Talking Shop

Milliner Erin Saboe doesn’t mince words about being a hat maker. It’s what she does, and that’s that. It all started because she loved hats but couldn’t find a ready-to-wear one that fit her head, so she learned the trade at the top — at the Fashion Institute of Technology…

It’s Shoe Time!

“Omigod, I feel like it’s Christmas!” As the entries pour in to her EvB Studio for SolePurpose, a juried group show of shoe-themed clay artworks, Denver ceramicist Marie Gibbons gushes over them, calling every single piece “amazing” and “fabulous” and a few other superlatives women often reserve only for their…

Anarchist Ball

What, exactly, is Louis Vuitton Night? “That’s a great question,” says organizer Adam Tinnell. “The show itself is inspired by the anarchist variety shows in Paris in the late 1800s,” he explains, as well as Dada and drag shows in Harlem. “It’s not just a show where you go to…

We Will Rock You

Ballet Nouveau Colorado artistic director Garrett Ammon casts a youthful aura over the troupe by creating such amped-up works as his hot, hot balletic version of Moulin Rouge and his growing series of Garrett Ammon’s Rock Ballets, which includes previous dance versions of “Mediate,” by INXS, and Queen’s “Love of…

Resolved: Undecideds

We’ve gone from a $500 billion surplus to a $10 trillion debt. The people who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large, we’ve invaded the wrong country, and terrorist activity around the world is on the rise. About the only thing that hasn’t gone wrong is a global recession…

Go Vote, Come Party

Calling this year’s election one of the most anticipated in recent history is a monstrous understatement. Ask the man on the street what he’ll be doing tonight, and odds are his answer will be “Watching the election returns as if my life depended on it.” Matchbox Movement, an informal organization…

Graveyard Smash

Looking for a more artsy, unusual way to celebrate Halloween? The holiday might be officially over, but if you’re still in costume-party mode, then look no further than Bad Art for Bad People’s Monster Mash. Featuring music by Dario Rosa, Tijuana Sweetcakes and the Severs, Monster Mash will also incorporate…

Sips and Skulls

El Día de los Muertos will be the theme at both Mezcal (3230 East Colfax Avenue, 303-322-5219) and Tambien (250 Steele Street, 303-333-1763) this weekend, with sugar-skull artwork from the children of William Roberts and Bromwell elementary schools (on display since October 20), plus special food and drink menus. “It’s…

Illicit Complicity

In Curious Theatre’s new quasi-musical, Speech & Debate, three teenage outcasts — Howie, Solomon and Diwata — each know a little something about the town sex scandal. Or at least they think they do. Openly gay Howie thinks a teacher may have solicited him for sex online; closeted-though-obviously-gay Solomon thinks…

Vaudeville and Beyond

If you are unaware that the Democratic National Convention took place in Denver in 1908 — and again in 2008 – well, then, you’re beyond our help and should probably consider investing in some method of mass communication soon (a newspaper or radio would be a good, safe place to…

Green Fairy Tales

Join the green fairy for a special Halloween buzz at Holographic Universe 9, an all-night dance party at the Royal Peacock Absinthe Lounge, 5290 Arapahoe Avenue in Boulder. From 11 p.m. until 5 a.m., a host of DJs headlined by Buddhabomb will help you get down to a variety of…

Culture of Fear

Although Halloween is all about being something you’re not, a little authenticity is always appreciated. For example, would you rather spend the evening in a creepy yet chic clock tower, or a bar decorated with fake spiderwebs? “Looking at the other parties going on downtown, this is the coolest,” says…

What Lies Beneath

Zoe and Kim Boekbinder aren’t like any duo of singing sisters you’ve seen before. While my siblings and I were imitating Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen’s White Christmas song and dance, the Boekbinder girls were honing their skills in clown boot camps and digging through dumps for instruments. Vermillion Lies, their…

Road to Nowhere

It will be a very “Psycho Killer” Halloween when the Motet plays the Talking Heads. Just don’t expect anyone to show up in one of David Byrne’s big suits — the dress-up here is purely musical. “The first year it was the Beatles,” recalls Dave Watts, the band’s founder. “And…

A Stitch in Time

TACtile Arts Center director Dianne Denholm can sew a pretty piece. But when she picked up a pair of needles recently to knit a pair of socks, something she’d never done before, she found herself less than impressed with the results. “I’m kind of stuck, and I don’t know anyone…

Crossing Cultures

In Mexico, El Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is right up there with Christmas in terms of celebration. It’s a lot like The Nightmare Before Christmas, where no one is scared, gifts are given to the dead instead of the living, and candy skulls replace gingerbread…

Halloween Camp

There are some movies I can watch over and over again without getting sick of them, but horror movies do not fall under that category. I already know when Michael Myers is going to jump out and frighten the bejesus out of Laurie Strode, and the fact that it really…

Corntastic

In Pueblo mythology, Corn Mothers were sacred figures who sung the essence of all creation into existence. “About three years ago, my husband brought home this book called When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away,” remembers journalist and photographer Renee Fajardo-Anstine. “It was about the Corn Mothers and the…

Purple Haze

There’s not a rock guitarist alive who can’t claim that at least a teensy bit of the Jimi Hendrix vibe flows in his veins; even today, the voodoo child’s screaming licks and dead-on phrasing still give ya the shivers, though he’s been dead for more than thirty years. That’s why…

3OH3!

“Maybe I could be the first rapper-slash-doctor!” As he applies to medical schools for next year, Nathaniel Motte — beatmaker and one half of Boulder crunk-rock duo 3OH!3 — is getting psyched about the cred this will win him in the hip-hop game. “Let’s put this down in ink,” he…

A Wynne Wynne for Denver’s Kirkland Museum

Hugh Grant, director of the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, has relentlessly carried the torch for Colorado’s art history, doing more to promote awareness of this important legacy than anyone ever has. He began his promotion with the work of Vance Kirkland, for whom the museum has been…

Natural Abstractions at Walker Fine Art

In the front gallery at Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955, www.walkerfineart.com), owner Bobbi Walker has paired up painter Don Quade and sculptor James Dixon, both from Denver, for the exhibit Natural Abstractions. The show’s title is somewhat general in its implications, if not quite a catch-all, because…