History can build and destroy nations, create and end wars and help society wrangle with ethical obligations and failures. But when teachers reduce it to an endless scroll of names and dates that have been stripped of context, history loses its power. The Smithsonian Institution’s Richard Kurin is on a…
There were plenty of Spider Men, and Women, at Denver Comic Con this year, but there was only one Spider, a machine that allows users to create digital sculptures with ZBrush, industry-standard animation software. The Digital Animation Center (DAC) from the University of Colorado Denver has set up the Spider…
Though it has been a few years since filmmaker Scout Wise produced her silent film Stan Needs a Maid, the Denver native is proudly part of a group of once-student filmmakers who will be showcasing their work tonight on CPT 12. Now working in the Bay Area as an associate…
When world-renowned banjo player Béla Fleck was commissioned to write his first banjo concerto, he knew it would be a long, deep and challenging experience. The master musician decided to film the yearlong journey, and the result is Béla Fleck: How to Write a Banjo Concerto, a very personal look…
Although he is known mostly as the co-creator of the animated series, “Gargoyles,” Greg Weisman has taken on a new challenge: young adult fiction. Spirits of Ash and Foam, the second in his growing series, officially comes out July 8, and the author was at Denver Comic Con over the…
Summer is in full swing and you’re probably saving up your cash to party with 2 Chainz this weekend at the Westword Music Showcase. So if you want to have a good time this week without burning a hole in your wallet, here’s a few things to try. Celebrate sports,…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. “Art is in my DNA,” says illustrator and photographer Lindy Hargrave, who…
The annual 1940s WWII Era Ball goes back in time right down to every last retro detail, with re-enactor appearances by ’40s celebrities, swinging to big band music and some cherry examples of WWII aircraft for a backdrop at the Boulder Airport. Photographer Jake Shane was there on Saturday night…
TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design brings sixteen local leaders innovators and entrepreneurs to Ellie Caulkins Opera House tomorrow for an independently organized TEDx Mile High event. The theme is “Emergence” — of new ideas, thinking and technology — which will be threaded through the presentations. Educators, musicians,…
We’ve written before about the strange career of Denver cabbie and secret author Gary Reilly, who wrote more than two dozen novels over decades but never tried to publish any of them before his death from cancer in 2011, at the age of 61. That long silence is now being…
Denver is a beautiful city, especially on days devoid of any brown cloud, and there are dozens of places where you can get a memorable shot. Here are five spots that offer a great view of the city or the mountains — and, in some rare cases, both. See also:…
Ever since I could speak, I’ve always been proud to tell people about my dad’s job. He makes pottery for a living, running a business out of a converted garage studio connected to my parents’ Evergreen home. From here he throws, decorates, fires in a kiln, and ships out his…
Three people get lost in a strange new world where mystery and danger abound. In the process of figuring out how to return home to the real world, they will uncover a secret that puts the fate of not just the planet, but perhaps the entire universe, at stake. That’s…
It’s Friday the thirteenth, but that’s no reason to stay home: Tonight and in the days to come, Friday Flash, Denver Comic Con and OhHeckYeah will transform downtown into a wham! pow! high-tech and pop-culture art paradise, while the otherworldly, monumental glass shapes of Chihuly will wow the crowds at…
Here comes the weekend, and it sounds like the good weather alone will be reason to leave your house. But all the great activities scheduled around town provide dozens of other reasons — and many of those activities won’t even cost you much. If you’re looking for interesting, fun, wacky…
Ryan Policky of Bloodshed Deathbath Productions is teaming up with The Enigma and Daniel Crosier of Mother Mind Studios to present one of the most unusual booths at Denver Comic Con 2014 where Crosier, The Enigma and Serana Rose, along with their comic-artist collaborators, will release issue 3 of Show…
It doesn’t take a geek to raise a geek, but it sure helps. My elder daughter will turn 21 this year, and as she reaches the final gateway to adulthood (woohoo, booze!), it’s safe to say that just as surely as she got my genes — sorry about that terrible…
#74: Ivar Zeile Ivar Zeile collects artists with a keen eye for talent and trends as director of RiNo’s Plus Gallery, but he also makes some free-swinging hunches as he tries to get a sense for what’s next in the contemporary art scene. In recent years, Zeile’s search for the…
Forty years ago, bombs exploded in Boulder, killing six Chicano activists. Their deaths are still shrouded in mystery: Who killed them and why? Were they plotting a bombing? Did the police and FBI entrap them? Were they murdered? Su Teatro’s Tony Garcia has written Cuarenta y Ocho, a play that…
San Francisco artist Tony Labat has built a site-specific sculpture for Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria Campus, and from 6 to 9 p.m. tonight you can watch his sculpture turn into a platform for community interaction when it is activated with performances by DJs and drag queens. This piece is…
1959. Dean Sobel, director of the Clyfford Still Museum, is the host curator for Modern Masters at the Denver Art Museum, and he’s done a companion exhibit at his own stamping grounds called 1959: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery Exhibition Recreated. (Special tickets allow visitors to see both.) The backstory for…
One of the biggest selling points of 21 Jump Street, the 2012 TV-remake comedy, turned out to be its seemingly unscripted lunacy, the way it put Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in police-shorts outfits and let them riff on their characters’ mutual ineptitude. As undercover cops who pose as teenagers…
