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Best Historic Photo Show -- Solo

Denver's Pictorial Photographer

Pictorialism is a photographic style in which images are blurred to create the atmospheric quality normally associated with a painting. It was all the rage a hundred years ago -- and it is again right now. Believe it or not, Denver had its own first-generation pictorialist, R. Ewing Stiffler, who was the subject of Denver's Pictorial Photographer at Gallery Roach last spring. Stiffler moved to Colorado as a teenager, but he studied his craft across the country, including at the Art Institute of Chicago. To say that this exhibit was a rare viewing opportunity would be more than an understatement, since some of the pieces had not been displayed since the Denver Art Museum did a pictorialist show back in 1935.

Best Iconic Photo Show

Marilyn Monroe: Beginning
to End

When you talk about photogenic, you've got to talk about Marilyn Monroe. After all, more than a few photographers built their entire careers on their memorable images of her. Camera Obscura Gallery, granddaddy of the city's photo scene, hosted an interesting duet comparing and contrasting Andre de Dienes's earliest shots of the glamorous siren with George Barris's moody photos, taken a few weeks before the actress died, in 1962. Barris is believed to have snapped the last pictures of Marilyn, but like the gentleman that he was, he refused to publish them until long after she died.

Best Contemporary Photo Show -- Solo

John Bonath: Blessings Revisited

Well-known digital photographer John Bonath had a hell of a year battling cancer. So it's amazing how well he kept his spirits up -- even naming his one-person show at sellarsprojectspace Blessings. Man, what a trouper! In his pieces, Bonath created fantasy worlds that are completely believable because they were made up of images of real things. Most of these digital photos included figures, both male and female, while others incorporated shots of carved wooden hands to stand in for the missing human subjects. Bonath's chemotherapy has been successful; best of luck to him with that.

Best Showcase of Photograph Trends

(REAL): Photographic Constructs

This dynamite show, put together by Center for Visual Art director Jennifer Garner and assistant director Cecily Cullen, featured eight photographers who were pushing their medium to the absolute edge. Local talents Jon Rietfors, Gwen Laine and David Zimmer were joined by internationally famous artists Zeke Berman, Gregory Crewdson with Susan Harbage Page, Bruce Charlesworth and Meridel Rubenstein. With photography coming on so strong in recent years, this intelligent show gave viewers a good snapshot of some of the best work being done across the country.

Best Sculpture Solo

James Surls

The star attraction at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art last fall was James Surls: A Cut Above. The sculptor made his name in the 1980s from a studio in Texas, but he moved to Colorado in 1998 and has been here ever since. Surls's medium of choice is wood, which he carves into attenuated shapes based on organic forms. He assembles his sinuously cut sections into unlikely arrangements or clusters, typically leaving the material in a subtle array of natural tones. Some of the pieces stand on the floor while others hang from the ceiling. Coloradans don't usually cotton to Texans, but since Surls is among the region's best sculptors, we'll just have to make an exception.

Best End to a Daydream

Matthew Rose: Spelling With Scissors

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy is a one-woman art scene. In the past, she was involved with Edge Gallery, was one of the founders of the long-closed ILK co-op, which she ran, then opened Pod, a boutique that morphed into Capsule, an alternative gallery. Experimental shows were a specialty, with the over-the-top Spelling With Scissors being the last of them. For this outing, Matthew Rose, an American in Paris, covered the walls with nearly 900 funny and weird neo-dada collages cut from the pages of newspapers and magazines. In December, when the show closed, so did Capsule. Murphy found that selling art was harder than renting space to other people trying to do it, so she opened the Capsule Art and Events Center next door. We wish her the best.

Best Ceramics Show -- Solo

Martha Daniels

Martha Daniels's work riffs off the history of ceramics, combining Mediterranean and Asian influences in the same way as her mentor, Betty Woodman. The most remarkable creations in the show at William Havu Gallery were her delicate -- though gigantic -- towers that subtly referred to work by the great Brancusi. Among Daniels's strengths are her expressive handling of the forms and the way she uses glazes as though they were paints. Long one of the best ceramicists in the time zone, Daniels is a city treasure.

Best Ceramics Show -- Group

Breaking the Mold

Wouldn't it be neat to be rich? You could put together a first-rate art collection overnight -- ten years or so in the art world. That's what Connecticut collector Virginia Vogel Mattern did. In 1988 she became enraptured with pottery from the pueblos of New Mexico, and over the next decade sought out the best pieces available. Then, needing to downsize in 2003, she donated it all to the Denver Art Museum. Nancy Blomberg, the DAM's Native Arts curator, selected over 100 of the best pieces from the gift to make up Breaking the Mold: The Virginia Vogel Mattern Collection of Contemporary Native American Art. The show, which is still open, is a marvelous way to get a thorough introduction to the field.

Best Imitation of Carnival Spin Art

Something to Consider

Despite having an essentially meaningless title -- Something to Consider -- this show did have some of the freshest-looking abstracts seen last summer. The paintings were edgy examples of post-abstract expressionism, as done by Quintn Gonzlez, a Denver artist who just keeps getting better and better. The small acrylic-on-canvas paintings resembled carnival spin art, though they hadn't actually been spun. Gonzlez builds up layers, starting with a flat monochrome and then pouring on different colors that combine into various hues. It's amazing how he keeps the different shades separate and unblended -- that's something to consider.

Best Installation Show

Weekend in So Show

After years of gurgling in a temporary space, the Laboratory for Art and Ideas at Belmar -- the Lab, for short -- finally started an exhibition program in its finished home last fall. The place aims to bring high culture to Lakewood, an idea out of the mind of founding director Adam Lerner. Lerner loves what's called "new media" -- film, video and installation -- and that's what's on tap in the still-open Weekend in So Show. With this multi-room piece -- which comprises wooden boxes, LCD monitors displaying an old film, and lots of wall text -- British artist Liam Gillick addresses the topic of human labor. It's hard to follow, but it's even harder to deny how good it looks.

Best Of Denver®

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