The streets of Larimer Square and the surrounding area will lose their monotone drab as over 200 artists take part in the 10th annual Denver Chalk Art Festival this weekend. The Denver Chalk Festival not only aims celebrate the history of it’s own conception, but also the history of chalk…
It has been a long and winding road for photographer Sigri Strand. Beginning her bachelor’s degree program in 2001, she found herself living in New York City for a while before finishing her studies in photography at the University of Colorado Denver a decade later in 2011. That same year,…
Even if you haven’t read about the Ladies Fancywork Society, you’ve likely seen their fancywork — known as “yarn bombs” — around town. LFS often works in the dead of night, wrapping random, urban objects in a comforting knit sweater, giving the pedestrian telephone pole or bike rack an intimate,…
When we think of the art of Taos, the first image we usually conjure up is the landscape, colored in the tones of the mountain Southwest. Yet that’s not what all Taos art turns out to be, especially in contemporary times, as artists continue to flock to northern New Mexico…
The term “weird artist” may seems like an oxymoron. Contemporary art in itself is weird: it breaks apart the structural rules put in place before the Modernist movement and asks the viewer to suspend disbelief in order to transcend into an unrealistic world. Yet, some art is just weirder than…
I met Jenny Morgan within twelve hours of stepping onto the filthy and gorgeous streets of Manhattan for the first time in 2007. I was assisting Sarah Cass on a photo shoot of one of Jenny’s portrait subjects, and I have been following her work religiously since that moment. This…
Curious Theatre Company cracked open a whole new fascination for troubled color-field artist Mark Rothko with its production of the engaging play Red, in which the painter and his assistant discuss the meaning of life and art while painting a fresh canvas onstage. And just as the play offers a…
Burning Man is hands-down the biggest celebration of life, art, music and culture that America has ever seen. The week-long event held in the days leading up to Labor Day in the Black Rock Desert — roughly 120 miles north of Reno, Nevada — will have approximately 50,000 people in…
When I parked the car on Tennyson Street Friday night, I was still two blocks away from the Oriental Theater — and I could already hear the Whomp Truck thundering bass-heavy music into the night air as a prelulde to Cirque Voltaire III: Blitzkrieg. And as I walked to the…
Denver has been on a culture binge over the past decade, with major milestones being marked off every couple of years. It began in 2006 with the construction of the Hamilton Building, which doubled the size of the Denver Art Museum and became world-famous thanks to Daniel Libeskind’s futuristic design…
We’re used to gallery shows that look pretty much the same when they end as when they began. But Residue Denver, opening tonight at Edge Gallery, isn’t designed to remain static. Though the juried group show will begin with a variety of sculptural objects scattered around the space, five or…
Like gay marriage, marijuana use and tattoos, public perception of female sex toys is not what it used to be. While male sex toys still weigh heavy on the shame scale, a female pleasure device is mostly seen as a cute novelty. Encountering one while snooping is comparable to finding…
While most art galleries in town do all they can to promote themselves, some of them provide back room spaces, which are not advertised as often and usually feature the work of up-and-coming or associate-member work. This weekend is closing weekend for many shows, as galleries gear up for next…
Artist Chuck Dorsey crouches down, cutting a letter out of tape on the wall of Certified Customs, a tattoo, piercing and barber shop on South Broadway. He’s wearing an old painter’s shirt, splotched with bright colors, and drops his knife in his bag to pick up a fistful of brushes…
At a preview yesterday for the upcoming Denver Chalk Art Festival, artist Kyle Banister got a reminder of what it means to be a chalk artist. At ten years, the festival may be long-lived — but the art it celebrates is ephemeral. Banister’s piece, which he worked on with Southwest…
There’s a whimsical element in Liese Chavez’s paintings. A woman is baking a pie, but there’s feathers next to the pie, or a woman is holding a pear in her hand, but the pear is a house with a smoking chimney. The single maiden in a seemingly empty rustic house…
The hoopla at the Denver Art Museum this summer is mostly focused on fashion and Yves St. Laurent. But another small show, Abstract Angus, featuring works by contemporary Western painter Theodore Waddell, opened at the DAM over the weekend, offering museum-goers a completely different artistic point of view. The show…
Kevin Curry: Between Chaos and Order is a smart-looking solo at Rule Gallery that’s dominated by conceptual abstractions which the artist, Kevin Curry, made from reclaimed materials. Curry moved to Colorado in 2009 and has since made something of a splash. I first encountered his work in the Faculty Triennial…
Eggs Benedict is a notoriously hard dish to pull off. I wasn’t even intimidated, though, when my girlfriend told me that’s what she wanted for breakfast — even though I had never made it before, I’m basically like the King Midas of victory, and I made that Eggs Benedict, and…
With its accentuated curves and ability to look good in almost any color, the Volkswagen Beetle was made for customization. Until 2003, the Type1(the beloved and ubiquitous “vintage” model) bug had remained in production with few cosmetic changes for close to thirty years. Though the car has since seen a…
Definite trend: Drink and Draw, Cocktails and Canvases. No matter what you call the combo, it translates to knock back a few back while making art. And tonight at PlatteForum, the award-winning, innovative community art center that pairs underserved youth with artist-mentors, that’s just what you’re invited to do…
Update: Two corrections have been made: Tropic Thunder is now the only June 18 film, and viewers can vote on which film they’d like to see on July 16. It’s finally here. The 2012 Film On the Rocks summer line-up at Red Rocks Amphitheatre was announced this evening, and many…
