Arts & Culture

After years of doing representational paintings, Craig Marshall Smith suddenly changed course ten years ago and started creating abstracts. “I took an inventory of what I’d done,” he says, “and I realized that my work was not really notable. All along, I’d had this affection for Motherwell, Kline and Diebenkorn…

The foothills town of Golden is full of historical lore: Coors Brewery, Foss Drug, Jolly Rancher, Lookout Mountain and the Colorado School of Mines are just a few of its landmarks, come and (some) gone. Town officials have done a great job of preserving the physical remains of all that…

When a relative passes away, one rite of passage involves divvying up that relative’s possessions. For siblings Amy and Joseph Findeiss, deaths in the family led to finding a treasure trove of photos with Catholic and military themes. The brother-and-sister artists then collaborated on a series of portraits based on…

When Boulder-based performance artist Gemma Wilcox first caught Mike Mathieu and Andrew Connor, aka the Cody Rivers Show, while traveling the fringe circuit with her own acts, she was floored by what she saw. “Their level of performance really blew my mind,” Wilcox remembers. “They are a sketch-comedy troupe unlike…

Will you be ready for the inevitable zombie apocalypse? If you need a little more practice taking down the undead, this weekend’s Zombie Madness 4 is your chance to brush up. Grab an Airsoft gun (it’s like a BB gun that shoots plastic pellets), join a team and prepare for…

It was a simple trip to Michael’s that set the whole thing in motion. While browsing through the crafts store, Crystal O’Brien, director of the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, spotted The Crafty Chica Collection, a tome by Kathy Cano Murillo, whose “Crafty Chica” empire includes a website and blog,…

Where vampires thrive, black humor is certain to show up sooner or later. And thanks to best-selling author and biting humorist Christopher Moore, funny vampires make hilarious mayhem in San Francisco in Bite Me: A Love Story, the last book in a trilogy about bloodsucking protagonist Tommy Flood and his…

Among death and illness memoirs, John Thorndike’s The Last of His Mind has refreshing strengths. Thorndike combines an elegant, expressive prose line with an unsparing honesty and a willingness to plumb the depths of his experiences — even those that are frightening or ugly. He doesn’t hesitate to describe the…

Although the Ron Miles Trio — trumpeter Ron Miles, guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Brian Blade — can swing something fierce, “understated” might be the best way to describe each of the musicians. They let their music do the talking, and the subtleties and nuances they bring make for some…

When Zolo Southwestern Grill kicked off its 151 Days of Tequila last year, bar manager Brian Selbichka wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. “I think it was ambitious to have this go over the course of five months,” he admits. “But we’re getting more people who are ambivalent about tequila,…

Sure enough, the bill guaranteeing rafting companies passage on established routes through private property died (at least for now) in the Colorado Senate, the Associated Press reported in the Aspen Times Friday. (See the most recent OTE post on the issue here.) Sparked initially by a fishing resort near Gunnison…

Front Range skiers looking to start doing extreme skiing have an excellent challenge an hour from Denver in the Dead Dog Couloir on Torreys Peak. Chris Davenport, in his Ski the 14ers project, descended the Dead Dog in late February in an unusually stable winter snow cycle. Most people trying…