Bundle up and see some hot shows this weekend!
A sample of Colorado artist Chuck McCoy's work for the Arvada Center's Art of the State 2025.
Chuck McCoy
Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, Arvada
January 16 through March 30
Perhaps the most important showcase of art made in Colorado, the Arvada Center’s triennial Art of the State is neither overly lavish nor overestimated. The 2025 version was pared down from 2,503 open-call submissions by 911 artists to a definitive 148 artworks by 145 artists by a three-person jury: new Union Hall director Jane Burke, Chris Heron of the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, and Collin Parson, the center’s own gallery director and curator. The art that made the cut is workmanlike in an egalitarian and beautiful way, best showing what sets each artist off from all the others, both because of and beyond the wide breadth of mediums used. From co-op long-timers to names attached to tony commercial galleries, the representation is loose and friendly.
Rough Gems: Transnavigation: Coming Into the Body as Home
Union Hall Gallery, The Coloradan, Suite 144, 1750 Wewatta Street
Through February 8
Curatorial Talk with Rae Richards: Thursday, January 23, 6 to 7 p.m.
Into the Skin: Transnavigation, Closing Party: Thursday, February 6, 6 to 8 p.m.
Union Hall’s open-call curatorial program Rough Gems returns with the first of three exhibitions mounted by emerging curators. Transnavigation, curated by Rae Richards, an MSU Denver graduate in Industrial Design, continues in the Rough Gems tradition of presenting art that explores themes from diverse underrepresented groups. In this case, the focus lands on the infusion of queer theory into jewelry-making. The participating artists all foster metalsmithing practices infused by trans ideology and body politics, while some work in other mediums, too. Think of it as a trunk show of adornments and artwork telling personal stories that set their makers free.
One of several sculptures in Fitz Lewis's solo show, The Peace Found, at Leon Gallery.
Fitz Lewis, courtesy Leon Gallery
Leon Gallery, 1112 East 17th Avenue
Through February 22
Fitz Lewis’s impressive exhibition remains on view through February 22. Autobiography weighs heavily in Lewis’s work, represented in The Peace Found by sculptural works mirroring painful personal stories of an abusive upbringing and an emotionally unstable tour of duty with the U.S. Army. One, a molded, golden self-portrait bust hung within a string-bound, spiked wire wreath, takes the artist’s psychic battles to nearly biblical proportions. But there is also a sense of healing in works built from common materials with ties to Lewis’s past — or at the very least, a sense of finding a way through. Leon is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays, or by appointment, and word is that Lewis will be sitting the gallery on Sunday, January 19. Appointments and info at [email protected] or 303-832-1599.
Deborah Carlson, Alanna Peters and Benjamin Stanford, Surface Tensions
Shane Epping in Gallery East
D’art Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
January 16 through February 9
Opening Reception: Friday, January 24, 6 to 9 p.m.
D’art Gallery members Deborah Carlson, Alanna Peters and Benjamin Stanford share solos on the theme of Surface Tensions; Carlson incorporates glass into sculpture and wall-hung panels, while Peters and Stanford astound with photo-realist figure paintings. Photographer Shane Epping shows new work in Gallery East.
Doug Haeussner, "Subconscious Soul," multimedia collage, National Geographic Magazine cutouts and acrylic on canvas.
Doug Haeussner, courtesy Walker Fine Art
Walker Fine Art, 300 West 11th Avenue, Unit A
January 17 through March 8
Opening Reception: Friday, January 17, 5 to 8 p.m., and Saturday, January 18, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The latest group at Walker Fine Art — Deidre Adams, Doug Haeussner, Farida Hughes, Brandon Reese, Blair Vaughn-Gruler and Danny Williams — bind abstraction and a jewel-box of personal experience in wildly different ways, from Hughes’s mixed-media paintings in explosive, translucent colors to Williams’s pulsing, sculptural wave-form paintings or Haeussner’s layered mixed-media collages using cutouts of printed matter. Altogether, this show is a feast for the eyes.
A sampler of artwork from the Dairy's group show Black Futures in Art.
Courtesy Dairy Arts Center
Jocelyn Roy, Feel the Love
Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder
January 17 through March 30
Opening Reception: Friday, January 17, 6 to 7 p.m.
Artist Talk: Thursday, February 13, 5 to 8 p.m., free, RSVP here
Closing Reception: Thursday, March 27, 5 to 8 p.m.; free, RSVP here
Two new shows kick off the Dairy’s spring gallery exhibitions. Black Futures in Art: The Space Between Us is a group show shaped by new curator Stella Witcher, who says the subtitle, "The Space Between Us," is a positive declaration that “in a world often marked by divisions of race, class and cultural differences, this exhibition asks us to reflect on how those separations came to be, why they persist, and what it will take to dismantle them,” Grab that outstretched hand and go with it, and then learn more at the artist talk in February. Opening in the Dairy’s Locals Only Gallery is Feel the Love, a showcase of painter and digital artist Jocelyn Roy’s oeuvre of historical storytelling and portrait painting with a focus on common folks. Roy is a longtime artist and activist at Denver’s Access Gallery, an empowerment program for talented people with disabilities.
Rochelle Johnson, "Meditational Moments."
Rochelle Johnson, courtesy Bell Projects
Bell Projects, 2822 East 17th Avenue
January 17 through February 23
Opening Reception: Friday, January 17, 6 to 10 p.m.
Bell Projects mounts Our Imagined Future this week, a strong, prophetic group exhibition guest-curated by the Los Angeles-based Iraqi-Jewish artist Naima White. White joins her picks, Brenda Melgoza Ciardiello, Laura Esbensen, Jalaina Felker, Karen Fisher, Cindi Gaudette, Rochelle Johnson and Brandon Kuehn in predicting the future through art shaped by personal lenses. For White, that grows out of her heritage and its inherent immigration story, but this wide-open subject offers global and speculative points of view, from a variety of feminist outcomes, Octavia Butler’s time-traveling future to the outcomes of mass UFO sightings over centuries. Hop aboard!
-Raven Rohrig, “The Secrets I Keep In Fear Of Losing You,” gouache and ink on paper.”
Raven Rohrig
Bitfactory Gallery, 851 Santa Fe Drive
January 17 through February 22
Opening Reception: Friday, January 17, 6 to 9 p.m.
A variety of Bitfactory studio artists star in this annual New-Year showcase, invited to bring art out into the open to give viewers an inkling of what they’ve been doing behind those studio doors. There will be a lot to see—paintings, drawings, wearab le art and jewelry, mixed media and more—with results that are completely singular. Power on.
Installation views of Language Without Words: Works by Ash Eliza Williams.
Ash Eliza Williams, courtesy Denver Botanic Gardens
Seeds of Inspiration, January 18 through May 20
Anna Kaye: Finding Light, February 15 through May 20
Denver Botanic Gardens, 1007 York Street
Ash Eliza Williams Artist Talk: Thursday, January 23, 6:30 to 8 p.m.; $12 member, $15 non-member, register here
Spring Exhibitions Reception: Wednesday, March 5, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.; free, RSVP here
Been to the Denver Botanic Gardens galleries lately? If not, you’ve already missed the beginning salvo of the art program’s spring rollout: Language Without Words: Works by Ash Eliza Williams, a stunning exhibition of paintings and sculpture that bind geological and biological inhabitants of earth and the universe in sentient communication. In Williams’s world, massive boulders converse with tree branches and slowly encroaching lichens and moth wings echo clouds and the moon. Next, there’s Seeds of Inspiration, scheduled to open Friday, January 18. But folks will have to wait to see this new botanical illustration exhibition from Botanical Interests LLC, the Colorado-based seed company that packages its product in packets with beautiful artwork: The gardens will now be closed over the weekend due to extreme weather conditions. An artist talk by Williams on January 23 (details above) offers a good excuse to catch up when the cold breaks, and both shows, along with Anna Kaye: Finding Light (opening February 15) will be celebrated with a Spring Exhibitions Reception on March 5 (details above).
Lanny DeVuono, “Monuments 3,” 2023, gouache, gesso and graphite on wooden panel.
Lanny DeVuono, courtesy Nick Ryan Gallery
Lanny DeVuono: Human Nature
Nick Ryan Gallery, 1221 Pennsylvania Avenue, Boulder
January 18 through March 1
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 18, 3:30 to 6 p.m.
Well-matched solos from Brenda Stumpf and Lanny DeVuono debut at the Nick Ryan Gallery in Boulder, with Stumpf bringing life to salvaged materials in sculptural memorials to the passage of human experience, and DeVuono contemplating human folly as dwarfed by the timeless existence of planets, water on Mars and meteors in space, and rock edifices on earth.
New Beginnings
NKollectiv, EASEL, 3485 South Broadway, Englewood
January 18 through February 23
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 18, 2 to 6 p.m.
The members of NKollectiv are finally at home in their new gallery as the building anchor at Englewood Art Space Events Lessons (EASEL) on South Broadway, ready to celebrate with New Beginnings, a group show and welcome to the neighborhood. See the show and check out the vast second-floor enclave above Mutiny Comics & Coffee, which includes flexible, rentable studio and event space.
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