We love our cars — that’s a fact. They’re our homes away from home, the canned personification of whatever freedoms we have left to enjoy in these uptight times. But automobiles also reflect popular culture in a seasonal blueprint of design, color schemes and technology that rewrites itself annually. Cars…
FRI, 6/4 The relationship between people and their gardens is an ancient one, primeval as a redwood, humanity’s link to its own natural beginnings. And not only do we love gardens for their beauty, but also for the creativity they inspire. That’s how it is for Boulder artist Cha Cha…
THURS, 6/3 Beginning today, weekend warriors can jump on the adventure-race bandwagon at the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, the largest extreme-sports festival in the country. “This is the crown jewel of the outdoor industry,” says Joel Heath, president of Untraditional Marketing, organizers of the event. “There is just so…
FRI, 6/4 Local event engineer Ben Popken might possibly be mad. “For many months, I have been obsessed with the idea of a cardboard party. In my mind, I see a topographical landscape built from cardboard, with cardboard furniture, a cardboard stage and cardboard props. Inhabiting this land, of course,…
SAT, 6/5 Three years ago, a group of teens approached Douglas County Libraries community-relations specialist Aspen Butterfield with an interesting proposal. “They saw that the library had children’s performers coming through, and they wanted to know if they could play music there, too,” Butterfield explains. But before flocks of nebbish…
The story had been circulating for months: Fresh Art Gallery was closing for good, and the newish +Zeile/Judish would be moving into the sharp-looking spot at Ninth Avenue and Santa Fe Drive. And it was lots more than a rumor. Not only had the tale been spread around by Jeanie…
Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955) is currently presenting a three-artist group show with the meaningless and universally applicable title Contemplation. The exhibit brings together the work of Boulder sculptor Anne Shutan and Denver painters Eric Michael Corrigan and Angela Larson — or does it? All three artists…
Abstractions on Paper. The current show at the Emil Nelson Gallery, is a fascinating group endeavor put together by director Hugo Anderson. The exhibit combines historic and contemporary works in the forms of watercolors, prints, drawings and photos by more than two dozen artists. The mood is classic modernist with…
The program notes for Nat King Cole & Me include an interview with author and performer Gregory Porter. He describes his mother, who, he says, was dedicated to helping others. One Thanksgiving, she made a sumptuous meal of ham, turkey and sweet-potato pie, and took it to the mission for…
My reaction to a Harold Pinter play often follows a predictable pattern. For the first few minutes, the dialogue strikes me as ordinary, the contradictions and obscurities willful and self-conscious. I find myself questioning whether the playwright is really as brilliant as decades of reviews say he is. Yet by…
Alarms & Excursions. Alarms & Excursions is minor Michael Frayn, a series of comic finger pieces, but it can’t help bearing the master’s stamp. A group of eight playlets examines the role of technology in our lives and its impact on human communication. In the first, a friendly dinner is…
The first time through, you might dismiss Coffee and Cigarettes as a filmmaker’s recess — playtime before the serious business of making a real feature. Jim Jarmusch never intended this new movie — a collection of eleven shorts made over the last two decades — to be a movie at…
Sitting through Raising Helen is an exercise in frustration, because somewhere inside this big heap of Hollywood nothing is a something (someone, actually) worth saving and savoring. Her name is Joan Cusack, always a supporting player but never a star, no matter her grace and warmth and charm even in…
Those people who live in small towns, they’re not like you and me. So naive, so innocent. And adorably quirky. Why, they’ve got so many lovable quirks you just wanna run up and hug ’em. Or, if you’re a filmmaker, perhaps you can make a movie about these simple folk…
This year’s renewal of Boulder’s popular Chautauqua Silent Film Series starts off with a showing of The Patsy (1928), King Vidor’s enduring comedy starring Marie Dressler and Marion Davies as a constantly feuding mother and daughter. Not to be confused with the Jerry Lewis talkie of the same name, this…
Ever hear of something called the Sundance Film Festival, a little gathering that Bob Redford started up in the hills of Utah a few decades ago? It caught on, and now everyone who can afford a fringed buckskin jacket and a private jet heads to Sundance in hopes of hightailing…
Thursday, May 27 While thousands flee the city this weekend, the International Wine Guild continues its ongoing series of classes designed to inform casual wine lovers. What will be uncorked this session? A wide variety of flavorful topics, including “Wines of the Pacific Northwest” (tonight) and “USA Food and Wines…
Aah, Memorial Day. A day of somber reflection, of backyard picnics and barbecues. A day for quietly contemplating the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, and a day for beer. Lots of beer. Lots and lots of beer. So while Mom is in the kitchen making red, white…
MON, 5/31 The Shona people of Zimbabwe call the bateleur eagle (a rare native raptor that in Shona religious lore serves as a messenger of the gods) “Chapungu.” It’s no mistake that the name also applies to the contemporary stone art of the nation, a relatively recent cultural endeavor that’s…
MON, 5/31 If you’re feeling the need for speed this Memorial Day, get to Bandimere Speedway for the annual Pepsi All-American High School Drags. The showdown is open to high school students between the ages of sixteen and nineteen with a valid driver’s license and a release form signed by…
When invited by the City of Broomfield to put on an art exhibit in the building shared by its library and public auditorium, members of the Women’s Caucus for Art made certain the theme fit the environment. As an enhancement for the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library’s summer reading program,…
SAT, 5/29 The universal struggle that women face in trying to balance a career, family and friendship is highlighted in Saints and Hysterics, a new work by local playwright Tracy Shaffer Witherspoon and performed by the Paragon Theatre Company. The play opens tonight with a world-premiere presentation at Denver’s Phoenix…
