When I mentioned to a friend that I was writing about quilts, he rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, please, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” It’s a common reaction, and I know a lot of people feel this way, because every time I write about a quilt show,…
Surely the biggest art news last week was the joint acquisition by the Denver Art Museum and the Anschutz Collection of “Cowboy Singing” (pictured), an 1892 painting by Thomas Eakins valued at between $5 and $8 million. In addition, the DAM has also acquired two Eakins sketches, both of which…
Berghaus, Douglas and Riverhouse Press. In the front spaces at Sandy Carson, there’s a whimsical yet intelligent show called Clearing: The Kinetic Sculpture of Marc Berghaus. The pieces are mechanical, with the most clever use of machinery being “Freeway Chase,” in which viewers look through the frame of a TV…
While digging in the mud of a Kansas river bank, a group of scientists discovers…bones! Whose bones are they? Where did they come from? And what are they doing in this unlikely spot? All of those questions are answered in the latest film to hit the Extreme Screen Theater at…
Metallica is a magnet for performers dedicated to covering the band’s music in a manner 180 degrees removed from its noisy, aggressive origins. Consider Fade to Bluegrass: The Bluegrass Tribute to Metallica and Rockabye Baby!: Lullaby Renditions of Metallica, two discs so dopey and ear-wrecking that they’re capable of making…
Join the Parker Road Players for Almost Denver: The Songs and Failures of Jim Aurora, a John Denver parody that pokes fun at the legend by creating a “forgotten” fictional folk singer whose life parallels Denver’s. “I think they just thought up these parodies while listening to John Denver music…
When Michael Mason was younger, he and his friends used to cruise downtown Denver in their parents’ cars. “When you’re young, you want to get older, and when you’re older, you want to have the same feelings as when you were younger,” he says. As an engineer who lives in…
I am the proud owner of an 81-pound Victorian bulldog named Marshall. He’s the best dog on the planet, and I wouldn’t trade him for anything. But there will always be a soft spot in my heart for little dogs — dogs you can tuck under your arm or into…
The fruits of the regional retail union known as the Original Shopping Districts are finally beginning to ripen, as evidenced by tonight’s Ladies Only Sample Tour event, taking place from 4 to 7 p.m. in member districts all over the metro area. A successful, rapidly growing venture in past years,…
Polyester might not wrinkle like its natural-fabric cousins, but neither will this disco child get you laid. Well, actually, it won’t get rats laid. In Mary Roach’s new book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, you’ll learn about the Egyptian doctor who dressed vermin in little underpants for…
Truth be told, El Hijo del Santo probably could have ridden comfortably on his father’s coattails. The son of legendary professional wrestler and Mexican icon El Santo, El Hijo was born into a large shadow and could easily have cashed in on his father’s good fake name. But Mexican wrestlers…
What is it about Trevor Appleson’s new exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver that reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s prose? Is it the intense quiet, the obsessive detail or the undercurrent of violence? Honestly, it’s probably a little bit of each. Edging out all background distraction with a large…
I’ve been raving about Jeff “Maestro” Hughes, a violinist whose music mixes hip-hop sensibilities with classical technique, since I first clicked on his website (www.maestrohughes.com). But you can catch him in person tonight at the Denver Food Rave, which promises plenty of other tasty entertainment, including samples from Elegant Catering…
In Pueblo mythology, the Corn Mother is the ultimate earth mother: Like the corn she emulates, this deity dies and is renewed again and again, carrying in her kernel the very secret of life. She’s not unlike the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, which returns annually (CHAC’s just turned thirty)…
When we asked poet Andrea Gibson about the significance of her poetry collection’s title, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns, she had this to say: “One night, my girlfriend and I were outside of a music venue in Boulder. The band inside started playing gospel hymns, and the music was so…
A visitation of things both “wild” and “Western” couldn’t possibly be complete without a style element, so the concept of the Fresh City Life exhibit I Wanna Be a Cowboy, and You Can Be My Cowgirl, which opens today at the Denver Central Library, was a dead-on no-brainer for Fresh…
lthough we no longer live in the days of the Wild West, it’s tough to get away from our Western roots here in Denver, with events like the National Western Stock Show, summertime rodeos and more bringing history to life. And why bother escaping? The West has so much to…
Artist Sherri Lynn Wood likes to say that her Mantra Trailer is “parked at the intersection of imagination, evangelism and propaganda.” Inspired early on by slogan-swathed church signboards she encountered throughout the South, the interactive traveling meditation chamber with a recording studio inside bears a rotating series of watchwords on…
Eating in the dark might be a recent trend, but jumping on a bandwagon was the last thing on Greg Goldfogel’s mind when the Alto owner conceptualized tonight’s Wine Dinner in the Dark. “I’ve got a longstanding relationship with a guy named Nicholas Delmonico, who is a blind gentleman and…
Spike Lee, who speaks under the auspices of the University of Colorado Denver tonight, is among the most fascinating and frustrating of modern directors. He’s extremely talented and relentlessly passionate, yet during the two decades-plus since the breakthrough success of 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It, he’s only occasionally been able…
A lot of women need to be kicked out of their houses this time of year, like mama bears from their dens, and forced to put on makeup, buy new outfits and rejoin the real world. The only difference is that unlike the bears, who’ve been hibernating and emerge skinny…
Standup comedy is best seen live. The atmosphere of a live set (not to mention the alcohol usually involved) has caused me to laugh at jokes that I didn’t actually think were funny. It takes more skill — and better jokes — to create a standup routine that people will…
