Art Attack: Fourteen Things for Art Lovers to See and Do in Denver

It’s another banner weekend for art across the metro area, with everything from an Eames-chair paean at the Kirkland to an exhibition of chastity regalia. Get out while the sun is high and make the rounds. Here are fourteen shows that should be on your itinerary:

Brian Shields, Myths, Lyrics and Landscapes
Jeff Baldus, Scholar Rocks
Michael Warren Contemporary, 760 Santa Fe Drive
Through August 24
Opening Reception: Friday, July 19, 5 to 8 p.m.
Brian Shields, an environmentalist who lives and works in northern New Mexico, makes big, bright, chaotic abstracted landscapes that swirl with color and action. Jeff Baldus, on the other hand, makes work rooted in the earth, creating bronze sculpture that mimics the twists and turns of box elder driftwood. Want to know more about the art? The artists will talk about their work from 10:30 a.m. to noon Saturday, July 20, at the gallery.

Nature Changes
Rachek Doran: Alopecia
Erin McAllister: Sanctuary
Art Gym Denver, 1460 Leyden Street
July 18 through August 9
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 18, 5 to 8 p.m.
The main gallery at Art Gym will house a members' show with work inspired by nature and the environment in a mixed bag of mediums. For example, Gigia Kolouch’s Going Home encaustic series checks in on changes in the artist's garden over a forty-year period. In the Common Space, Rachel Doran and Erin McAllister explore the therapeutic and meditative sides of art in paintings and mixed-media fiber, respectively.

Topher Straus: The Parks
American Mountaineering Center and Museum, 710 Tenth Street, Golden
July 18 through September 30
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 18, 6 to 9 p.m.
Topher Straus and the American Mountaineering Center and Museum were made for each other. Straus’s large, digital landscape prints of mountain parks are applied to aluminum surfaces for an abstracted look that suggests the very canyon walls and mountain peaks the center was built to extol. As a bonus, the reception for Straus’s show will include punch from Golden Moon Distillery, beer from Golden City Brewery and bites from Cheese Ranch.

Lisa Calzavara, With or Without Hue
Sync Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
July 18 through August 10
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 18, 6 to 9 p.m.
Sync member Lisa Calzavara calls her abstract works “pictograms” that weave stories into liquid shapes on canvas. If you miss the opening, you have a second chance to view the show as part of your First Friday stroll through the Art District on Santa Fe.

Stitching Stories: Contemporary Maya Textiles by the Multicolores Cooperative of Guatemala
Latino Cultural Arts Center, 2705 West Colfax Avenue
Reception: Thursday, July 18, 5 to 7 p.m.
Multicolores Hooked-Rug Sale
Hijos del Sol, 2715 West Eighth Avenue
Saturday, July 20, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Mayan women of the Guatemalan collective Multicolores, known for their beautiful hand-hooked story rugs and embroidered dolls, will get a one-night-only showcase and reception on July 18 (artist presentation at 6 p.m.) at the Latino Cultural Arts Center, 2705 West Colfax Avenue. If you like what you see, LCAC’s fundraising gift shop, Hijos del Sol, will be open for a special sale on July 20.

The Enchanted Garden
Walker Fine Art, 300 West 11th Avenue
July 19 through August 31
Opening Reception: Friday, July 19, 5 to 9 p.m.
Walker Fine Arts’ latest is a botanical wonderland, with a few birds — Meagen Svendsen’s ceramic swallows —to fly among the branches and blooms. Jean Albus, Angela Beloian, Norman Epp, Don Quade, Eileen Roscina Richardson, Ben Strawn and Ana Zanic join Svendsen in saluting the magic of the natural world in photographs, natural materials, abstractions and sculpture. Take a walk through the garden and woods in a gallery radiating peace and quiet — at least for a few weeks.

Grand Opening With Judith Cohn
Urban Mud, 530 Santa Fe Drive
July 19 through August 30
Opening Reception: Friday, July 19, 6 to 9 p.m.
Artist and gallerist Mary Mackey, a veteran of the Denver art world, will debut Urban Mud, a new gallery and clay studio co-op, with a show by an old friend, Judith Cohn, a ceramics artist who exhibited work at the Mackey Gallery in Jefferson Park a couple of decades ago. Cohn’s constructions are big in stature and ideas, providing a great introduction to Mackey’s style as an arts booster. Welcome Urban Mud to the row and check out the rest of the street during the Art District on Santa Fe’s Third Friday Art Collector’s Night.

Dateline, 3004 Larimer Street
Splendid Tree Frog: New Works by Matthew Pevear
July 19 through 29
Opening Reception: Friday, July 19, 4 to 11 p.m.
Succulents and Hypertufa Sale with TheFancyReal
Saturday and Sunday, July 20 and 21, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Dateline showcases photographer Matthew Pevear, who captures the soul of the ordinary in shots of fruit, vegetables, fences and unintentional portraits and still lifes. The gallery will be hopping on Saturday and Sunday, too, when TheFancyReal, aka artist Bruce Price, rolls up for a weekend sale of succulents and decorative hypertufa planters that he fashions from Portland cement. Price will offer instruction on how to care for your hypertufa succulent garden at 2 p.m. each day for a $5 fee.

Pastime / Past Time
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, 1201 Bannock Street
July 19 through August 25
$8 to $10 gate admission (members free)
The Kirkland throws a pop-up companion exhibition to complement the Denver Art Museum’s Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America with a display of Eames chairs and Irving Harper clocks, complete with an interactive element involving Lincoln Logs. Carla Hartman (aka the Chairs Lady), the eldest granddaughter of Charles and Ray Eames, will offer a related talk, "Up Close & Personal: Eames at Kirkland Museum,” on Wednesday, August 14, at 6:30 p.m. at the museum; find details and tickets, $18 to $25, online at Eventbrite.

Abstracted Facts: Digital Systems in Design, Painting and Sculpture
Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder
July 19 through September 1
Opening Reception: Friday, July 19, 4 to 8 p.m.
The Dairy Arts Center finishes out the summer with an exhibition extolling the intersection of digital technology and fine art, bringing together three shows — WORK WORK, by Boulder designer duo Berger & Föhr with trans-disciplinary studio artist Joseph Schaeffer; Market Watch, by Chad Erpelding; and installationist Jodi Stuart’s Pseudomorph — that take the theme in different directions with thought-provoking results. Meet the artists and curators at the opening, then see how the future is infiltrating the present look of art.

Ira Sherman: Hardcore Chastity Couture
Bitfactory Gallery, 851 Santa Fe Drive
July 19 through August 8
Opening Reception: Friday, July 19, 6 to 10 p.m.
Denver metalsmith and jewelry-maker Ira Sherman might be better known for his sideline, something medieval and a little bit twisted that he calls Chastity Couture. The wearable, mechanized costumes have a way of dropping jaws in a gallery, but he says that they are meant to create dialogue around the subject of sexual assault. Welcome to the dungeon.
Atelier Durst: Hand-Built Clay Invitational
Niza Knoll Gallery, 915 Santa Fe Drive
July 19 through September 21
Opening Reception: Friday, July 19, 5 to 8 p.m.
Artist Reception: Friday, August 23, 5 to 8 p.m.
Niza Knoll is a big fan of clay artist Peter Durst, a mentor whose South Broadway studio, gallery and sculpture garden has been turning out work for decades. As his student, Knoll wanted to share the ambience of his studio with the public through this exhibit of work by Durst and other students. Here’s your chance to see the rich clay-art lineage that Durst has nurtured over the years.

Colorado Metalsmithing Association (CoMA) All Members Show
Balefire Goods, 7417 Grandview Avenue, Arvada
July 19 through August 2
Opening Reception: Friday, July 19, 6 to 8 p.m.
As a metalsmith and jewelry artist herself, Balefire’s Jamie Hollier is an active member of the Colorado Metalsmithing Association and is hosting its annual members' show. Here’s a chance to see talent just waiting to be discovered, side by side with work by nationally known conference presenters Harlan Butt, Charles Lewton-Brain and Jesse Mathes. That’s some heavy metal.

Kelly Mansfield, Broken Open
Next Gallery, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
July 19 through August 4
Opening Reception: Friday, July 19, 6 to 10 p.m.
Next member Kelly Mansfield transforms recycled materials into pumping hearts and other symbols of empowerment during her turn in the gallery, and she’ll get to the heart of the matter by donating 15 percent of all sales from the show to the children of the Mount Saint Vincent Home in north Denver.

Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected]. For more events this weekend, see this week’s 21 Best Things to Do in Denver.