Clyfford Still Unveiled. A master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, painter Clyfford Still was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. His anti-social behavior led to a situation where 94 percent of his artworks remained together after he died — a staggeringly complete chronicle of his oeuvre that…
If you only recognize Michael Ian Black as the talking head on VH1 or the guy hawking Sierra Mist between first downs, than you have truly been missing out. And you’re an idiot. Because although those appearances are certainly smirk-inducing, Black is a bona fide alternative-comedy superhero, dishing out some…
For a real taste of where Denver is today, you can’t beat First Friday. To whet your artistic appetite for tonight’s festivities, get a taste of Denver’s past when Myron Vallier, author of Historic Photos of Denver, leads a photographic journey through the city’s history from 12:15 to 1 p.m…
Remixes, sampling and mash-ups have become part of the standard lexicon of music, and now they’re making their way to visual media. Artist Tony Romano takes photographs, drawings, found objects and more, scans them all into a computer and then layers, distorts and filters them in Photoshop. The results are…
Thank goodness for eBay. During a visit to the site, violinist Josie Quick found a copy of 1966’s Violin Summit, a long-out-of-print recording that teamed string pros Stephane Grappelli, Svend Asmussen, Jean-Luc Ponty and Stuff Smith — and she was so taken by the results that she decided to create…
Fortune’s son, anthropologist and entree are just some of the words you could use to describe Michael C. Rockefeller. No matter what you call him, his determination to bring the wood carvings of the Asmat tribes of southwestern New Guinea to the attention of the Western world is the stuff…
“All the work we do is geared toward helping native peoples gain more control over their resources,” explains Jeanne Rubin, organizer of the Indigenous Film & Arts Festival. “And stories are a resource. These people should be in control of their stories and how their histories are told, because when…
Generations of University of Colorado at Boulder art students have called the old Sibell-Wolle art building home since it opened its doors in the 1930s, but now the place is toast, scheduled for demolition later this fall to make way for a state-of-the-art replacement projected to open in 2010. Hence…
Traditional Kathak dancer master Pandit Chitresh Das and Emmy-winning tap-dancer Jason Samuels Smith met backstage at the 2004 American Dance Festival, and it was a match made in heaven: The former child prodigies shared a similar approach to dance, a passion for exploring the possibilities of rhythmic improvisation, and a…
There are plenty of movements out there inviting lapsed, laissez-faire and staunchly secular Jews back into the fold, but perhaps one of the most engagingly persuasive is Storahtelling, the brainchild of Amichai Lau-Lavie, the descendent of a long line of rabbis dating back to the eleventh century and a man…
Julie Pech, author of The Chocolate Therapist, has a thousand and one reasons why you should eat dark chocolate every day: It releases endorphins, it can lower your blood pressure, it’s rich with antioxidants. And, obviously, it tastes fantastic. The Denver resident has been extolling the virtues of chocolate for…
Yarrr! Colorado’s pirate reenactors, as it turns out, don’t just put on their eye patches and peg legs for the Renaissance Festival. The Colorado Rogues’ 115 members will don their ruffled blouses any chance they get. “You’ve heard of Civil War reenactors? We’re reenacting what it’s like to live and…
News flash: “Writing itself, but poetry in particular, doesn’t pay the bills,” says James Belflower, a local poet and organizer of Potlatch Poetry, a website dedicated to the free exchange of poetry and other literary ephemera. “So part of Potlatch is trying to avoid having older items just disappear or…
Denver Arts Week is out of the chute today, spewing a downright miasma of cultural events, all of them held together by one loose thematic thread. It’ll be hard to pick and choose; still, you wouldn’t want to miss tonight’s Super First Friday, wherein five Denver arts districts pull out…
Getting a new theatrical production from concept to opening curtain is typically a long process. But A Play in a Day, a three-day event that gets under way tonight as part of Denver’s Arts Week celebration, reduces the schedule from months to hours. According to the Colorado Theatre Guild’s Dana…
If you take a walk around downtown Denver today, you’ll notice that it’s suddenly chock-full of arty delights that have been placed along the wide third-floor walkway at the Denver Pavilions and in once-empty storefronts — in fact, just about anywhere you look. Local artist Rodney Wallace started the Think…
Imagine climbing in the shadow of George Mallory as he clings to the face of Everest or swimming with Robert Ballard as he discovers the fossil-like remains of the Titanic. Starting tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Macky Auditorium, 17th Street and University Avenue in Boulder, First Person: Stories From the…
What do World War II and the Cold War have to do with Boulder? Quite a bit, if you listen to Keith Gleason, manager of the Sommers-Bausch Observatory at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Gleason will explain it all tonight and tomorrow night in “Sputnik & the Space Age…
“Glendale considers itself a city that’s different from the rest,” says Chris Thonis, business-development manager at Denver-based FitBeats. “We really wanted something that would be fun and different from other races.” That’s why the company chose Glendale’s new Infinity Park — the country’s first municipally owned rugby stadium — as…
Back in 1999, one of my favorite exhibits ever left its footprints at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science: Titled Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway, it was simply the most imaginative science show I’d ever seen, the creation of artist Ray Troll, the absolute R. Crumb of paleontology, whose hilarious…
Look at the liner notes of the best punk and post-punk albums to come from Washington, D.C., over the past two decades-plus, and you’re likely to find Don Zientara’s name on lots of them. During the late ’70s, Zientara founded Inner Ear Studio in his basement, and since then, he’s…
The whispery, fairy-tale tone of the Slow Crash’s music is deceptively fey. Akin to the intense chamber rock of famed Fort Collins outfit Matson Jones, the sound is decidedly darker and would never be confused with more traditional indie rock. With a multi-instrumentalist singer who’s an amalgam of Johnette Napolitano…
