Escape to the Emerald Isle

Pat McCullough, organizer of the annual Colorado Irish Festival, is well aware of what people want from the cultural extravaganza each year. “We’re going to have all the nine yards there,” he confirms. “Music, dance and piping, and all the booths and artisans and vendors, and the Denver Gaels —…

And the Henry Goes to…

Despite the tanking economy, the shifting fortunes of local companies and the shrinking of the media that has always served as support and megaphone, there’s a lot going on in local theater. The annual Henry Awards, organized by the Colorado Theatre Guild with indefatigable director Gloria Shanstrom at the helm,…

A Ragtime Melody

Summer evenings at the Denver Botanic Gardens are something to be savored, and that’s why the growing concern at 1007 York Street hosts themed Sunset Strolls from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. every second Wednesday throughout the season. Tonight’s installment sounds especially dreamy: It’s a Great Gatsby promenade that invites you…

Bare Bones Art

“No matter how much money you have, no matter how much power you have, everyone’s gonna die,” says Emmanuel Gallery director Shannon K. Corrigan. This is the concept that will be thoroughly explored through the skeletal images of Mexican illustrator and political cartoonist Jose Guadalupe Posada in the gallery’s two…

Photos: Stay cool at summer shows at Ice Cube, Walker Fine Art

“Ice Cube Gallery sounds like an attractive escape from 100-plus-degree temperatures,” writes Michael Paglia in his review of Regina V. Benson: Wading In and Jane McMahan: Absence (through July 14), two shows that feature natural imagery as key components, in this week’s Westword. Meanwhile, the Golden Triangle’s Walker Fine Art,…

Denver Cash Mob at I Heart Denver store tonight

Flash mobs are so yesterday. Get ready for cash mobs! Rather than inciting a riot or inspiring a funky dance, these mobs encourage people to throw money at local businesses. As Samuel Schimek, who will be hosting the first installment of Style Strike at the Denver Pavilions at noon today,…

Photos: Getting sauced at the Colorado Tomato Battle

The Colorado Tomato Battle at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park Saturday was a mash-up of childhood frivolity and big-kid fun. Though the structure was more formal than the old Tomato Wars between Coloradans and Texans at Twin Lakes, the result was the same: utter chaos and tomato soup. Tomato Battle founders…

Ten new reasons to buy your ticket to the Denver County Fair now

If last year’s inaugural Denver County Fair was a grand experiment, this year’s “is going to blow the first one out of the water on all counts!” says DCF maestra Dana Cain. That’s because Cain’s mental notepad was a cover-to-cover frenzy of new ideas and lessons learned by the time…

Reader: Colorado Tomato Battle is one juicy story

You say tomato, I say tomato — either way, it hurts like hell when you’re hit by a green one. And it smells worse when you’re hit by a rotten one, as Natalie Gonzales learned when she joined in the Colorado Tomato Battle this past weekend. The event brought back…

Cool summer shows at Ice Cube and Walker Fine Art

I don’t need to tell you that Colorado’s weather has been a scorcher and that, less metaphorically, parts of the state itself have been scorched, including my sister’s neighborhood, Mountain Shadows. Her house was spared, luckily, but this once-handsome area of Colorado Springs will never be the same. The Waldo…

Now Showing

Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist that starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with some odd takes on…