Lights might be the best part of the holiday season: neighborhoods and business districts all lit up, more lights twinkling on trees and candles aglow in menorahs, kinaras and luminarias. And the enjoyment of those magical lights is a piece of childhood that never leaves us; as they turn off…
I first saw the movie of West Side Story at a drive-in as a little girl, but that first time, tinny window speakers and all, was a love-at-first-sight moment. I hadn’t seen many musicals at my then-tender age, but I knew immediately that it was radically different: Ruthlessly modern and…
Aurora sometimes gets a ho-hum rap from the urbanistas to the west, but the sprawling gateway to the plains certainly has its hidden treasures. Downtown Aurora Visual Arts, which provides a creative haven for at-risk youth of all ages, is one of them, offering year-round art-making programs led by a…
Not many artists can say that they had their first gallery show when they were in the fourth grade. But they’re not the artists now featured in I Have a Dream…Dreamers’ Art Exhibit at NEXT Gallery. The idea behind the show was simple: During Denver Arts Week, and in conjunction…
When Maruca Salazar took over a couple of years ago as director of Museo de las Americas, she envisioned a curatorial pattern that would feature Latino art in an alternating series of contemporary, traditional and folk art exhibitions. She’s filled the folk art slot beautifully with Wixaritari: Huichol Art of…
Entries in the third annual LoDo Aglow contest — for which 22 businesses in lower downtown decorated their windows — ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. The really ridiculous. Who knew that one of Santa’s elves was a pole dancer? But that was just one of the revelations in…
Salvagetti Bicycle Workshop will kickstart a tiny, 250-square -foot version of its bike shop on South Broadway sometime in the next few weeks. It will be located right behind Happy Coffee, which Salvagetti owner Scott Taylor plans to open at 1 South Broadway sometime in February or March inside what…
Brandi Shigley could be our Westword MasterMind poster girl: Civic-minded and an ever-positive dynamo on the local style scene, the Fashion Denver founder lives up to the very definition of a MasterMind in a way that truly befits a member of the inaugural 2005 creative class. Back then, she was…
It’s like a mash-up of mash-up: The film Girl Walk // All Day takes the manic moods of remix master Girl Talk’s 2010 record, All Day, and pairs it with a story of Girl and her city, told through dance. In advance of tomorrow’s screening at the Denver Film Center,…
You made it to 2012 — congratulations! — and maybe you’re still partying hearty from the night before…or perhaps you just need to get out of the house on this Sunday after. We’ve got a rundown of New Year’s Day events; keep reading to see our picks:…
It’s the end of the year, which means that Westword scribes are busy compiling lists of the good, the bad and the ugly of 2011…sometimes the very ugly. If we were working on a list of the worst art moments of 2010, it would certainly include the fact that arts…
We’ve listed the best cheap events — and the best free events — in the area on New Year’s Eve, but if you’ve got money to burn or want to impress someone really special (it is your last chance to do that in 2011, after all), we’ve got you covered…
Read it and reap! We’ve long lamented the lack of a strong literary history of Denver — and now Jenny Shank, author of The Ringer, has provided one, just published on the em>Poets and Writers web site. “Colorado has often been a boom and bust state,” she writes, “attracting outsized…
Vaclav Havel, the unassuming playwright dissident who helped spearhead the Velvet Revolution of 1989 that overthrew Communism in Czechoslovakia, died on December 18. He became the country’s president after the revolution, presiding over its peaceful break-up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, leaving and then returning to the office, before…
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Okay, It actually wasn’t either of those things — but 2011 was pretty okay in its own right, and at certain times it was downright awesome. Because we’re in the business of thoroughly cataloging things, we’ve cataloged the…
“Imagine how cool it would be if you were an eighth grader visiting the Judicial Center and you saw a word that you had submitted in the art,” says Jon Sarche, public information coordinator for the Colorado Judicial Department, on its current art endeavor. The department is asking middle-school students…
Yes, 2012 is creeping up on us like my 32nd birthday (no need to send presents — I will only be accepting fan letters as gifts and creepy Facebook messages of adoration from high school stalkers). Since the world is not going to be ending as some of us maybe…
There’s big news on Broadway, where Fancy Tiger and the Buffalo Exchange will be sharing a building at 55-59 Broadway, with the clothing resale shop opening post-Christmas after a quick move from Capitol Hill, and Fancy Tiger opening its new, merged doors in in early January. It’s big news, but…
The art of the West’s introduction to the world came in the 1970s, when paintings and photos from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suddenly became highly sought after in the marketplace. By now, this kind of emblematic Western work — stunning landscapes, charming scenes of cowboys and Indians…
Birger Sandzén. Though Birger Sandzén was born in Sweden, studied painting there and in Paris and later made his permanent home in Kansas, we in Colorado can claim him as one of our own. Sandzén found his muse here — in our stunning scenery — and after his first extended…
It’s a Wonderful Life. The film It’s a Wonderful Life is a much-loved American classic. Some families watch it together year after year at this time, like Miracle on 34th Street and varying versions of A Christmas Carol. What makes It’s a Wonderful Life interesting and original is the twist,…
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is hardly a personal project. Still, David Fincher’s sveltely malevolent remake of the 2009 Swedish blockbuster directed by Niels Arden Oplev from Stieg Larsson’s rambling thriller — a posthumously published international bestseller and Kindle record-holder — is a recognizably Fincherian caper. The movie, which…
