In late summer for the past six years, an unusual sight cropped up here and there in places as disparate as Denver’s Golden Triangle Museum District, the Lariat Loop National Scenic & Historic Byway and the 16th Street Mall: Plein air artists have been spotted outdoors, on location, painting everything…
“Pangloss” refers to Dr. Pangloss, the talkative optimist in the Voltaire classic Candide. And “Gravitron” is the name of a spinning amusement-park ride with a high thrill level. Mashed together, Pangloss Gravitron is a Denver artists’ collective informally spun around a concept. “The general idea is about invested hope,” explains…
We Denverites tend to get stuck in our ways, especially with regard to our holiday entertainment. At this point, we’ve come to expect that the Denver Center Theatre Company will be serving up A Christmas Carol. This year, though, the DCTC is changing its tune for something more upbeat and…
It’s ironic enough for the biggest Jewish event of the year to fall on Christmas Eve, says promoter Eric Elkins, but this year, it’s happening in a church. The Church, that is — the multi-leveled nightclub known as much for its stained glass and gothic arches as for its nightly…
Ready to feel the earth move? The holidays aren’t really the holidays in downtown Denver until the annual TubaChristmas Concert has been heard from. The multi-generational oompah band featuring more than 300 tubas will once again hold forth, sunshine or frost, under the direction of the University of Colorado’s Bill…
Sports-card collectors and collectibles dealers from around the Rocky Mountain region will gather today for some last-minute holiday wheeling and dealing at the Sports Collectible Show, which offers a spread of local team and Hall of Fame-related memorabilia, just in the nick of time. Promoter Christian Bakken, a dealer himself…
Denver’s vibrant slam poetry community has deep roots. Minor Disturbance is where the youngest poets grow into their words — poets like former East High student Libby Olga Howard, who’s gone on to find her future at Lewis and Clark College. Howard, a Minor Disturbance mainstay of a few years…
Gorinto, the Mercury Cafe’s occasional music, food and whatever Wednesday evening get-together, continues to reinvent itself. This week, it will transform into a showcase of homemade and found-object musical instruments featuring a revolving parade of local folks who toy — sometimes literally — with the definition of what we use…
“The things we fear about poetry are the things that are good about poetry.” — Jake Adam York Those words inspired me as a dabbler in poems, though the genteel poet and educator Jake Adam York, who died unexpectedly yesterday of a stroke, couldn’t have known that about me. And…
It seems that nearly everyone who’s seen internationally known installation artist Judy Pfaff’s latest solo show at Robischon Gallery has come away feeling revitalized — so much so that the exhibit was held over until the end of December. That created the opportunity for Pfaff to drop by the gallery…
It’s hard not to find some love in your heart for those darned cute, hairy-footed hobbits, and last night some of their most dedicated fans donned hobbit, elf and dwarfish gear for the long-awaited midnight premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at AMC Westminster Promenade 24 and other metro…
The Ice Cube Gallery fronts the Dry Ice Factory, a beautiful, light-strewn maze of studio spaces in, yes, a converted dry-ice factory. It’s a formidable venue for the display of art, and once-a year Ice Cube cooperative members join together for a wide-open group show. See also: – Feminism is…
If you want to get funky this holiday season, tonight’s late-night shopping event on Broadway is just the ticket: Word has come down from Jil Cappuccio and Kirsten Coplans of the Westword Best of Denver-winning Sewn boutique that nineteen independent SoBo shops will keep their doors open until 8 p.m…
When Winnie Wenglewick of Denver’s Dangerous Theatre set out to write The Perfect Gift, an offbeat holiday play with a message, she looked inside her own life. And when rehearsals began, her two co-stars did the same. “Since then, we’ve practically rewritten the whole script,” she says. “For me, this…
Denver artist and Chicago native Tim Flynn grew up loving his home city’s unique Midwestern architecture; as an adult, he gravitated toward twisted wire and sculptural assemblage, and eventually — in the present — back to architecture, thanks to a rekindled interest and ensuing research into the technical side of…
Visionbox, a local actors’ studio and commercial theater group, recently relocated to 910Arts in the Art District on Santa Fe, bringing an infusion of performing-arts energy to an already artsy area that’s starting to see an upshift in the theatrical realm. But, as Visionbox director Jennifer McCray Rincon (who first…
Tamara Pidhayny, aka the Merry Widow, says her monthly Artisan Operetta vaudevillian variety show at Voodoo Comedy Playhouse dedicates each program to a different pre-1960s pop hero or heroine. Last month, for instance, it was the inimitable Mae West. And when it came to December and the holiday season, an…
Santa will tell you that there’s plenty of Christmas literature out there, from A Christmas Carol to “The Gift of the Magi” and beyond. But this year’s edition of Stories on Stage’s Making Merry dramatic holiday readings will skew younger…and funnier. Sort of. The show will start off more seriously…
In past years, when Denver designer Mona Lucero threw a fashion show in her LoHi boutique, she’d also take a philosophical look back over the changes in her own life. But this year is different. “It is more about new beginnings,” says Lucero, who is both celebrating the boutique’s tenth…
A Denver Cruiser Ride in the heart of December has to have a reason — or at least a reason more urgent than the usual “because.” And in fact, tonight’s DCR Retro Ride is getting in gear for a great reason: It’s destined to be part of a locally produced…
For some folks, the ski season doesn’t really start until they’ve seen the annual Warren Miller adventure flick. Others caught the premiere of Flow State last month, but are ready for another look at the movie. And they’ll get their chance tomorrow night, at the sixth annual Warren Miller Screening…
As a university town, Boulder has a reputation for supporting both the avant garde and the cultural underground. Tonight, for instance, the Univerisity of Colorado boulder will host the multimedia program Invasion 2012, featuring works by students of new media technology-arts ground-breakers Mark Amerika (who teaches Remix Culture) and Mark…
