Every year since 1986, Denver has recognized creative individuals and organizations that make an artful impact on the community with the Mayor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts. The 2012 winners were just announced, and for the first time, they were split into three new categories: Youth Arts, Entrepreneurial Arts…
Denver Arts Week, which kicks off Friday with a special Know Your Arts First Friday, is really a big magnifying glass: Denver boasts a vibrant First Friday tradition every month of the year; this annual event just turns on the spotlight. As with any First Friday, the real trick is…
On Saturday night, a horde of dancers, musicians and performance artists took over the spaces of Prism Glass Works, an entrepreneurial hatching ground associated with the atelier-for-hire Club Workshop. Part of a “12-step program” leading up to next year’s Biennial of the Americas, it was intended as an opportunity for…
Last month’s DIY Blacktop Festival in the Denver Theatre District was no fluke — it marked the first step of Recuperatio|12: A series of twelve interdisciplinary events organized by the School of Critical Engagement. The twelve-month program will eventually align with next year’s Biennial of the Americas, exploring modes of…
A recent stroll through the popular teen retail store Hot Topic got me all geared up for Halloween. Seeing the skeleton jewelry, the fake blood-splattered wedding veils and tiaras and the slashed-up fake body parts gave me a warm feeling in my heart. Then I scoped the female costumes and…
Get to the art of the matter tonight, at a free panel discussion — complete with refreshments and a DJ — in support of the Urban Arts Fund. This graffiti-prevention program of Arts & Venues Denver produces unique opportunities for young people to participate in diversionary art and leadership programs…
During the twentieth century, one new public building was constructed in the greater Civic Center area for each decade. But it’s been a very different story in the current century: By my count, eight new landmarks have been built in the mere twelve years since 2000. Some, like History Colorado,…
The 2012 Mayor’s Design Awards, announced last night, celebrate a range of notable projects across six categories: I Wanna Live Here!, Oh, Pioneers!, Use It Or Lose It!, Eye-Catcher!, The City’s Gotta Eat! and Goin’ Rogue! This year’s winners include restaurants, breweries and livable properties, as well as such cultural…
Though Dia de los Muertos is officially November 2, this Saturday’s Day of the Dead Artist Trading Card Workshop should provide some good preparation. From 12:30 to 4 p.m., galleries in the Navajo Street Art District are inviting artists of all kinds to create miniature pieces of work in the…
At 11 a.m. today, a small group of dignitaries led by Mayor Michael Hancock will gather at the McNichols Building at the edge of Denver’s Civic Center (just named a national landmark) to cut the ribbon on the classical structure’s new lease on life. Built in 1910 as a Carnegie…
Davy Rothbart is famous for his love of detritus. Ten years ago, he launched FOUND Magazine, an exuberant, low-fi celebration of things left behind: love letters, Post-It notes, journal entries, birthday cards, shopping lists and other strangely revealing minutiae of human existence. FOUND’s pages are hilarious and heartbreaking; often, they’re…
We love our cons in Colorado, and there’s no con more splendid than MileHiCon, which unfolds this weekend at the Hyatt Regency Tech Center — for its 44th year. By tradition, MileHiCon is about books, but it’s also about the many worlds of genre fiction, from tried-and-true science fiction to…
Though it may seem unlikely as you stew in I-70 gridlock, Colorado is an excellent place to enact your high-speed racing fantasies. Or at least, Playground Games seems to think so. Forza Horizon for the Xbox 360 is an open-world racing game that takes place in our fair state, against…
Timothy Standring, curator of the Denver Art Museum’s exclusive exhibition Becoming Van Gogh, traveled the world for several years to beg and borrow the show’s more than seventy paintings and drawings. It wasn’t an easy task. “People aren’t going to loan works by van Gogh, arguably the most well-known artist…
Michael Paglia visits Robischon Gallery in this week’s review, taking in work by three different artists. The main show focuses on Judy Pfaff and her installations. There is also a small show featuring Ana Maria Hernando, and a larger one with pieces from Katy Stone. Continue reading for photos from…
The visual arts in Denver reached an obvious high point in the fall of 2006, when the Denver Art Museum opened the Hamilton Building. But some runners up, date-wise, would have to include the following year, when MCA Denver moved into its new building, and last season, when the Clyfford…
If you missed the second presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney last night, you might not be able to understand your friends’ jokes this morning. Aside from an aggressively unexpected use of the phrase “gang bangers,” last night also featured the much-memed line in which Romney mentioned “binders…
The inaugural Art Meets Beast at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver was a surprise hit in 2010, featuring local chefs and arts enthusiasts in a mashup of mammoth proportions. And now the beast is coming back, with a two-day exploration of art that will culminate in a bison feast…
Melissa Borrell has been making jewelry for years — stylish, lightweight metal or 3D-printed nylon necklaces and dangling earrings in clean, sculptural shapes. But recently, she’s had a hankering to create something larger and less functional. The result goes on display at PlatteForum when her installation, tessellate, opens tonight with…
Denver has become the leading destination for all things related to the marijuana industry, especially now that Colorado sits on the precipice of a decriminalization law with Amendment 64, and a cutting-edge show by Dampie, a progressive artist who specializes in hemp-culture art, just opened at HoodLab, the gallery located…
One of the great historians of our time, Dustin Lance Black is responsible for some great dramatic portrayals of our country’s past. Whether his subject is Harvey Milk, J. Edgar Hoover or the California State Supreme Court, Black is painstakingly thorough with his research and masterful with his storytelling. While…
What is dasHAUS? Created in Germany, the compact pavilion demonstrates the most up-to-the-minute green technologies in home-building, from the sleekest of sustainable materials to renewable energy systems. Packed full of bright ideas, dasHAUS started a fourteen-city tour of the U.S. a year ago; now it’s at home in Denver’s Sustainability…
