Some customers can be unabashed thieves of holiday joy. There are few things that promote grotesque pain and suffering more than working a retail gig from November to January, and for those who do these customer service-oriented jobs there should be hazard pay, hazmat suits, and free liquor and weed…
Street art beautifies Denver in a significant way, taking some of our city’s ugliest spaces — including problem graffiti walls — and transforming them into public art galleries that are respected and revered by the community. Although the street-art season will come to an end with the colder weather, the scene is…
Weird imagination and the artistic process are the focus of shows opening around the metro area this week, from Donald Fodness’s cuckoo-clock installation at BMoCA to Access Gallery’s showcase for a young artist going big. Here’s where you can get your fill of adventurous art before the holidays hit. Donald…
After World War II, downtown Denver started to decay, and movie palaces disappeared. The Curtis Street pleasure row came down, and the grand old houses that remained turned into adult-film showrooms, places that sold beer, too, dark and dangerous and filled with stink. (The tradition of dirty movies downtown is old…
Point Gallery focuses on contemporary representational imagery, as with the pair of exhibits on view there now. In the front spaces is Michael J. Dowling: Forgotten Scoundrels, which comprises drawings and paintings of people and animals. Dowling, who grew up in Colorado, studied with Amy Metier and John Hull here…
It’s cold outside, but plans are heating up for Artopia 2016 — and our presale on tickets ends tonight! This is the best deal on tickets you’ll find, so get yours now and then join us on Saturday, February 20, at Artopia 2016 — a night of art, culture and…
There are ghosts on the grid. The new owners of what was once the Webber movie theater at 119 South Broadway recently applied for a certificate of non-historic status — a first step toward allowing the building to be demolished. Losing landmarks is nothing new in Denver; waves of development…
Mike McClung, the director of Michael Warren Contemporary, has put together two interesting solos that are midway through their runs. The shows are extremely compatible, as both focus on artists who work with geometric compositions, though each does so in a thoroughly individual way. In the large set of spaces…
“Sometimes you just gotta know when to pull the trigger. I’m a happy camper today,” says Chuck Rozanski, owner of Denver’s Mile High Comics. He should be: He just made a million bucks, free and clear. That’s because he sold his company headquarters for the past 29 years, a 22,000-square-foot…
Paris. Beirut. Kenya. Iraq. Syria. It’s hard to think about the tiny house and my life when the world is in chaos and so many are mourning losses. It’s hard to contemplate the future when the present is so urgent, so disrupted. The Mayday Experiment feels worlds apart from these…
MCA Denver just announced its “I’m an Artist” program, which will offer free museum memberships to Denver’s creative community. According to museum director and curator Adam Lerner, securing funding to underwrite a thousand artist memberships for the next three years represents just the beginning of big plans the museum has…
The artist community of the River North Art District celebrated a ten-year anniversary – and a bright new future – over the weekend at Tracks, with live art and cool spins, a costume party and an aerial-dance performance. Photographer Aaron Thackeray brought back these images ofall the fun. Now see…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we take a look at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. Farhad VakiliTabar was born in Iran and moved to Houston when…
It’s no secret that some of the best ideas and inventions are cooked up right in sunny Colorado. In this series, we’ll be exploring the latest products coming from the state’s makers, builders and innovators. Two years ago the folks at Boulder-based Sidfactor – a product-design and strategy firm specializing…
For the second installment of Warm Cookies of the Revolution’s Stompin’ Ground Games, the organization dedicated to civic health will celebrate the neighborhoods of southeast Denver — Virginia Village, Washington-Virginia Vale, Cook Park, Hilltop and other nooks and crannies — with a participatory program of urban storytelling and oral history…
This Friday — Friday the 13th, to be exact — a group of MFA candidates at the University of Colorado will tap into people’s superstitions with a spooky, site-specific, one-night-only exhibition at the Newhouse Hotel. Vacancy? No, their pop-up exhibit, will feature works in a variety of mediums inspired by the aesthetics…
From the moment it opened, four years ago this month, the Clyfford Still Museum has been one of the city’s greatest cultural treasures. Located inside a lovely little concrete building, the museum is dedicated to the conservation and presentation of the work of the legendary abstract-expressionist pioneer Clyfford Still, who,…
Like most Denver residents, Black Cube artist fellow Derrick Velasquez has grown accustomed to seeing apartment building after apartment building appear throughout the city. The “blocked, stacked and stereotypical-colored” boxes are the inspiration for his upcoming exhibition, New Brutal, which will debut tomorrow in the future home of the Stanley…
Navajo Street co-op gallery Pirate Contemporary Art invited the neighborhood to its traditional Day of the Dead community observance last Friday night. Gallery-goers were treated to an altar display and original Day of the Dead artworks, a candlelight procession to Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, face painting and piñata parties…
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. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in World War…
The fall opera season begins when Opera Colorado presents Verdi’s Aida at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House on Saturday, November 7, and if you aren’t waiting with bated breath, you should be. There’s lots of freakiness just waiting to be savored, and even those of us who dwell in the squalid village…
After nearly a decade of bringing bicycle erotica to big screens around the world, Bike Smut is pedaling its final tour through Denver this weekend. For the last nine years, a community of cyclists and sex-positive individuals have consistently submitted short erotic films to be shown at Bike Smut’s live…
