Denver Life

Mysticism, nature and personal politics mingle freely in Denver artist Katy Zimmerman’s organic work, rendered in a constellation of mediums while hurtling through a dimensional space-time continuum.

Pure Barre is celebrating the opening of its fourteenth studio in Colorado with the unveiling of Pure Barre Belmar on Sunday, October 1.

A native New Yorker now living in Denver, Vincent Comparetto walks the planet at street level, but with a global view fired by a love for traveling. When he’s not doing that, Comparetto teaches, makes films and music videos, does motion graphics design work, photographs sights seen in places near and far and, as an artist with an elegant modernist design sense, stencils designs over collaged backgrounds in limited editions.

As of today, summer’s gone. Fall’s here. Sure, there are golden aspen trees, apple picking, trick-or-treating, hay rides and eventually ski season to look forward to. But damnit, if we’re not missing the dog days of summer already.

Jacob Barreras is the ultimate projectionist who exercises his eye for new and the historical avant-garde film while plying his trade for the University of Colorado Film Studies Program, and Libi Striegl, a doctoral candidate in intermedia art, writing and performance at CU, bounces around between disciplines with special interests in robotics, software design to textiles and filmmaking.

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science will host a major exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls alongside the largest collection of historic artifacts from the Holy Land ever assembled; the show opens March 18, 2018.

Author and activist Erika T. Wurth puts a modern face on Native American life, which she characterizes as a vital, but invisible underground, thriving beneath the homogenized American landscape. When she’s not away teaching creative writing for her gig at Western Illinois University, Wurth, a native Coloradan who identifies as Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee, writes novels and poetry and can be heard at readings about town.

There’s a lot of potential inside 2,000 square feet of gym space. So much so, that well-known fitness and Pilates guru Heather Willer plans on offering over 35 classes a week in the newly-renovated Axis Pilates, beginning Saturday, September 16.

Lisa Druxman knows what it means to be a “momboss.” The founder of FIT4MOM, the country’s largest fitness programs for mothers, has spent the last 16 years creating successful prenatal and postnatal exercise programs, building a business franchise* and finding time to pick her kids up from school every day. This weekend, Druxman will be heading to Denver for a weekend of FIT4MOM events, including an Empowered Mama workshop on Saturday, September 16, where she plans on helping women create healthy, happy lives for themselves as moms. Druxman says that nearly 70 percent of mothers are working, whether it’s a “side hustle or full time,” and while there are a lot of workshops out there for entrepreneurs, there’s nothing specifically for mothers.

Fall is just days away, and with it comes arguably the best season for fashion, full of layers — chunk sweaters, cardigans, flannels — and accessories. Here, in chronological order, are the ten best fashion events through September in Denver.

Both artist and artisan, Cal Duran creates folk art on steroids, bowing to the ancient traditions of Mexico and the Southwest and conjuring the souls of the ancestors in murals and installations of clay and papier-mâché.

As a recognizable face of the new, arts-rich Trinidad, Colorado, Rodney Wood serves as the grand poobah of what could be the southern Colorado town’s most distinguishing features: The annual ArtoCade art-car festival, and as of 2017, its year-round companion, the Bizarre Car Garage, a permanent museum where ArtoCade vehicles winter over.

ARC Thrift Stores were selling secondhand clothes and housewares to Coloradans decades before Macklemore made thrift shopping the subject of a chart-climbing rap tune. Since ARC opened its first store in 1968, the nonprofit has used proceeds from store sales to support and advocate for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including Downs syndrome and autism. Today it employs 300 individuals with intellectual and development disabilities, and it will debut its 26th Front Range location in Littleton this month.

Sommer Browning is primarily a poet and, by day, a librarian, but she’s also a collector and purveyor of one-liners, both in person and in hand-drawn comics, as well as a curious observer of Denver’s growing cross-cultural art scenes. Her latest project? Georgia Art Space — a new multi-disciplinary arts showcase named for her five-year-old daughter and housed in her garage.

Published author, journalist and avid traveler Monique Antonette Lewis grew up in Texas and Colorado before following her wanderlust across the U.S. and abroad. During a stint in New York City, Lewis founded the reading series At the Inkwell, which has since gone international, with outposts bringing literary communities together to read for each other — and the public — in bookstores and bars in Denver, London, New York, Richmond, San Francisco and Seattle.

Anybody can fly at Atherial. The wellness studio located at 3905 Fox Street offers aerial fitness and yoga that’s accessible to every “body.”

Denver native and artist Lucas T. McMahon has chameleon skills as a collagist, sculptor and painter, but he’s not comfortable with finding a groove — when there are so many other avenues to explore. Dig into what it’s like to be a young artist who’s still asking questions — McMahon tells all for the 100CC questionnaire.

Bright and community-minded, Thadeaous Mighell devotes his skills in arts administration and practice to causes both above ground, as Adam Lerner’s recently named Assistant Chief Animator at MCA Denver, and under the radar in the DIY community, working with groups like Unit E and the Birdseed Collective.

As director of the Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls and Toys for ten years and counting, Wendy Littlepage tackles miniature problems with big ideas, making the most of the museum’s microscopic collection while constantly exploring new ways to bring visitors into her small, small world.

As a writer, singer, selfie-taker, documentarian of changes in her neighborhood and the fleeting colors of urban nature, massage therapist, MFA candidate and lover of people, art, culture and life, Coleman expresses in multiple ways what so many of us can’t or don’t know how to express: That beneath all the grit, bad politics and forces beyond our control in this world, we still live in a paradise.

Consider August the golden hour: July’s heat is gone, but fall isn’t quite here yet, making this month the ideal time to get out and about. Celebrate Denver’s Mexican heritage and food at Westword’s second-annual Tacolandia, or kick off the High Plains Comedy Festival at a preview show. Give a…

Life partners Jeff Lee and Ann Martin are book people to the core: The couple’s shared love for our wild lands and the kind of socially engaged, place-based literature that argues for preserving natural spaces converge at the Rocky Mountain Land Library.