellite locations. Sama Alshaibi: Silsila, a stunning multimedia display that follows Alshaibi’s seven-year travels documenting ancient deserts and endangered water sources in the Middle East and North Africa, puts a selection of performative photographic prints and video in Colorado State University’s Hatton Gallery. The second exhibition, Shadowed Glimpses, brings analog, alternative, mixed-media and handmade photography projects by Kimberly Chiaris to the community art space Art Lab Fort Collins on Friday. Chiaris frequently works with pinhole photography and cyanotype images that she might fold, roll or incorporate into artist books, all with an interest in visual storytelling.

Athena Project/Pink Progression, Crossing Borders
40 West Gallery, 40 West Hub, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
October 6 through October 28
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 6 to 9 p.m.
Two big champions of women, BIPOC and queer artists, the Athena Project and Pink Progression, teamed up to curate Crossing Borders, a group show addressing a myriad of subjects that fit under that umbrella, from crossing the literal border of two countries to the psychological ones we don’t always honor. Tag team-curated by Athena’s Angela Astle and Anne Myers, and Pink Progression’s Melissa Furness and Anna Kaye, the exhibition showcases fifteen artists whose responses will express a broad diversity of solutions to the challenge.
Whitney Bradshaw: OUTCRY
Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC), 1200 Lincoln Street
Through October 7
Closing Reception: Friday, October 6, 6 to 9 p.m.
OUTCRY, Whitney Bradshaw’s astonishing portrait exhibition of women and non-binary people screaming against inner pain, breakups, racism, the patriarchy, sexual assault, capitalism, war and international aggression — or whatever it is that makes them unrequitedly angry — is closing this week. The sight of the hundreds of photographed screamers Bradshaw displays in a grid on the wall is powerful enough (the series has surpassed 450 images), but Bradshaw is also leading a scream session that will add to the impact; unfortunately, seating is extremely limited and it's been full for weeks. You can still see the show, though, which hosts a closing reception with Bradshaw in person on Friday and stays up through Saturday.
Karen Scharer and Christina Sorace Mackinnon, Unexpected Landscapes
Space Gallery, 400 Santa Fe Drive
October 6 through November 11
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 6 to 8 p.m.
A pair of abstract painters with a twist, Karen Scharer and Christina Sorace Mackinnon, have solos opening at Space Gallery on First Friday. Scharer, who is based in Pueblo, switched from realistic watercolors to abstract canvases in oil or acrylic some years ago, but the landscape still forms the bare bones of her work, with sunshiny outdoor colors suggesting figures, flowers, clouds, sky, water and trees. Mackinnon’s approach is busier, with mediums freely mixed on one surface in furiously active diverse shapes, marks, patterns and colors, all curving into one another for a look that’s composed in spite of its messy sense of élan. Life is like that, isn’t it?
Brady Smith: 5,000 sq. ft., 3 Car Garage
Alto Gallery, RiNo ArtPark, 1900 35th Street, Suite B
October 6 through October 28
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 6 to 10 p.m., RSVP here
If you often walk through your neighborhood, observing familiar places and unexpected surprises, Brady Smith’s exhibition of screen prints and collagraphs opening at Alto Gallery will feel just like home. Smith calls 5,000 sq. ft., 3 Car Garage a “love letter” to the suburban experience, though its pictures of houses and yards are often printed in commercial-looking halftones that create a feeling of monotony. The show is set up for viewers to follow a path around the gallery, just as you might walk down the sidewalk, turning corners here and there until the halfway mark, where the same images repeat in a backward direction.
Ilan Gutin, at is now, is not the time
Understudy, 890 C 14th Street
Through October 29
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 6 to 9 p.m.
Ilan Gutin has also hung a show meant to be seen in sequence, and meant to evoke the safety of screens and woven textiles that guard your personal space from outsiders. At is now, is not the time began as a series of fifty gridded screen prints inspired by window screens; those images were converted into commercial-grade textured weavings on a Jacquard loom. Gutin hopes the installation heightens viewer observations and a sense of being at home in a protected place.

From Prison Walls to Gallery Halls
People’s Building, 9995 East Colfax Avenue, Aurora
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 5 to 7 p.m.
The Prison Art Experience offers a platform for incarcerated (or formerly incarcerated) artists to find redemption and purpose through the power of creativity by making and selling their original artworks for a profit. It’s a baby step, but one worth trying by giving people experiencing life behind bars a sense of a better future. The organization will host From Prison Walls to Gallery Halls, a show of works at the People’s Building in Aurora curated by program founder Roohallah M., who’s experienced prison life himself; online bidding is now open for an art auction here, through October 17.
Carlos Lucero, La Danza de la Vida!
BuCu West, 4200 Morrison Road
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 5 to 8 p.m.
BuCu West hosts artist Carlos Lucero, aka Zero the Painter, for a Día de los Muertos-ready show depicting a series of street El Catrin images and other works, from Frida portraits to a rooster close-up. Food and beverages will be served.
Mug Shot
Urban Mud Gallery, 530 Santa Fe Drive
October 6 through October 27
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 5 to 8 p.m.
The first image that pops up in some people's minds when hearing the word “pottery” is probably a coffee mug, that stalwart of clay art and a must in the cupboard for java drinkers everywhere. So the artsy ceramic artists of the Urban Mud clay studio and gallery have no qualms about selling mugs as the gifty season approaches. It’s a badge of honor for them, and a boon for you.
Louis Recchia, New and Vintage Artwork
Judith Grey, Riparian Botanicals
Pirate: Contemporary Art, 7130 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
October 6 through October 22
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 6 to 10 p.m.
A certain sector of gallery-goers and co-op collectors get excited when Louis Recchia hangs a show at Pirate. His pop imagery of sleek, reveling anthropomorphic animals, retro fairy tales and storybook people, painted in pale, pretty shades on Plexiglas or canvas, never go out of style. Recchia will present both new work and old relics from the archives. Zoa Ace and Mark Friday share the empty spots on the walls, and Pirate Judith Grey chips in with her member exhibition, Riparian Botanicals.
Fred Becker, Ambiguous Abstraction
Sam Smith, 0% Juice
Core Art Space, 40 West Hub, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
October 6 through October 22
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 5 to 10 p.m.
You might suppose that Core’s Fred Voigt Becker paints for painting’s sake, letting the paint take him wherever it wants to go with a pleasing culmination of repetitive markings in keen color combos or more helter-skelter canvases that seem to always right themselves compositionally. Meanwhile, Sam Smith considers the big questions everyone’s asking about AI in his show, 0% Juice. What could possibly go wrong?

Terra Marks, Inevitable: decline, decay, revival, hope
Tamara Mahoney, Lumorous
Next Gallery, 40 West Hub, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
October 6 through October 22
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 5 to 10 p.m.
Next Gallery pairs Terra Marks, who keeps it sweet and light with Lumorous, a show about donkeys, and Tamara Mahoney, whose more serious effort, Inevitable, explores the circle of life, needle-felted mushrooms, and cogs and gears in an installation of assemblages.
Stephen Shugart, Phase Shift
Wynne Reynolds, Hold Your Breath
Edge Gallery, 40 West Hub, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
October 6 through October 22
Opening reception: Friday, October 6, 6 to 9 p.m.
What’s new at Next? Stephen Shugart will display light sculptures with a message about industrialism’s siege on our rapidly warming planet Earth, using a range of materials like plastic shrink wrap, indestructible Styrofoam and LED lights and the like, countered by twigs, strings, wood and stones. Wynne Reynolds, on the other hand, uses her own foraged findings — sailor’s knots, plaster fragments and other detritus — to create a dark story evoked by stormy seas and broken hearts.
Wood Metal Paint
FoolProof Contemporary Art, 3240 Larimer Street
Through November 18
Artist Reception: Friday, October 6, 6 to 9:30 p.m.; Saturday, October 7, 2 to 5 p.m.
Wood Metal Paint, a fifteen-artist group show with an expository title, has been up for a while at FoolProof, but it's saving the reception for this weekend.

Opposing Ideas in Mind
The Lab on Santa Fe, 840 Santa Fe Drive
October 6 through October 29
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 14, 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Opposing Ideas in Mind was inspired by this quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Artists who were brave enough to send submissions required to do just that — visually, in an artwork — and who survived the test, including running a gauntlet of seven jurors from a variety of creative disciplines, will see their works pairing opposites on the walls of the Lab this month. While the show opens on First Friday, the formal reception will be held the following weekend.
Resonance 2023: Art Invitational
A.R. Mitchell Museum, 150 East Main Street, Trinidad
October 6 through December 29
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 5 to 8 p.m.
More than thirty artists from Colorado and across the nation were invited to the Mitchell Museum’s second challenge to create paintings based on individual photographs culled from painter A.R. Mitchell’s vast archive of his own historic images. A mix of new invitees and returning artists from last year’s inaugural exhibition will have their entries displayed next to the original photos. It’s a long drive, but a must-see for serious fans of Western art — and the show remains open through the end of the year.
Julio Alejandro and Danielle Cunningham, phat earth/space is the place
Bell Projects, 2822 East 17th Avenue
October 7 through October 29
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 7, 6 to 10 p.m.
Pour One Out for Laika Costume Party: Thursday, October 26, 7 to 9 p.m., $10 here
The child-like works of collaborative couple Julio Alejandro and Danielle Cunningham may fool the eye, but in their joint show, phat earth/space is the place, there’s a lot of commentary behind the stick figures and scrawled messages. Fueled by science fiction — and science itself — the show shoots for outer space, with interim alien adventures and thought guided by a mixed cocktail of the humanities. Also, it’s hella fun.

Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].