Art Beat

In the main space at Pirate, John Crandall has brought in a handful of abstract paintings for his solo, Infinitely Minute. Several large and aesthetically ambitious paintings have been placed on top of shiny silver paint cans and are lined up leaning against the walls. The most successful of this…

A Little of Everything

Manitou Springs painter Sushe Felix, whose work became well-known in the mid-1980s, has really been on a roll lately. Every time we turn around, it seems like there’s something by her in front of us. One of her abstracted landscape paintings was chosen as the publicity image for the Colorado…

Art Beat

The O’Sullivan Arts Center is just a couple of big rooms in an old, nondescript building on the Regis University campus. But somehow, there’s always a good show on display, like the impressive Bill Joseph: A Retrospective, which fills the place now. Joseph, who has been making art in Denver…

Dynamic Duo

It’s really quite inspiring the way the entire metro art world is focusing, at least briefly, on ceramic artists, a group that is typically unsung, ignored and rarely exhibited around here. A year and a half ago, artist and Auraria art professor Rodger Lang began calling the city’s museums, art…

Art Beat

The Edge Gallery is highlighting the work of two artists who couldn’t be more different from one another. In the front space, Gail Wagner features the artist’s sophisticated abstract sculptures; in the back is Wendy Clough: Recent Work, a collection of representational paintings of the landscape. Upon entering Edge, the…

Winter Wonders

Despite the trends elsewhere, winter in Colorado, as much as fall, is high season in the art world. This may have something to do with the way we handle the colder months. In New York recently, a few inches of snow almost shut down the city. In Denver, on the…

Art Beat

Inflections of Style, at the Market Street Gallery at Guiry’s, is a display of small three-dimensional objects created by a wide array of artists, most from around town, a few from across the country, and even a couple from Europe. But it’s primarily a local show — and a very…

Clay Feats and Printed Sheets

The Mizel Arts Center at the Jewish Community Center is somewhat off the beaten path of the art world, and its fine art division, the Singer Gallery, is just a single room divided into a series of four small spaces. Despite these limitations, however, the Singer is often the place…

Art Beat

Late last summer, Carla St. Romain opened the Bayeux Gallery in the Golden Triangle. What makes this noteworthy is that the gallery is unique — at least in Denver — because its specialty is contemporary textiles made by local, national and international fiber artists. The name “Bayeux” is a reference…

Season of the West

In the last 25 years, the visibility of the art world has undergone tremendous changes — upheavals, if you will. For a variety of reasons that range from improvements in mass communication to changes in art education, global artistic innovations are now communicated almost instantaneously. This expedience has led to…

Art Beat

The Fine Arts Center Exhibition Space, on the third floor of the fine art building at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, is currently presenting Homeless in Denver, a compilation of disturbing photo-based work by longtime Denver artist Annalee Schorr. Over the years, Schorr has explored the ubiquitous…

Two Sublime

On a recent Saturday afternoon, in the up-and-coming neighborhood around First Avenue and Broadway, a steady stream of visitors found their way through the doors of the Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery. At the same time, a client in the gallery’s back office was making a purchase. At one point,…

Art Beat

RedShift Gallery, which combines a frame shop with a minimal exhibition space — just a few walls, really — has been framing for ten years and presenting art shows for the past five. But it’s only been in its current location in the Ballpark neighborhood for the past two years…

Altering Currents

There’s no denying that Real to Surreal, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in Sakura Square, has garnered some negative word of mouth. Perhaps it’s the disappointment generated by the fact that it could have been a great show and is instead merely a good one. The exhibit represents…

Getting the Picture

There are only a few days left to catch Hal D. Gould: Visual Legacy at the Camera Obscura Gallery. The important show highlights the long career of a significant figure in the world of local fine-art photography, and believe it or not, after fifty years of photography, this is Gould’s…

Art Beat

The Howell-Cole Gallery has been specializing in artist-made ceramics for almost ten years, starting out in Larimer Square in the early ’90s and moving to Tamarac Square in 1995. The gallery, which takes a boutique-style approach, is a partnership between Jack Howell and Susan Cole. The current exhibit, Masters of…

Here’s Mud in Your Eye

Yogi Berra, the New York Yankee baseball legend who’s known for his hilarious bon mots that seem to be oxymorons, once made an astute observation that would surely characterize the Denver Art Museum during the last few months: “Nobody goes there anymore — it’s too crowded.” The blockbuster exhibit Impressionism…

Art Beat

The Carol Keller Gallery is extending Dan Ragland: Recent Work through December 18, so there’s still a couple of days to catch this intriguing photography show. Ragland, who lives and works in Denver, specializes in edgy and disturbing pictures, even when his subject is a vase filled with flowers. But…

Earthly Delights

Color, Line and Form: Abstraction in Metal, at Boulder’s Dairy Center for the Arts, is a duet featuring the sculptures of William Vielehr and Doug Wilson. Both have been creating abstract-expressionist sculpture for the last thirty years, but since their studios are in Boulder, they are less well-known in Denver…

Art Beat

Using Your Faculties is a three-part exhibition series at the Emmanuel Gallery that features the work of the art instructors at Auraria’s three institutions of higher learning. Part two of the series, which showcases talent from the University of Colorado at Denver, is on display now and runs through December…

Disappearing Legacy

I’m going to posit a radical claim, one that flies in the face of standard beliefs. I think Denver was a more sophisticated town twenty or thirty years ago than it is today. And though the city is more crowded and there are a lot more big-box retailers and chain…

Art Beat

Studio 1818, a boutique-style gallery in LoDo, features art glass, ceramics and jewelry in addition to paintings, sculptures and custom framing. The art exhibits are installed mostly in the back room, which is also where the frame samples are displayed — but the shows usually spill out into the front…