The Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design is fast building a reputation as a quality artist-making machine, and Joseph Coniff, a young RMCAD graduate, is living proof. Westword critic Michael Paglia called his 2011 exhibition at Rule Gallery “a spectacular debut for a young artist” and the show also…
If you tried to count the number of artists who also have day jobs, it’d be like counting stars in the sky. Within the governmental agencies of Denver and Colorado, there’s a similar microcosm, and that’s the whole reason for the annual On My Own Time art exhibitions curated through…
It’s been 25 years since Gabby Gourmet Pat Miller and the late Noel Cunningham co-founded the Taste of the Nation, one of the city’s oldest and best-attended foodie events, featuring up-close sessions with top chefs and mountains of great local food and drink for charity. That alone makes tonight’s annual…
Much like political ads and zombies in October, found-footage flicks are starting to get old, but now and then comes a twist that makes the trend relevant again — even the second time around. Just in time for the witching season, Grave Encounters 2, the second in a series of…
Any true city rises on a foundation of stories, and Denver, with its Wild West roots and City Beautiful continuum, more than qualifies as a storied metropolis. Plenty of the best ones are set along the 16th Street Mall, which celebrates its thirtieth birthday — only a drop in the…
Emily Griffith Technical College — formerly Emily Griffith Opportunity School — might have dropped the rose-colored nomenclature, but not the tradition behind it. The legendary working-man’s academy, in business since 1916, still teaches everything from upholstering and barbering to auto mechanics and English as a second language. And once a…
The Deer Pile’s turning into Denver’s stand-out salon, a cozy place where art and comedy and poetry mingle. Here no one’s considered an outsider — no matter how disenfranchised they might feel on the outside. It’s the kind of place where an event like Baby Hair can catch hold. Billed…
Artist/artrepreneur Eric Matelski earned his Westword MasterMind award (class of 2010) largely for his tireless promotion of other artists. Over the years, he’s gotten people talking at monthly events and shows hung at Dazzle and other bars and restaurants where people gather to enjoy themselves while they’re looking at the…
As a curator, artist Eric Matelski likes to have fun. And he likes to put affordable art up on the wall and plan a party around it. Add to that a seasonal tie-in, and you’ve got the second annual Bogeyman Art Show, a group exhibit that’s both fun and a…
It won’t be easy for some folks to get to tonight’s Logan Lecture at the Denver Art Museum, with a stretch of I-25 closed during the presidential debate at the University of Denver. But it’s worth braving the urban jungle to hear Lucas Reiner, who’s known for, among other things,…
In all of its forty years, Denver’s Su Teatro has never performed a more iconic work than the satire I Don’t Speak English Only. And considering that nearly everything the troupe and artistic director Tony Garcia touch is entrenched in Chicano culture and activism, that’s saying a lot. See also:…
Henry Ford’s gift to society was the bare-bones Model T, but his wife drove an electric vehicle, says Kim Tyrrell of the Denver Metro Clean Cities Coalition. “Women preferred them back in the old days because you didn’t have to crank them,” she notes. “They were the perfect car.” That…
Colorado governor John Hickenlooper envisioned a different kind of ride when his office announced Pedal the Plains last January. Unlike such scenic yet grueling multi-day mountain circuits as Ride the Rockies, this race was conceived as a way to give equal time to the oft-ignored eastern plains of Colorado, where…
Do you like your art small? If so, VSA Arts/Access Gallery is the place to be this Friday night, when works less than a foot square will be available for purchase at a 99 Pieces of Art on the Wall fundraiser. The art is not just all over the wall,…
How does the peaceful vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. translate in the heart of China? The subject of the documentary Bringing King to China, an American woman teaching in Beijing, decided to find out by jumping the multiple hurdles of interpretation, governmental suppression and fundraising to produce a…
Nan Desu Kan is a world unto itself, and the culture of that world sucks you in. It’s something akin to jumping headlong into a manga book, and you begin to see things in terms of that skewed universe: Pink and blue locks, tails, huge eyes and supernaturally spiky hair…
Remember when you turned eighteen? Maybe you felt like you’d seen it all — but more likely, you knew that a grand personal story was about to unfold. You felt excited and afraid. But how about a theater company? What about Brian Freeland and the LIDA Project, a company that’s…
If you were at the Denver County Fair in August, you might have caught a steampunk vibe in the air — thanks to the amassed presence of the Colorado Steampunks and the Denver Victoriana & Steampunk Society, all decked out in their beautiful costumes. Among their ranks were world travelers…
The fascinating and close-knit Gullah Geechee culture of the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina, which evolved in an almost timeless shell, with its own dialect and way of life, is still a mystery to most Americans. But that hasn’t stopped Dr. Jacquelyne Benton, an African American Studies professor…
Upper-class drug addiction seems to be a Scandinavian thing, and it’s studied to excess in Oslo, August 31, a Norwegian-made flick by Joachim Trier that follows protagonist Anders Danielsen through a single day. That day takes him from a rehab facility to a blow-by-blow showdown in the real world while…
The fledgling 40 West arts district in Lakewood is off and running, and tonight’s 40 West Arts RIOT! cultural variety show might be considered the next step. “40 West has delivered several community-focused events in 2012, and we look to expand our calendar of events in 2013,” says district boardmember…
Off-Center at the Jones, curated by Emily Tarquin and Charlie Miller, began last year like a beautiful little secret, and, tucked away in the Denver Performing Arts Complex’s well-hidden and intimate Jones Theatre, the kick-off-your-shoes-and-have-fun improv series that always ends in a party can only go up from there. But…
