Arts & Culture

Being inclusive of non-Christians at Christmas time is a perilous task, but Cleo Parker Robinson Dance pulls it off in Granny Dances to a Holiday Drum.

Rick Griffith, the design maven and letterpress wizard of MATTER Studio, has a whole different way of approaching commerce as a community-based social action. In his world, every person — rich or poor, black or white, unschooled or highly overeducated — is a cog in the wheel of fair and equal commerce, and no one gets left out.

Looking for free and cheap things to do this weekend? We’ve got you covered.

Think you can get through the next few weeks without hitting the mall or setting foot inside a big box store? It isn’t necessary to empty your pockets soullessly on plastic junk and electronics just to make that space under the ChristmaHanuKwanzaa bush look as good as the one over at the Joneses. You’ve got this, and we’re here to help.

Pirate Contemporary Art, the city’s flagship artists’ cooperative, found a new home outside of Denver, in Lakewood. These are the wages of gentrification: The city’s alternative art infrastructure is being off-shored to the inner suburbs.

Group and small-works shows abound at co-ops, studio enclaves and commercial galleries, too, making December an opportunity to scope out the breadth of Denver’s many-faceted art scene. Have a holiday-season lark and get to know every kind of artist better at these ten events.

It’s not too early to start thinking about the biggest arty party of 2018. Artopia, Westword’s annual celebration of art, culture and fashion, will be livelier than ever next year, on a new night, in a new location and with a new emphasis on art created before your eyes.

With all the hurly burly of construction in the Golden Triangle (including the dismantling of “Lao Tzu” outside the Denver Art Museum), it’s a relief to see the new shows at the nearby Goodwin Fine Art and the new display by Linda Herritt at Rule on Santa Fe Drive.

A year and a few days after the Ghost Ship fire burned down an Oakland warehouse, killing 36 people at a party, Denver Arts & Venues announced it would be offering up $300,000 in need-based grants that groups that are a part of the Safe Occupancy Program for building modifications and safety compliance can apply for.

Usama Alshaibi aims for Boy From War to be a decidedly American autobiography about his experience growing up in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, at the start of the Iraq-Iran War, fleeing with his family and coming-of-age in Iowa City’s punk rock scene.