In a nutshell, a completely sustainable nutshell, the idea behind Design for the Other 90%, a traveling exhibition from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, has to do with the impact of good design on developing populations who must usually make do with no help from the design community at…
David Grinspoon is a local treasure, and we’re lucky to have him: The astrobiology curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, he’s not at all what you expect a scientist to be like. Instead, Grinspoon, who is also a musician and a funny guy, channels the downright psychedelic…
It takes a lot of flowers to earn the official title of Wildflower Capital of Colorado, but that’s no problem in Crested Butte, where despite the long winter, the lupines are spiking and the paintbrush is coloring the region’s alpine meadows red and gold. They’re peaking just in time for…
In the 21st century, we’ve seen it all. We’ve peered into the lives of Hulk Hogan and Ozzy Osbourne, the over-fertile Gosselins and the Octomom, the Kardashians and Snoop Dogg. But back in 1973, when reality television was still called cinéma vérité, the PBS documentary An American Family — a…
When the Arvada Center’s new production of Hairspray opened on June 21, everyone, but everyone, was checking out the costumes. That’s because Denver hero Mondo Guerra designed them, putting his way with fresh and professional looks to the test. And besides, if Mondo wasn’t meant to design costumes for this…
Are you still not sure about opera? Sure, it’s long. It’s melodramatic. It’s loud, sometimes ear-shatteringly so. And it’s seriously old-school, dude. It’s like a blue-hair fantasy camp. Think again. The Central City Opera, which will present the classic Carmen, Handel’s sword and sorcery epic Amadigi di Gaula and a…
CU-Denver MBA candidate Andrea Burns first conceived of the idea for LoyalTee — a fledgling business that creates T-shirts celebrating favorite (and sometimes esoteric) local haunts — as a class project. “I was aware of a few different companies that were basically doing the same thing in different parts of…
While cruising last winter’s Fancy Tiger Holiday Handmade show, we chanced upon the most delightful booth: Featuring paper dolls, prints and cross-stitched buttons by crafty Canadian partners Sara Guindon and Samantha Purdy, who together comprise the Pin Pals, their table offered up something truly original and more than a little…
Maybe you’ve heard about it: The buzz has been slowly growing over time. But what exactly is this Denver County Fair people are clucking and waving around their feathers about? Well, that’s not an easy question to answer, since chances are pretty good there’s never been anything quite like it…
Samuel Schimek and Rob Mack are local artists with a commercial streak, and they’ve ingeniously wrapped their collaborative installation, Microclimates, into a kind of artsy business plan, with its own website and social-media persona. It started out early this year with a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign, which has now segued…
Advocacy for photography in the metro area just took a powerhouse leap forward: Late last week, the region’s two major nonprofit photography organizations — the Colorado Photographic Arts Center and Working With Artists — officially announced their merger, something that’s been a long time in the making. Together, they hope…
The PlatteForum formula — pair a resident artist with a classroom of kids to co-create a body of art for a culminating exhibition — is currently in the able hands of sculptor and DU adjunct professor Kevin Curry, who often reclaims machinery, signage and the parts of technology to instill…
In her long writing career, Lisa See has covered China — and Chinese America — from a number of angles. But whether penning a memoir, a thriller or a historical novel, See comes off as a digger, a woman who spends a lot of time in the stacks and on…
The TACtile Textile Arts Center has gone all steampunk this summer, beginning with the opening of the current show, Steampunk: Mechanical Science Meets Victorian Romance, in May. But the voluminous ostrich feather in the exhibition’s Victorian cap is tonight’s Steamed Fashion Show, a juried feast of plumed millinery and mini…
One thing we like about Denver: The creative community sticks together. And now we have a free annual event, Project Hello, that embodies the spirit of said camaraderie by gathering local creatives under one roof to network and show off work and products. Celebrating its second year, Project Hello will…
There’s a scene from a performance in Lynn Hershman Leeson’s documentary !Women Art Revolution in which two women, one representing feminist art and the other minimalism, dance in a ring and duke it out, pounding home the inequality inherent in the art world of forty years ago. In a way,…
In the early ’90s, Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist first orchestrated the recurring exhibit do it, for which local participants choose a project from a manual of instructions created by a roster of internationally known artists. The local artists then interpret the projects, filtering them through their own sensibilities. Since…
Best-selling Chinese-American author Lisa See, who will read from her new book Dreams of Joy tomorrow evening at the Tattered Cover, is an extraordinary researcher: Her fierce desire to get the details right has taken her around the world, to museums and libraries, and even into the small worlds of…
When the Arvada Center’s new production of Hairspray officially opens tomorrow night, Everyone, but everyone, will be checking out the costumes. That’s because Denver hero Mondo Guerra designed them, putting his way with fresh and professional looks to the test. And besides, if Mondo wasn’t meant to design costumes for…
Books, says Alicia Bailey of Abecedarian Gallery, are by nature interactive, so it’s ironic that the often delicate handmade books she usually exhibits can’t be handled too much. But when the two small shows Interactive Artifact and Music Bo(o)x open tonight with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m., the…
It goes without saying that every LGBT bar and club in town will be overflowing this weekend with beer busts and boot scoots and just plain wild celebratin’ of the imbibing kind. Check into your favorite, and you’ll be well taken care of. But where do you go to see…
To call Frisco’s annual Colorado BBQ Challenge a regular three-ring circus would be putting it lightly: The action at the three-day food fest never stops, although the main attraction is, and always will be, the barbecue, which you can taste in copious amounts from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. tomorrow…
