Best Free Impromptu Show 2013 | Jack White | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Free Impromptu Show

Jack White

One Wednesday afternoon, hours before he was to perform a sold-out gig at Red Rocks, Jack White casually tweeted the secret location of a free show that had been rumored but seemed too good to be true. But it was true: The performance, which took place at Isdajo Automotive on West Colfax, drew a throng of excited fans who crowded into the small parking lot to watch the former White Stripes frontman play a few songs. White was gone almost as quickly as he came, but the memories from that monumental day live on.

Best Funk Night

Tuesday Night Funk

Eric Gruneisen

Skip "The Funktologist" Reeves, who hosts KZKO's Funk Above the Rest show, knows the funk inside and out. If the dude had his way, Denver would be one city under a groove. So it made sense when Reeves set up shop at Jazz@Jack's five or so years ago and started his own funk night there. It's still one of the few places in town where you're guaranteed to hear the best in funk and soul on a weekly basis.

Best Gallery in a Pot Shop

GroundSwell Gallery

Scott Lentz

GroundSwell would be a great gallery regardless of its location: Gallery curators Rebecca Peebles and Danette Montoya earned a Westword MasterMind award this year for opening an intimate viewing room that doubles as an arts incubator and a haven where artists can show more daring or experimental work. Since they opened GroundSwell, Peebles and Montoya have hosted everything from Andrew Novick's pie-in-the-face show Food Face to a recent group show by both emerging and more established local artists. But there's also a certain urban charm in the fact that they've joined forces with one of our city's growing retail industries, albeit one still a little on the edge. The mingled businesses rock the Colfax vibe, a state of being that inspires cereal bars and taquerias, poetry readings and street-corner prophets...and a wonderful community of budding artists.

Best Gallery Show — Group

The Other Primary Colors — White Black Grey

Two separate themes connected the artists in The Other Primary Colors, a group show at Space Gallery. First, as indicated by the title, all of them used neutral shades. And second, they all created pieces in the context of contemporary abstraction, with everything owing a debt to either minimalism or pattern painting. Guest curator for this show was Marks Aardsma (who dropped her first name, Jo, for the outing), who invited a wonderful roster of fellow travelers to join her in the realm of conceptual abstraction. That list included Tonia Bonnell, Nancy Koenigsberg, Carlene Frances, Corey Postiglione, David Sawyer and Space owner Michael Burnett. Elegant and impressive, the show lent an unexpected contemplative quality to the sometimes raucous gallery.

Best Gallery Show — Solo

Place

Michael Brohman, who teaches sculpture at the University of Colorado Denver, is known for being outrageous. For his solo Place, mounted in fall 2012, the longtime Pirate co-op member presented some never-before-seen works that he'd done during a residency at the Jentel Foundation in Banner, Wyoming. The works, mostly made of found materials, represent contemporary takes on Western themes, like the screen door with the missing cross brace that brilliantly expresses its title, "Horizon." Brohman's often been on the cutting edge, so even if Western-style contemporary art is one of the latest crazes, it's important to remember that he's been at it for more than five years.

Best Gay Bar

Tracks Nightclub

Keith Garcia

Tracks is more than just a gay bar — it's a veritable multiplex of GLBTQ-centered activities. The decades-old nightclub has it all, from Denver's largest ladies' night (First Fridays) to RuPaul's Drag Race watching parties to DJs from across the globe rocking its multiple dance floors. The adjoining EXDO Event Center space allows Tracks to offer the best live drag shows in Denver — when it's not serving as the premier party destination for corporate events, nonprofit fundraisers, weddings and more. At both venues, the door and bar staff are friendly and efficient, and the sound system keeps every party going, no matter the size of the crowd. From spring-break underwear parties to Pride weekend blowouts, Denver's vibrant GLBTQ community is in the spotlight at Tracks.

Best GLBTQ-Spotlighting Film Festival

Cinema Q

Giving movies that might otherwise never be seen a chance on the big screen, the Sie FilmCenter's ongoing Cinema Q series and annual film festival focuses on the wide-open world of GLBTQ cinema. I Want Your Love, which screened last year, might have been too pornographic for any other festival, but at Cinema Q, it got the attention it deserved. Programming director Keith Garcia continues to seek out topical and often controversial narratives, booking films by gay writers, directors and producers, documentaries about pivotal GLBTQ figures, and romantic comedies with complex plots, removing any notion that these are simply "gay" movies.

Best Graphic Novel by a Local Artist

The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln, by Noah Van Sciver

Don't think we're crowing just because Noah Van Sciver's work appears in these pages: The cartoonist would have made a name for himself in the comix world with or without our help — he's that good. Known to the rest of the world as the creator of the Blammo comic book and an accomplished old-school comic artist with a dense, heavily cross-hatched style, an ironic sense of humor and a slight taste for the macabre, Van Sciver has had work published in several compilations, in Mad and The Best American Comics 2011. But he reached his pinnacle — so far — with 2012's The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln, an impeccably drawn graphic novel published by Fantagraphics. Mining a little-known period in the life of Abraham Lincoln, when he was treated for a deep bout of depression resulting in a nervous breakdown, the book, which revisits the now-antiquated treatment options of the nineteenth century, is dark, but a glimmer of Lincoln's future can also be detected in the denouement.

Best Group of Shows by a Bunch of Kids

Estee Fox, David Sole, Harry Kleeman and Daniel Nilsson

This past winter, four young upstarts transformed Edge Gallery into a very edgy place. First was Estee Fox, represented by videos, disturbing performances and some great figurative works on paper. Then David Sole turned one space into an artificial back yard that included a gouged and graffiti-covered wall. Next up was Harry Kleeman, with some super-successful hybrids of paintings and sculptures that hung on the walls. Finally, there was Daniel Nilsson, who was all over the map with oddball attractions like silvered Coke bottles, a fur-covered ladder and some very elegant sculptures that relied on fluorescent lights. It's apparent that the next generation of Denver's art world has already arrived.

Best Group Show by a Bunch of Grownups

Stephen Batura, Edie Winograde, Jerry Kunkel and Gary Emrich

In anticipation of Continental Drift at MCA Denver, Jennifer Doran curated a quartet of solos by well-known Colorado artists that focused on new art about the West. Stephen Batura was made up of the artist's casein-and-acrylic paintings based on historic photos, like his famous train-wreck paintings. Edie Winograde mashed the past with the present through the artist's remarkable color shots of nerdy re-creations of historic events. Jerry Kunkel featured the painter's photo-realist pieces depicting Western scenes as though they were placemat images. Finishing things off was Gary Emrich, which combined a video with digital prints of mid-century Western-kitsch knickknacks. The strong foursome presented further evidence that contemporary art in the West is an up-and-coming national trend.

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