Writer, critic and colorful Algonquin Round Table yakker Dorothy Parker was really born to be a character in a play; known in her heyday for her caustic tongue and running witticisms, she left behind a diverse body of work, from comic poems to Hollywood scripts. And her life story was…
Five years ago, Denver filmmaker M Van Michaels (then working as Mike Olafson), released a documentary, Gears, Grease and Guitars, that traced the intertwined cultures of hot-rodders, rockabillies and, eventually, ’60s garage rockers, all from a local perspective. The fun flashback is packed with interviews and archival footage, and just…
#83: Anthony Garcia Tony Garcia, who turns sixty this spring, has spent his entire adult life with Su Teatro, the region’s primary Chicano theater group, which itself just celebrated forty years. He was just a kid from the westside who played in a rock band when he joined Su Teatro…
The studio community at Wazee Union, peopled by artists and creatives of all kinds, shows off its diversity to the rest of the world on Second Saturdays — often with fundraisers that showcase the building’s talented denizens. Unfortunately, last week’s Lucky Dog Art Show got snowed out — but it…
Clay artist Marie EvB Gibbons is already known for infusing some of her works with a droll creepiness that’s rather endearing. But the haunted masks in When your mouth is too small to scream in a dream, a solo show at the MacSpa, go a step further, by making it…
Collin Parson, gallery manager and curator at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, can’t wait for Art of the State to open, particularly because he can already imagine the energy in the room when a huge crowd gathers to see nearly 200 paintings, sculptures, prints, jewelry pieces and…
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, fiction writer Gish Jen has mined the bi-cultural experience over the past several years — with solid results. From Mona in the Promised Land, a comic novel about a first-generation Chinese-American teen who decides to be Jewish, to World and Town, in which assimilated New…
Boulder’s women-run LOCAL Theater Company focuses on the playwright experience by presenting plays to the public that are still in development and soliciting feedback. That will be especially important during the company’s LOCAL Lab 2013 New Play Festival, which starts its second run this evening at 7 p.m. with a…
Once upon a time in Chicago, Chris Buske attended a benefit that featured a caged artist creating a work in a single day. “At the end of the day, somebody bought the piece,” he recalls, and that’s what inspired Buske and the Denver Art Society to host Exposed: Observing Artists…
#84: Garrett Ammon Ballet Nouveau Colorado’s transformation into Wonderbound is nearly complete. The forward-thinking troupe that has been dancing under the direction of visionary choreographer Garrett Ammon since 2007 will make its last appearance as BNC in April with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. After that, it will formally segue into…
Crazed collector Andrew Novick even collects food memories with his camera, and sometimes he shares them with the world, as he does with Sweet Tooth: 1000 Photographs of Desserts (that I ate), an exhibit that opens with a reception from 5 to 11 p.m. tomorrow at cupcake emporium The Shoppe…
#85: Judy Anderson When Judy Anderson founded PlatteForum a decade ago, it was a good idea. Over the years, with the help of an enthusiastic team, it’s morphed into a great idea — a well-oiled machine that molds a rare product: Kids pumped up on creativity. The basic idea behind…
About ten years ago, this sort of thing — a little bit vaudeville-ish, a little bit carnivalesque — started to happen, and bands of saw players and burlesque dancers began to rove the country like gypsies, putting on shows reminiscent of evenings in the hobo town. And it’s evolved over…
What were the chances that a musical like Jersey Boys, inspired by the ’60s-era street-corner crooners the Four Seasons, would be a hit on Broadway? Pretty darn good, considering the number of Tony Awards the show swept up in 2006. It turns out that the idea of an all-male vocal…
The annual Women + Film Voices Film Festival officially opened yesterday, offering a well-curated sampler of feature films, shorts and documentaries — by, for and about women — that continues through Sunday. But this afternoon, the fest will kick back a little by presenting a bona fide chick-flick matinee screening…
#86: Marie EvB Gibbons Clay artist Marie Gibbons is all about community, and it shows in nearly every move she makes as an artist. Her dedication is not confined to the artist community with which she loves to connect; she’s also a firm believer in the idea that there’s an…
In Denver, we have theater for all tastes — and if yours runs to the risque, we’ve got that, too. Denver’s Dangerous Theatre fills that niche with, er, cheek and, often, laugh-out-loud panache. See also: – Actors playing apes in Dark Wood are naked — and on “Nude Night,” the…
This year’s version of Month of Photography is not going to be typecast, no way. The very breadth of the 2013 citywide photography showcase is astonishing and diverse, viewing photographic media from every perspective: In black-and-white and color, super-real and fantastically altered, analog and digital, projected, and cut up and…
Colfax Avenue earns its storied notoriety the long, hard way — it’s the longest continuous commercial roadway in the U.S., kissed for decades by summer-night cruising, streetside commerce and the salt of the earth, and it begs to be photographed any time of day on any stretch of its 26-plus…
#87: Mario Zoots Mario Zoots is something of a phenomenon in the local world of emerging artists: A DIY Renaissance man and University of Denver MFA candidate, he dabbles in music with his band Modern Witch, digital collage online and video work-out in the world at large. This is a…
On the phone, author Nathan Englander reminds me of young boys I sat across from at the Passover Seder table as a child; as if hyped up on one sip too many of the mild Manischewitz, he talks and talks, building invisible and fantastical windmills in the air before him…
On Saturday, Westword celebrated its ninth class of MasterMinds — artistic adventurers who are changing the landscape of Denver. Here’s our fourth winner: I’m not a hat person, but the first time I saw Susan Dillon’s handmade toppers, I had to throw my hat into the ring. Under the moniker…
