It’s not easy to find venues around town that support untested and new forms of expression, and the avenues for experimental and performance art are dwindling. “The art scene was more round in recent years. It’s not so round now,” says Justin Beard, who earned a BFA in sculpture from…
As the final High Plains Comedy Festival draws near and the final lineups are announced, Sexpot Comedy returns to Denver after an exploratory sojourn to Los Angeles, boasting another fine show packed with local talent and a nationally celebrated headliner in Sean White. White, a Chicago based comedian whose album…
The High Plains Comedy Festival will be back for a third round August 20 through August 22, and just released the full lineup. “Our schedule this year is insane — there’s no other way to put it,” said Andy Juett, who co-founded the festival with Adam Cayton-Holland, in announcing the schedule additions…
One of the largest galleries in town, Michael Warren Contemporary, is currently hosting three freestanding solos. Each is showcased alone, free of intrusions from the sensibilities of the others. To the left of the entrance is Patsy Krebs: Time Passages, made up of the artist’s austere ruminations on the horizon…
Now!, the 2015 Biennial of the Americas theme, asks the public to be present, eyes wide open, in the immediate world. And though we might all be tired of hearing “now” by the end of this week, the concept has reverberated through the arts community this summer, with galleries developing…
Metropolitan State University of Denver’s off-campus Center for the Visual Arts is turning 25, and celebrating with an art-centric street fair on Friday, July 17, where you’ll find work by talented Metro State students, food, musical performances and on-site gaming — and also catch the unveiling of a brand-new mural by…
This is theater as community. It is holy theater not because it exalts something on high, but because for the hour or so onstage, the audience and actor are one, and all those people, though each seeing it slightly differently, are believing — following the same course or going on…
We may not need another hero, but true believers don’t need to shrink-ray their expectations. Ant-Man is the first Marvel film — and the first of this summer’s pixels-go-kablooey time-wasters — to get better as it goes. The filmmakers save their biggest, wiggiest ideas for the climaxes, where they wittily…
While Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer’s new movie Trainwreck is “occasionally very funny, it also feels carefully constructed to make its points, chief among them that men can get away with all kinds of bad or crazy behavior that women can’t,” writes Village Voice film critic Stephanie Zacharek in her review…
A rocket scientist, a poet and a barista walk into a bar…no, make that the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art’s pop-up Poetry and Performance Café at 1550 Wewatta Street, in the Biennial Pavilion. The spot will debut on July 15, when Steam (STEM+Art) Day will give special emphasis to the importance…
Colorado is an easy target. We’re America’s new hip spot to stake your claim and the things and experiences that supposedly identify us as “uniquely Colorado” are being exploited and worse, falsely portrayed as representative of who we are. Take the influx of Colorado-themed merchandise lately. We’ve always been CO…
So much Biennial, so little time. The 2015 Biennial of the Americas, which begins today, is so rich in programming that it’s hard to decide what to do and see. You can go with the dependable: There will always be something happening at the Biennial Pavilion at 1550 Wewatta Street…
Does gay have a particular sound? Is there a certain way that gay men speak that our brains read as a dead giveaway to their sexual orientation? The new film Do I Sound Gay?, opening Friday at the Mayan Theatre, explores the myth and science behind the queer dialect ,…
I believe it’s an artist’s job not to provide answers, but to ask questions. Artists are the canaries in the coal mine for problems we face as a society. We are the first to speak up, often under threat of punishment — or even death, in some regimes and times…
For seven seasons and over 248 episodes, In Focus — Eden Lane’s weekly show on Colorado Public Television — has been covering this state’s flourishing arts community with in-depth interviews and spotlights of new exhibits and events. But now the show is looking for a little financial help to keep in…
Above all else, a movie built around a star promises presence, and in Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes, that promise is dual: Here’s 100 or so minutes with the great Ian McKellen, for once not casting spells, controlling magnetism or classing up script pages of expositional gobbledygook. Besides that, Mr. Holmes…
The problem with clamoring for more woman-led comedies is that actual comedy may be the thing that ends up being left by the wayside. Tina Fey, among others, has railed against the boneheaded dictum that women can’t be funny. But in the current climate of watchfulness — one in which…
Creating a link from one community to another is a central theme of the 2015 Biennial of the Americas. Visiting artist Marcela Armas wanted to dig deeper into that theme — quite literally. Since her work focuses on the intersection of arts, science and technology, after being invited to crease…
Some of the best names in burlesque paraded past in panties and pasties during the four-day Colorado Burlesque Festival, a gathering of burlesque stars from near and far, in Denver this weekend. Brandon Marshall brought back these images from the Friday-night showcase at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret. Now see the full Colorado…
Denver’s third Biennial of the Americas celebration is big and bright and filled with activities and exhibits exploring the hemispheric crossover of art, politics and economic trends in the Americas in the here and now. The hardest thing about navigating your boat through this busy sea is knowing where to…
#18: Tran Wills When Tran Wills won a Westword MasterMind award back in 2007, she was running the Fabric Lab, a boutique focused on local designers. That shop is long gone, but in the years since Wills moved on from East Colfax Avenue, she’s gone on to bigger and better…
Cathy Morrison heralds from small-town Texas, where she spent summers on a family farm surrounded by big flowers and indigenous plants. So moving from Denver to Livermore – “Northwest of Fort Collins, sort of in the middle of nowhere, with a lot of environmentalists around us,” Morrison says – wasn’t…
