The story behind the group show Carnivalesque, on view at the Niza Knoll Gallery since September, isn’t always bright and happy, as organizer and participant Penney Bidwell knows all too well. She comes from a family of carnies that goes back three generations on her father’s side, and as the…
Local artist Xi Zhang ended up here, direct from China, because of an obsession with the Beat poets; the lure of Naropa University and Denver’s Beat history landed him at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, where he was once a student and is now a teacher. And…
Denver photographer John Bonath doesn’t just take pictures. Nor is he a photographer necessarily obsessed with process. In addition to being a camera artist, Bonath is part pictorial set designer, part dreamer and part imaginative mind-bender, who spins gold from ordinary and often disparate materials and slaps them on the…
How do you really get in the mood for a zombie crawl? Today’s big event begins at 2 p.m. (see above), but you can chill — really chill — beforehand at the MacSpa, where they’ll be throwing an Afraid of the Dark Reception for the ongoing October Bogeyman Art Show…
The play Enrique’s Journey, adapted by Su Teatro artistic director Anthony Garcia from the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nazario, debuted last weekend in Denver, bringing to light the harrowing story of Central American immigrants who risk life and limb riding the tops of freight trains north, in search of…
Colorado plein-air painter Joellyn Duesberry has a national reputation and an independent streak, to boot. She recently hung a retrospective show at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (it’s now closed) and now has a beautiful monograph to remember it by: Elevated Perspectives: The Paintings of Joellyn Duesberry. Duesberry will…
You can start planning now: The schedule for the 34th annual Starz Denver Film Festival, which runs November 2 through 13 at various venues throughout town, is now available online at the user-friendly Denver Film Society website. DFS member early ticketing opens Wednesday, October 19; the rest of the hoi…
Of Love Songs for Poomouse, which opens tonight in Boulder, this much we know: It stars Bobby Dartt, whose unique sense of humor and elan is central to the musical revue. And it is all about the love songs — during the first half, Dartt covers some favorites; in the…
The Huichol people of Mexico, a spiritual and tight-knit clan of shamans and artisans, create art like that of no other culture on the planet, working in all nature’s brightest hues to produce intricate patterns and images from tiny seed beads and beeswax. Wixaritari: Huichol Art of Mexico, a large…
No double take necessary: Although at first glance, Altered Nature: Notable Interpretations From South America, which opens today at the Metropolitan State College of Denver Center for Visual Art, seems like it might belong down the street at the Museo de las Americas, it fits right into the handsome Metro…
It’s a little bit vaudevillian and a little bit Halloween, but one thing’s for certain: Carnivalesque, a new group show opening at the Niza Knoll Gallery, 915 Santa Fe Drive, will fill viewers with a little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of joy, and then, well, something darker. Clowns,…
Billed as a “theatrical song cycle,” Bobby Dartt’s Love Songs for Poomouse first hit the stage in a workshopped version at last summer’s Boulder International Fringe Festival, where it was feted with the Encore Award. Now it will be fully staged at Wesley Chapel on the University of Colorado’s Boulder…
Reading the comics in the daily newspapers isn’t always as satisfying as it used to be, but some strips persevere by staying totally, completely, indubitably silly. Exhibit A: Pearls Before Swine by self-deprecating comic artist Stephan Pastis, a patchwork of bad puns, goofy animal characters and a coven of stone-dumb…
Joellyn Duesberry is an integral part of Colorado’s arts landscape. Her plein-air views are a modernist take on a genre nearly as old as art itself, built in splashes of warm color and the structured patterns that underlie both natural and urban settings. She’s one of the state’s most respected…
When I was growing up, I was taken to many Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, which, aside from the clever and classical ditties, were bound together by those silly Seinfeld-esque plot twists of misunderstandings and mistaken identities that always played out in a circular twist that somehow led back to something…
We can all sink our teeth into the subject of food. A universal requirement of life, it’s what many of us plan each day around: Gathering, cooking, breaking bread together and eating are all essential and sometimes sensual human actions. But food has its dark side, too, when we think…
The Asian predilection for playing games — gambling games, in particular — rears its scheming head time and time again, as shown last year when Colorado Dragon Boat Festival director Erin Yoshimura threw a fundraising dinner with a side trip of mah-jongg and other wicked games. When it was time…
We’ve told you about Matt Scobey’s Not for Sale public art project. The rest is up to you. Scobey placed another work late this afternoon; check his blog for information on where to find it. And let us know if you do! And to keep up with the Froyd’s-eye-view of…
What is public art, and who gets to display it? How does that work? And why? Those are the initial questions that Denver artist Matt Scobey is asking with his Not for Sale: Denver project, for which he’ll be randomly hanging artwork in nondescript locations around town — artwork that…
On Sunday morning in Manitou Springs, early risers were treated to a sight they’re not likely to ever see again: The Manitou Chair Project went down as planned, featuring nearly 700 disparate chairs on loan from the tourist town’s artsy community lined up, one after the other, in a front-to-back…
Art by Craft, the Denver Handmade Alliance’s annual member showcase exhibition, opened at RedLine on October 1, and it’s stunning — a spectacle of work by local artisans with a fine-art credibility. But this Sunday, October 9, pieces by craft artists will come off the exhibit floor and into the…
2009 Broadway revival cast photos below by Joan Marcus. I don’t know exactly what I expected when I walked into the Buell Tuesday for the opening night of Hair, and after the curtain went up and the once-controversial musical got started, even my theater-going companion, an old hippie in every…
