Meanwhile, artists continue to sort out pandemic times in exhibitions at local co-ops and galleries. At Union Hall and Rule Gallery, there will be some serious artwork and talk about BIPOC women coping with systemic racism and social justice breaches, and Emmanuel Gallery at Auraria is feting that sculptor who made the huge cows at the Denver Art Museum with a show.
Here's what to see this weekend:
Koko Colab, “Shifting Tides.”
Courtesy of Moe Gram
RedLine Contemporary Art Center, 2350 Arapahoe Street
Through October 17
Creating Space, an open call, juried group exhibition of fresh, thought-provoking work that reaches beyond the barriers of time and place, opened last weekend as part of RedLine’s 48 Hours of Socially Engaged Art & Conversation Summit. Moe Gram and Jodie Herrera juried, selecting from a group of emerging and established regional artists. Onward!
Kate Petley, "Equal Measure," 2021, archival print and acrylic on canvas.
Kate Petley, courtesy of Robischon Gallery
Tim Whiten: Tools of Conveyance
CU Art Museum, Visual Arts Complex, 1085 18th Street
Through December 18
The CU Art Museum reopened this week with a pair of new solo exhibitions. Longmont artist Kate Petley, whose works blur the edges between sculpture, painting and photography with tricks of the eye, presents new work, while Canadian artist Tim Whiten, known for his gestural drawings and sculptural works tracing ritualized behaviors developed across cultures and time, is feted with a forty-year survey. Welcome back.
Emily Roan, “Cloud Watching,” 2021, gel medium, acrylic paint, ink and oil pastel on canvas.
Emily Roan
Bell Projects, 3525 Walnut Street
Through August 29
Bell Projects, a service connecting artists with collectors, opportunities and exhibition spaces, hosts a solo show by Denver painter Emily Roan, who creates densely marked and spattered abstract works in mixed media on canvas and paper, and in sculptural installations. Roan will also be featured next in the Storeroom’s window vignette at 1700 Vine Street, beginning in October.
Rebekah Griffith, “The Bachelors,” oil.
Rebekah Griffith
Stanton Art Gallery, Town Hall Arts Center, 2450 Main Street, Littleton
Through September 12
The Littleton Fine Arts Guild’s Way Out West, juried by watercolorist Gene Youngmann, is part of Littleton’s Western Welcome Week, a tradition in the southern suburb since 1928 that continues through August 22. The show, a grand representational display of all those elements that make up the legendary West, from landscapes and cowboys to horses and animals in nature, is up through September 12, or view it online.
Lost & Found: Art With Found Objects
The Collective Community Arts Center, 201 North Public Road, Lafayette
Through October 3
Artists’ Open House: Friday, August 20, 3 to 7 p.m.
The Collective Community Arts Center in Lafayette wants to show off the charms of sustainable art in this show of art made with recycled and found materials. The all-Colorado exhibition goes off on every tangent imaginable for a diverse view of what one can do with junk.
Summer 2021 Exhibitions
Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, 2450 West Main Street, Littleton
Closing August 22
A timely mountain of a show, Viral Influence: Art in the Time of Coronavirus, draws to a close on August 22 at the Arvada Center. More than 250 participating artists show how they battled despair and found solace in sticking to their studios, making pointed art, face masks and brave choices. Two solos — showcasing Brady Smith on loneliness and suicide in the Upper Gallery, and teaching artist Melody Epperson on women’s suffrage in the Theatre Gallery — also close after Sunday.
Lisa Calzavara, Convergence
Sync Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
August 19 through September 11
Abstract painter Lisa Calzavara seeks to capture the kinetic in the swirling oil paintings of Convergence, her solo member show at Sync Gallery.
Don Stinson, “Tru Vu, Delta, Colorado” 2020-21, watercolor on Arches paper.
Don Stinson, courtesy of David B. Smith Gallery
David B. Smith Gallery, 1543 A Wazee Street
August 20 through September 25
Opening Reception: Friday, August 20, 6 to 8 p.m.
The former Colorado artist Don Stinson, now settled in Des Moines, has made a career of painting panoramic views of human encroachment by disintegrating roadside attractions, highways, industrial machines and telephone wires upon pristine prairie, desert and mountain landscapes. Nonetheless, in Stinson’s world, nature still remains in weird balance with man’s egregious intrusions, perhaps by flipping its beauty card in the face of dust-blown Big Boy statues and the like. See what that means when Stinson’s latest show opens at DBS Gallery.
Craig Robb, Sublime
Tom Mazzullo, Two-Part Inventions
Jude Barton, Vesica Piscis Black Series, on the Treasure Chest wall
Pirate: Contemporary Art, 7130 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
August 20 to September 5
Opening Reception: Friday, August 20, 6 to 10 p.m.
At Pirate, Craig Robb debuts a collection of geometric or wavy molded acrylic shapes, in translucent rainbow colors, lit up from within — and other sculptures; Tom Mazzullo shows silverpoint works, including drawings of staged sculptural concepts; and Jude Barton continues her reflections on sacred and architectural geometry.
Earl Chuvarsky, Ghosts of Old Denver
Christine O'Dea, Continuum
Nobody Special, There are three sides 2 every coin, in the Annex
Core New Art Space, Art Hub, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
August 20 through September 5
Earl Chuvarsky goes down the rabbit hole of old Denver in portraits of historical Western figures and reflections on what’s disappeared off the face of the city, while Christine O’Dea shares ceramic and found-object assemblage; in the Annex, the artist known as Nobody Special chips in with a variety of works by R. Garvin and friends.
L’Edge: Members’ Show
Edge Gallery, Art Hub, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
August 20 through September 5
Opening Reception: Friday, August 20, 6 p.m.
Edge is finishing off August with a big ol' member exhibition to show how the gallery’s coterie has been keeping busy through the latest ins and outs of the pandemic. Stop in at the reception for chit-chat with the gallery’s current artists, including its newest, oldest member: Mark Brasuell, an original Edge member who left six years ago and returned to the fold just in time to hang work in this show.
Viral Hope
Bitfactory Gallery, 851 Santa Fe Drive
August 20 through September 9
Opening Reception: Friday, August 20, 6 to 9 p.m.
What the world needs now is viral hope to counter viral disease. At least that’s what artists in the group show Viral Hope at Bitfactory posit through works encouraging community storytelling created during the pandemic. Artist Amy Métier juried thirty artists to share their experiences with others via the exhibition.
A detail from Katherine Simóne Reynolds's installation How to Hold a Cry, at Rule Gallery.
Katherine Simóne Reynolds, courtesy of Rule Gallery
Tya Anthony, Jasmine Abena Colgan, Noa Fodrie and Rochelle Johnson, While Performing in the Corner of the World
Rule Gallery, 808 Santa Fe Drive
August 21 through September 25
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 21, 5 to 8 p.m.
Gallery Artist Talk: Sunday, August 22, 2 p.m., seating limited
Rule hosts Chicago artist Katherine Simóne Reynolds, who, as a Black woman, uses tears shed in reaction to subjective repression (what she calls “the effacement of choreographed grief”) metaphorically in her multimedia installation How to Hold a Cry. Reynolds’s recipe for developing a new way to cry is woven into the work, as she sheds anger, pain and loss of hope, finding more positive avenues for her tears. Reynolds has also curated a companion show of work by Colorado artists Tya Anthony, Jasmine Abena Colgan, Noa Fodrie and Rochelle Johnson that can be viewed in Rule’s upstairs gallery; they'l join her on Sunday for an artist talk heavy on social justice politics.
Female Alchemy
SassaBird Fine Art, 840 Santa Fe Drive
Through September 5
Just steps away from Rule is a newer gallery, SassaBird Fine Art, which is showing an encore of Female Alchemy, featuring the work of eleven female artists.
Dan Ostermiller: Wild Life
Emmanuel Gallery, Auraria Campus, 1205 10th Street Plaza
August 23 through October 1
Thousands of visitors to the Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton Building have passed by the monumental bronze sculpture "Scottish Angus Cow and Calf" resting peacefully on the grass along 13th Avenue, but many might not know Dan Ostermiller, the sculptor who created the pastoral bovines, as well as a whole menagerie of giant-sized animals as public art. His latest, called "Lynx," will soon adorn Benson Terrace near the University of Colorado Denver’s Lynx Crossing residence hall at Auraria. But first "Lynx" will crouch up close and personal at Emmanuel Gallery, along with a full survey of Ostermiller’s creatures. No news yet on a reception, but the gallery has been open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. this summer if you want to take a peek. Be sure to bone up on visitor protocols before you visit.
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