Denver Life

#99: Ratha Sok Ratha Sok just couldn’t stop tagging. Growing up in the projects of Westwood, he found his young voice in a spray can. Graffiti was the only art he knew. And eventually, he got caught. Ratha spent two months in Juvie, and that’s where things started, slowly, to…

Elephant Quest comes to us from John Cooney, who made a name for himself with the self-referential meta game, Achievement Unlocked, a parody of the curious nature of achievements and trophies in game. Elephant Quest takes takes the same elephant from that and plops him into an exploration-shooter-RPG that initially…

For all those who give pom-pom critters for birthdays, feel an urge to stick googly eyes on everything or just occasionally get a twitch to fold some origami, we bring you “Gettin’ Crafty” where we feature a craft you can easily make with minimal supplies and limited finances. Today, we…

When the local design- and fashion-savvy entrepreneurial couple Tran and Josh Wills visit other cities, they don’t look first for the typical tourist attractions and destinations. “We try to hit the Plastic Chapels, the Mona Lucero Design Boutiques in other places,” Tran says. Tran and Josh are part of a…

Fresh off headlining the fashion show of Westword’s Artopia on Saturday night, local clothing brand DVLP announced yesterday that it will close its doors. The brand, which carved out its niche with eco-friendly materials, domestic manufacturing and relaxed but stylish designs, expanded quickly and went international in 2007, maintaining lines…

It’s a consistent argument against gay marriage that it just ain’t natural, that gays are in some way deviant and that to allow them to wed would be a corruption of the very fabric of society. The GLBT Wedding Preview Event at the Cable Center this weekend, though, seemed to…

DVLP’s “The Distant Vagabond” went down at Westword’s Artopia party on Saturday, February 19, 2011 at the City Hall Amphitheater. Presented by Abella Bala, Justice Talent Agency, Flippin’ Entertainment and Making the Model, the show featured designers DVLP, Akomplice, Jiberish, Tricia Hoke, Fallene Welles and more. Photos by Aaron Thackeray…

#100: Dana Cain If the overarching Colorado arts scene is like an awesome picture of a unicorn galloping across a rainbow — and we’re going to go ahead and say that it is — then Dana Cain is like the glitter: essential. A tireless arts cheerleader and all around rolling…

The only albino alligator in Colorado — and it’s pretty weird that there is even one — celebrates his birthday tomorrow. Well, it’s not really his birthday, but it is the first anniversary of his arrival at the Colorado Gators Reptile Park, a truly strange attraction just north of Alamosa…

Local couture house Maison de Rose released Wreck Less Abandon today, a gorgeous sneak peak into an in-the-works full-length fashion movie featuring local artists as models. Maison de Rose’s Baily Rose says the short piece came to life after she and Luke Bender (of multimedia collective Brass Tree) went on…

This week’s print issue marked Westword’s seventh annual awards for local MasterMinds. There were five in this year’s MasterMind class, about which you can read via the links below, and as an added bonus, you can view their works, thanks to the technology of this modern age…

Genghis Con XXXII kicks off today, and to celebrate the weekend-long board-gaming fest, we’ve decided to create a handy guide for people looking to attend. Since it runs over the course of four days and is filled with hundreds of events, you’re going to need our help — and a…

As a cultural construct, video games are better known for blowing shit up and somehow causing rape than as a scholarly pursuit. Still, like any other form of entertainment, video games engage us, capture our attention and, perhaps, alter the way we see the world — and examining how they…

Yes, your childhood dream of being able to play The Great Gatsby instead of reading it is finally here. While it’s not going to help your high school term paper score, it’s still a welcome addition to the book-turned-into game genre, and it’s filled with nods to the original story,…

For all those who give pom-pom critters for birthdays, feel an urge to stick googly eyes on everything or just occasionally get a twitch to fold some origami, we bring you “Gettin’ Crafty,” where we feature a craft you can easily make with minimal supplies and limited finances. Here at…

Seven years ago, Westword added a very special component to Artopia: the MasterMind awards. Recognizing that the local arts scene needed a little fertilizer to really get going, and growing, we created a program that every year honors five cultural visionaries — artists and organizations alike — working to change…

When Slam Nuba was started four years ago by a small group of Denver poets fresh off a win at the Poetry Slam nationals with the team from the Mercury Cafe, there was some concern that the upstart group would cause some friction. The Merc was the established anchor of…

The Titwrench music festival — built from the ground up three years ago as a way to highlight women in music and give a stage to “folks who don’t necessarily fit comfortably into any scene,” says founder Sarah Slater — is almost the definition of DIY: a grassroots, community-run project…

Tricia Hoke does so much more than design clothes — but she does even that with an intense artistic flair. An excellent illustrator who teaches classes on the fine art of fashion sketching, Hoke creates clothing from the most cozy material on earth — sweatshirt — but the pieces magically…

I was probably one of your top-five worst interns,” confesses Adam Gildar. And he could be right, which means there’s absolutely no favoritism involved in this MasterMind award. “I was obsessed with Illiterate at the time and trying to put out another issue.” This was back when Gildar was a…