Freshly Baked: New Art Exhibition Space Cookie Factory Opens in Baker

Amanda Precourt, a Denver-based real estate developer, art collector and philanthropist, is taking her love for art to the next level by opening a new large exhibition space in Baker, housed in an old fortune cookie factory.

Cookie Factory opens to the public on Saturday, May 24, with a block party showcasing work from Sam Falls in the venue's inaugural exhibit, Nothing Without Nature. The celebration will be hosted by CPR’s Alisha Sweeney and will launch the community hub with live art from local artists Andi Todaro and Kaitlyn Tucek, family friendly activities such as fruit art and face paintings and food from Barbed Wire BBQ with ice cream, floral cotton candy, lemonade, coffee from Weewoo Coffee and more. The event will also feature live music from Gio Chamba, Danny Yuno, The Cosmosmiths, Sinclair Soul and DJ Musa Starseed.

For the Cookie Factory, this is just the start of bridging local and global views through community events each month and two shows a year in the historic Baker Neighborhood, organizers say.

Jérôme Sans, Cookie Factory curator and artistic director, explains the ethos of this new establishment. “A lot of art is centered around [the artists]," he says."Here, the center is outside…It’s all cooked, baked here.”

Proudly non-commercial and open to the public, the main purpose of the Cookie factory is to be a facilitator of conversation, creativity and collaboration, as well as to bring larger meaning to Denver in the form of a community. “This project represents a gift to the city of Denver,” says Precourt. “Through the art and through the people that work here, people will be here to find connection and commonality, rather than polarization. I think now, more than ever, we need to do something that connects… It is a part of the human experience I think we forget.”

This objective was present eight years ago when Precourt was helping a friend look for a space, and they stumbled upon the Cookie Factory. Though it wasn’t right for her friend, it sparked something for Precourt. "As a developer, the first thing I did was look up at the building, and I had this vision that this needs to be a space for art,” Precourt recalls.
With the neighborhood requiring rezoning and approval, alongside many personal struggles, it was a hard, nearly decade-long labor for this vision to be realized. Captivated by her surroundings, taking in the beauty of what the building has become with a touch of reminiscence, Precourt admits that, “I have to pinch myself.”

Every aspect of the Cookie Factory has been tailored toward serving not only Baker, but also the broader Denver and Colorado community as a place dedicated to celebrating art’s role in healing, dialogue and fostering community growth.

That includes keeping the past of the building alive, a place full of sweet wishes and fortunes. There are many sections, inside and outside, where the building's original bricks are visible and the rough wood ceiling tell stories of its past. “Adaptive reuse and paying homage to the original building is really important in the way I develop,” Precourt explains.

The 5,000-square-foot showing area is intentionally an artist's playground and home to experimentation. “Art is a great idea followed by a series of compromises," says Andrew Jensdotter, director of exhibitions and Precourt's life partner. "As a creative, you don't want that. So, the fewer compromises the better, and I think our job is to allow an artist to generate an idea and then go directly to that idea as much as possible without compromises.”

This is much easier for the Cookie Factory as a private space that isn’t guided by boards or driven by fundraising, which makes the art crafted explicitly for the Cookie Factory even more compelling and limitless.

That spirit echoes around the space in its inaugural show, Samm Falls' Nothing Without Nature. The collection of art spans from pigments on canvas, photographs, projections and banners of modern life’s impressions. Falls' work is a take on Colorado’s wonder as “an American artist.”

Most of the pieces displayed were created on the flat top mountains and near Yampa River Valley. Starting with "One Rainy Wish" and through the rest of the gallery and into his dual projection livestream "Sunrise/Sunset," where the viewer is left to engage with either side of the world in a fascinating display of connectedness on a global level, Falls engages deeply with the human experience alongside nature.

“I'm always dissecting essentially the plants, and it becomes a very… intimate, but also skeletal in what was once always like a metaphor for me, of mortality, of the briefness of life of a plant," Falls says. "The bloom, spring to fall, starts to feel really personal."

This emotion deepens with each work, revealing a deliberate and somewhat soothing investigation into existential melancholy crossing into the weight of loneliness and somber time alone.
One of the walls in the expansive Cookie Factory holds five film photographs, each containing the inherent fuzziness of this older method of photography. One is an image of the artist’s son playing with paper and light, and another captures a canvas already layered with plant life, waiting for the slow natural process that will imprint their likeness.

"The photos… get more of that poetic side of the work because so much of it is about site-specific nature and everything, but as a human artist with a lot of feelings, it is nice to have some release in the art I make,” Falls says.
There is an element of uncertainty when it comes to the Cookie Factory's future, not in its being, but in the unforeseeable evolution that Precourt, Jensdotter and Sans want to see encouraged by those they serve — Denverites. The three are dedicated to the goal of Cookie Factory becoming a place for the community, and know that listening to that community is integral to their next steps.

Precourt acknowledges that the three of them, with plenty of support, have created something special. “I hope that Denver feels the same,” she says.

The Cookie Factory at 425 West Fourth Avenue in Denver will hold a grand opening block party celebration from 1-6 p.m. on Saturday, May 24. Nothing Without Nature runs through September 24; learn more at cookiefactorydenver.com.