Brandi Shigley and Sahar Pazirandeh first met on a dance floor at Dazzle — they liked each other’s moves, Shigley says, and that started a friendship that was fed by their shared fervor for entrepreneurship and positive consciousness-raising. Meanwhile, Shigley — a member of the first class of Westword MasterMinds…
#1: Andrew Novick Andrew Novick is many things, but it all boils down to being an enthusiast of the highest order: for weird food, goth culture, Harajuku style and visual Japanglish, Peeps, Casa Bonita, collecting nearly everything, horror films, lowbrow art, mini-golf, toppings, being this week’s Westword cover boy and…
#2: Suzi Q. Smith Suzi Q. Smith’s power lies in her words as well as her heart — and the great gift she has for sharing both so freely, both as a poet on a stage and a bedrock cheerleader behind the scenes. But the 2012 Westword cover girl and…
#3: Richard Alden Peterson From his stint documenting punk-rockers in the 1970s and snapping art images for the early Bay Area zine Search and Destroy to his current gig — only one of many — as house photographer at MCA Denver, Richard Alden Peterson has covered a lot of ground…
Three years ago, on the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, President Obama symbolically passed the intent of that document forward with the creation of Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, an observance meant to increase awareness of worldwide injustices and give recognition to agencies battling them. “Around the world, millions…
Books and documentaries abound on the subject of Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, the Los Alamos-based lab where scientists researched and built the atom bomb during World War II. But what about the young wives who followed their husbands to Los Alamos, where they lived in a shroud of…
After Boulder County’s devastating floods in September, the City of Boulder and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art quickly mobilized to put artists on the job for the Flood Project, actually a series of projects commemorating the disaster and lifting the human element out of the mud it left behind…
Our town rocks the arts all year ’round, from those crowded First Friday art walks to the vibrant club scene, where live music thrives; there’s so much to do that it’s often difficult to make room for it all. But one night a year, Westword makes it easy for you…
After a year of studying the local arts scene, we’ve finished our 100 Colorado Creatives countdown. Here are eight of our favorites (the numbers indicate their spot on the list, not an official ranking). Find the rest at showandtelldenver.com. #1 Andrew Novick #12 Anthony Garcia Sr. #15 Julie Carr #32…
#4: Adam Lerner There’s not much one can say about Adam Lerner that would truly do him justice. He runs MCA Denver with nothing resembling an iron hand: He’s funny, impossibly smart, steeped in culture and a natty dresser, and he has a knack for surrounding himself with people of…
There have been rumors about trouble among the Denver Comic Con ranks. But today, DCC co-founder Charlie La Greca posted the following letter on a new Save Denver Comic Con website. Hello my name is Charlie La Greca. I am a cartoonist, lifelong comic fan, and lover of all things…
#5: Kim Shively One of Westword’s newest crop of MasterMinds (all of whom will be honored this Saturday at Artopia 2014), Kim Shively expresses herself in images, rather than words, as a video artist and technician who’ll take on any subject matter, from Wesley Willis to Lucha Libre wrestling, not…
#6: Nora Burnett Abrams Nora Burnett Abrams makes exhibits happen, and that’s not easy: As curator at MCA Denver, she can’t just pick up artists at a supermarket. Instead, it’s about developing a relationship — with a little detective work on the side — and getting inside each artist’s head…
#7: Tricia Hoke Tricia Hoke is first and foremost an artist, but hers is an artistry that translates into the folds and drapes of her ingenious clothing designs, which morph into different style configurations with the slightest inside-out turn or flip of fluid fabric. As a dance costumer, she’s unparalleled,…
#8: Jose Mercado A Greeley native who left for schooling and a chance at the limelight in L.A., Jose Mercado returned to the state after garnering praise and awards on the stage in California. He took a job teaching theater at North High School in Denver, and his future path…
#9: Nikki Pike Nikki Pike is a poster girl for the new artist: She doesn’t do just one thing, she does it all — from performance to sculpture to installation to multimedia and cross-disciplinary works to art as activism. The former instructor at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design…
#10: Manuel Ramos Manuel Ramos looms large in Denver’s Chicano arts and political communities: A veteran legal-aid lawyer for more than forty years, Ramos found voice as a writer when he wasn’t fighting for justice, though even that vocation is imbued with an innate understanding of the struggles of the…
#11: Marie Vlasic Like many of her portrait subjects, painter Marie Vlasic has nothing to hide. There’s no pretense to her hyper-realistic work: She paints what she sees — a lot of it skin, much of that skin tatted and otherwise permanently decorated. But her visual observations also peer deeply…
Just as Z Cuisine is that little French place in the neighborhood, Patrick DuPays’s latest effort, Entre Nous Galerie d’Art, serves a similar purpose in showing work from neighborhood artists, many of whom frequent the eatery. Companionably squeezed between Z and its sibling bar, À Côté, the gallery will host…
Known as the Sweetheart City, Loveland is proud of its heritage, including the annual Valentine Re-mailing Program, which reroutes valentines sent in from across the nation with its hearts-and-flowers postmark. But Loveland also has the Loveland Feed & Grain, a converted 1892 warehouse and grain elevator where the Arts @…
#12: Anthony Garcia Sr. Raised in Globeville, Anthony Garcia Sr. knows the street, but his artist’s vision only wants to make the street more beautiful — with grassroots public art and murals. Garcia may have moved on from Globeville, but his heart remains in the community, where members of the…
#13: Lynne Bruning Denver-based but with an international following, Lynne Bruning studied neuroscience and architecture, but found her place in the world as a weaver, designer and well-traveled e-textile expert active in the worlds of the Internet, Maker Faires, hackerspaces and Burning Man. In a brilliant twist, Bruning blends an…
