And don't miss the Arvada Center’s Mo’Print 2024 shows when they open this week, with an eye on dozens of Colorado printmakers. Where to start? Here’s the list:
See exuberant print work by artist Taiko Chandler at the Arvada Center's 528.0: Regional Juried Printmaking Exhibition.
Taiko Chandler
Artist Proof: Print Process at Oehme Graphics, Upper Gallery
Sue Oehme: Inclusions, Theatre Gallery
Arvada Center for the Art and Humanities, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, Arvada
January 18 through March 24
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 18, 6 to 9 p.m.
Sue Oehme, Kaleidoscope
Space Gallery, 400 Santa Fe Drive
January 19 through February 24
Opening Reception: Friday, January 19, 6 to 9 p.m.
It’s a big week for Steamboat Springs-based master printer Sue Oehme, as it ought to be: As the Denver Month of Printmaking 2024 biennial approaches, Oehme more than deserves double honors as an artist and as a skilled technician who guides other artists through the heavy lifting of printmaking. It looks like this is her year at Mo’print, beginning with the launch of three exhibitions: two opening January 18 at the Arvada Center, including a solo show, Sue Oehme: Inclusions, and a group show, Artist Proof, of works created by sixteen notable artists at Oehme Graphics. Her presence is announced from the moment one walks into the center’s lobby, where her monumental curtain of colored shapes hangs from the ceiling; a second solo show by Oehme, Kaleidoscope, opens at Space Gallery the next evening.
Noah Travis Phillips, “The Screaming Weathers: 99, 90, 37, 24.”
Noah Travis Phillips, courtesy of Union Hall.
Union Hall Gallery at the Coloradan, 1750 Wewatta Street, Suite 144
January 18 through February 10
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 18, 6 to 8 p.m. Curatorial Talk With Jennifer Lord: Wednesday, January 31, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Dirty Abstraction Book Club: Wednesday, February 7, 6 to 7:30 p.m. (details and registration here)
Union Hall’s signature curatorial series Rough Gems returns for another year, with three shows put together by emerging curators spaced one after the other throughout late winter and early spring. First up is Dirty Abstractions, curated by Jennifer Lord, currently an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Works by Joan Anderson, Paula Damasceno, Anthony Garcia Sr., Noah Travis Phillips, Claire A. Warden and Jen Wohlner uphold the idea that non-representational art can hold expository meanings beyond shape, color and composition. Lord will give insights at a curator’s talk on January 31.
Dylan Griffith: Magic Apple
Galleri Gallery, Meow Wolf Denver, 1338 First Street
Through May 3
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 18, 6 to 8 p.m.
Meow Wolf Admission: $30 to $45, by timed entry here
Dylan Griffith’s mystical drawings and paintings have a souped-up, contemporized outsider vibe aimed right at a visceral inner world where gremlins, pretty girls, animals and heroic figures tell stories that viewers might not fully understand. But Griffith’s fantasy scenarios are actually quite charming, even while making some of us uncomfortable, and well worth the trek (and a ticket) to Meow Wolf’s Galleri Gallery. The theme of the Magic Apple suggests life as a heroic journey, rife with pitfalls and wrong-way turns, with the apple being the prize.
A Mona Lucero art outfit echoes a landscape by Jenny Wilson at D'art.
Courtesy D'art Gallery
Colorado Women’s Art Museum: MAGPIES: A Collection of Art Collectors’ Collections, in the East Gallery
D’art Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
January 18 through February 11
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 18, 6 to 9 p.m.
Magpies Black & White Soiree Reception: Saturday, January 20, 6 to 9 p.m.
Art Appreciators’ Night: Friday, January 19, 5 to 9 p.m.
Curator’s Cocktail Party With Tammy Abramovitz: Saturday, January 27, 6 to 9 p.m.
Sundays on Santa Fe: Sunday, January 28, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
First Friday: Friday, February 2, 5 to 9 p.m.
Mimosas With Mona Fashion Pop-Up: Sunday, February 11, 1 to 4 p.m.
The two shows opening at D’art Gallery this week diverge from the usual in pleasant ways. In the Main Gallery, the member show Invitation to Linger showcases abstract painters Karla Raines and James-Allan Holmes, and landscapist Jenny Wilson, an artist who strives to capture a spiritual light or aura spread by Mother Nature. But here’s the twist: The fourth artist is fashion designer Mona Lucero, whose richly ornamented wearable art garments are spread around the floor on mannequins, echoing the art on the walls. Curated by Tammy Abramovitz, a social tastemaker with a flair for throwing gorgeous parties, the show is also designed as a backdrop for special events in the gallery, including a Curator’s Cocktail Party on January 27 and Mimosas With Mona, a Valentine’s Day soirée and pop-up shop on February 11. In the East Gallery, the Colorado Women’s Art Museum presents Magpie, a show of art by women from several local personal collections. CWAM will host its own black-and-white soirée on January 20.
Kristy Smith and Karin Kempe, This Moment
Sync Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
January 18 through February 11
Opening Reception: Friday, January 19, 1 to 9 p.m.
Sync Gallery artists Kristy Smith and Karin Kempe both erase the boundaries between abstract and representational in their wide-ranging practices, and the title of their shared show, This Moment, says it all: Do what you want, whenever. Smith approaches her work through the structure of process, while Kempe follows a more intuitional inner voice.
The Unusual Suspects
Rule Gallery, 808 Santa Fe Drive
January 19 through March 9
Opening Reception: Friday, January 19, 6 to 8 p.m.
It’s all about the shapes of things: Rule pairs Joe Clower and Amber Cobb in a well-matched show fed by private and unorthodox visuals in, respectively, paintings on paper and small-scale sculptures. Clower, a member of Boulder’s influential Armory Group in the late ’60s and the Criss-Cross artist co-operative in the ’70s, offers mechanical imagery in largely untitled watercolor paintings on paper, while Cobb’s familiar organic sculptures in wood, metal, epoxy and enamel twist human-inspired shapes into visual representations of the human condition.
Counterpart: A Collaborative Exhibition by Brett Matarazzo
Denise Pfau Demby, The Source of My Disillusion
Pirate: Contemporary Art, 7130 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
January 19 through February 4
Opening Reception: Friday, January 26, 6 to 10 p.m.
Artist Brett Matarazzo, an associate member at Pirate, as well as a co-director of BRDG Project, is also a fan of artist collaborations. Therefore, he’s chosen to include personal collaborations with several local artists with widely varied practices for his Pirate exhibition Counterpart. Works were generally handed back and forth so each artist could freely add to the final product. Between the meetings of creative minds and wildly different style mixtures, it’s going to be fun and fascinating. Meanwhile, in the members’ gallery, Denise Pfau Demby, who also founded 931 Gallery, shows her depth in a show of steel and glass sculpture, and abstract and color-field expressionist paintings.
Remix
NKollectiv, 960 Santa Fe Drive
January 19 through February 11
Opening Reception: Friday, January 19, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Remix at NKollectiv is just that: a fresh collection of art by gallery members for a fresh year. Alongside their ceramics, metal, glass, wood, jewelry, paintings and mixed-media works, biracial Jamaican-born guest artist SA Bennett will present a recent body of work that swings away from acrylic paintings to experimentation with ink resist, cold wax and oils while also veering toward abstracted, rather than literal, representations.
Talia Johns, Hypothesis: A Tapestry of Expression
931 Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
Through February 18
Opening Reception: Friday, January 19, 5 to 9 p.m.
Ukrainian fiber artist Talia Johns brings woven, collaged and mixed-media paper tapestries to 931, exploring color palettes and environment-friendly materials. Hypothesis is Johns’s first solo exhibition in the United States.
¡Viva México!
Parsons Theatre, Northglenn Arts, 1 East Memorial Parkway, Northglenn
January 19 through February 11
Opening Reception: Friday, January 19, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
CHAC Gallery artists bring a new member show, ¡Viva México!, to their northern outpost in the Northglenn Arts Parsons Theatre Gallery. A celebration of Mexican cultural identity and art forms, the exhibition unfolds a sense of pride in the Mexican heritage of Colorado’s Chicanos. For the best introduction to the art, food, music and dance of Mexico, don’t miss the reception, where refreshments, live music and traditional dance will entertain visitors.
Clint Eccher, “The 27 Club,” acrylic on canvas
Clint Eccher
Bitfactory, 851 Santa Fe Drive
January 19 through March 9
Opening Reception: Friday, January 19, 6 to 9 p.m.
Bitfactory’s annual No Show Invitational is deliberately curated to be wide and messy, lacking in theme or similarities in style and medium. That’s the beauty of it, and in 2024, Bitfactory gallerist and curator Bill Thomason selected a group of artists new to the gallery, including Clint Eccher, Meredith Fontana, Lance Green, Steven Morrell, Amanda Thurmon and Riah Urquhart.
Evans School Open Studios and Art Market
Evans School Building, 1115 Acoma Street
Saturday, January 20, noon to 6 p.m.
After several test runs, the artists of the Evans School Building, located just south of the Denver Art Museum, are launching a monthly Open Studios and Art Market event. The public is invited to visit on every third Saturday, beginning January 20, when more than twenty artists swing their doors open and show people what they do. Admission is free, and artworks will be for sale direct from the makers; one tenant, neü folk gallery, will host a closing reception for the show Drawing Curiosity, which both simplifies and expands on the limits of the medium.
Christine Nguyen and Matthew Brandt, “Garden Picture 9” (detail), 2023, archival pigment inks on paper.
Christine Nguyen and Matthew Brandt, David B. Smith Gallery
Matthew Brandt and Christine Nguyen, Garden Pictures, in the Project Room
David B. Smith Gallery, 1543 A Wazee Street
January 20 through February 17
Opening Reception: Friday, January 19, 5 to 8 p.m.
Christine Nguyen and Chris Oatey share space for Indexing Nature in the Main Gallery at David B. Smith, each showing large works on paper. Nguyen’s contribution focuses on an annual project of growing, harvesting and capturing images of sunflowers as cyanotypes, while Oatey’s practice involves driving his car over clean sheets of paper in a parking lot, later using carbon paper to capture the textures left behind. In the Project Room, Nguyen collaborated across the miles with L.A.-based artist Matthew Brandt to make Garden Pictures, a series of photos of their home gardens that they traded back and forth, each altering the imagery digitally with gorgeous psychedelic outcomes.
Levi Fischer, “The Blue Apartment.”
Levi Fischer
The Lab on Santa Fe, 840 Santa Fe Drive
Through February 10
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, January 20, 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Catch another “anything goes” style of exhibition at the Lab on Santa Fe, where Lab founder Josh Berkowitz curated I Am That!, a show with an emphatic theme that allows artists of every stripe to strictly be themselves.
Celebrating Colorado’s Black Street Artists
Museum of Boulder, 2205 Broadway, Boulder
Muralist Panel Discussion: Saturday, January 20, 1:30 to 3 p.m.; admission is $7.50 at Eventbrite
Boulder’s Street Wise Arts facilitated new murals by Black artists last fall to coincide with the opening of the Museum of Boulder’s exhibit Proclaiming Colorado's Black History. To learn more about the fall mural project, which specifically included themes of building community, Afrofuturism and social justice, and hear directly from the artists, the museum will host a panel discussion with Black muralists Jahna Rae, Yazz Atmore, Devin “Speaks” Urioste, Rob Hill and Marcus Murray discussing activism and art, moderated by artist Moe Gram. Proclaiming Colorado's Black History is open through September 2025. To visit the murals being discussed, use the map at streetwisearts.org, filtered to show murals from 2023.
Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].
