Five First Friday photography fetes

Tonight’s First Friday? It’s off the clock. Galleries all over town are spilling over with shows worth celebrating in Denver Arts Week style. But it also marks what might be the best collection of photography shows and events to come out at once since last March’s Month of Photography marathon…

Eyes on the prize: Michelle Obama honors PlatteForum

Ain’t it beautiful? That’s Judy Anderson and Salvador Flores-Martinez of Denver’s PlatteForum accepting the 2011 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from Michelle Obama yesterday at the White House. Their voyage to Washington also marked Sal’s first-ever jet flight and an ensuing sense of utter awe at being in…

Light in the Darkness: The artists of Light Supply speak out at MOA

Light Supply, a glowing group exhibition that opened last summer amidst a flurry of local shows playing with light, features works by a number of well-respected magicians of illumination. Three of them — Lonnie Hanzon, Jen Lewin and Collin Parson — will join Museum of Outdoor Arts director Cynthia Madden…

Americana Grande

Denver Center Theatre Company artistic director Kent Thompson traditionally injects each season with at least one offering grown from Latino roots. This year, the niche is represented by American Night: The Ballad of Juan José, a contemporary show from Richard Montoya and the long-lived, California-based Chicano comedy group Culture Clash…

All Arts, All the Time

Denver Arts Week, the local cultural community’s answer to Denver Restaurant Week, is five years old and growing annually, luring the public — with special deals and events — to come out and explore the city’s art districts, museums and performing-arts facilities. The festivities kick off tonight with a ramped-up…

Around the World in Sixty Minutes

What’s the next best thing to visiting the Grand Canyon? It might be Digital Earth: Explore the World from Space, a unique program in the Gates Planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science that uses vivid panoramic images by photographer Vance Howard and members of the International League…

Blind Ambition

One of the primary functions of the Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artists League is to help normalize the way other people perceive and behave toward folks with disabilities. The handicapped actors of the PHAMALy troupe don’t want you to turn your eyes away from them, or, conversely, treat them…

A Long Time Coming

The beleaguered Shadow Theatre Company will attempt to make a fresh start at Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center tonight, kicking off its season with The Final Mile to Providence, an ambitious original work written and directed by production manager Arnold King. A drama about a family torn apart…

You have to be careful where you put your pumpkins these days!

What is street art? Where does it belong? We’re still asking that question. But in the meantime, this moment frozen in time comes from artist Rodney Wallace, who spotted it on a counter at the DUI education center, BI Incorporated. We won’t ask what he was doing there, but he…

PlatteForum’s got a secret. Here’s how to learn more.

PlatteForum has some big news to share with you. Problem is, the folks behind the Central Platte Valley nonprofit that pairs artist mentors with at-risk youth in collaboration with partnering youth programs can’t talk about it. Not yet. Let’s just say it involves a major honor, some money and even…

It’s Halloween! Take a shining to the Stanley Hotel.

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is a lovely old place. Built in the early 1900s at the mouth of what is now Rocky Mountain National Park from wood salvaged from the Bear Lake burn of 1900, it was best-known then for the Stanley Steamer, a steam-powered automobile invented by…

Greetings from Vox Phamalia!

The whole point of Vox Phamalia: Quadrapalooza, the Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artists League comedy show opening tonight at the Avenue Theater for a two-weekend run, is that differently-abled people (or whatever the politically correct terminology is this week) have a sense of humor about themselves. And they think…

Bill Amundson’s Blurred Vision: A sight for sore eyes

Bill Amundson, once a local character and still the inimitable creator of what might be the densest work on the planet, took off last year for his home state of Wisconsin. But he’s back for a visit, and what might be the show of his lifetime (at least so far):…

Get in the swing with PoeTreze IV

There’s poetry. And there’s a trapeze. Do you really need to know more about PoeTreze? An occasional cultural offering from the National Theatre Conservatory class of 2012 (its last, incidentally), PoeTreze swings in a way that regular poetry readings never do: in the spoken meter of high-grade performance poetry –…

The Long Road Home

Los Angeles Times journalist Sonia Nazario won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for “Enrique’s Journey,” a remarkable piece of reporting for which she traveled with a young Honduran migrant as he made his way to the United States in search of a better life. And that’s just the story behind…

All That Glitters

In a couple of weeks, the gold-themed exhibition AU: Exchange, curated by Cortney Stell of the Philip J. Steele Gallery, will open at RedLine Gallery, featuring interpretations of the precious metal by RedLine resident artists. In preparation for the exhibit, RedLine is seizing Stell’s curatorial subject for a different take…

What A Blast-Off

Usually when the Fantastic Hosts throw a party, it’s just for them and their friends, but as local artist and FH member Marie Vlasic points out, they also party in public every once in a while. This season’s “once in a while” is Forbidden Planet, a spectacular public Halloween soiree…

Dress up your head at Kitty Mae Millinery. It just might stick.

Photos by Norman Dillon. Elegant is back again, ladies. That’s the look-at-me aesthetic Denver milliner Susan Dillon cultivates at her new Kitty Mae Millinery & Accessories boutique in RiNo/Curtis Park. And she’s eagerly waiting for you to stop by, so that she can dress you up. “I want people to…

John Bonath on A Strange Beauty at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Photographer John Bonath’s spectacular three-level show, A Strange Beauty, which opened at the end of September at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, encourages visitors to explore a massive, hidden-away portion of the museum collection in an unusual and contemporary way. The hand-chosen objects that Bonath re-examined through an…

Let zombicaturist Stan Yan bring out the bogeyman in you

At tomorrow’s pre-Zombie Crawl Afraid of the Dark reception for the Bogeyman Art Show at MacSpa, you can commission comic artist Stan Yan to create an on-the-spot zombie makeover for you on paper, which you can then hang on your wall and remember that important day forever, dead or undead…