Update, 12:30 p.m. Monday: Watch the video of Sunday’s flash mob at FlatIron Crossing below and see photos from the “Party Rock Anthem” flash mob. Eric Rosenberg calls it the “Rick Saga” on his blog, where the Denver Flash Mob co-founder writes about con-man Rick Strandloff, aka Rick Duncan, the…
The lights are very bright on Broadway, and 2012 is shaping up to be the year that SoBo, with its growing lineup of independent shops and boutiques, second-hand emporiums and quirky dining spots, becomes a solid destination. The biggest news on the hip and funky stretch of Broadway between First…
It’s not too early to make plans for the second annual Denver County Fair — which has been moved to the second weekend in August, starting on Friday, August 10 and running through Sunday, August 12, with extended hours. “We won’t be up against the Dragon Boat Festival, the last…
Nederland santera Catherine Robles Shaw usually sticks to the basics when creating her lovely retablos — plaques depicting the saints that are hand-carved and painted in a folk style that’s been handed down over hundreds of years in northern New Mexico and Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Contemporizing the old art…
Editor’s Note: Cartoonist Noah Van Sciver brings us his trip to the Denver Art Museum in this web comic. Make sure you read Noah’s blog for more comics and wonderment…
Denver has Sun Spot, a giant dog sculpture created out of dog tags outside the new municipal animal shelter. Now Boulder has Alfie, a huge rooster made out of more than 3,000 pieces of old farm equipment by longtime local artist Robert Bellows. The sculpture was dedicated this past weekend…
Though the Robischon Gallery (1740 Wazee Street, 303-298-7788, www.robischongallery.com) is a commercial enterprise, it’s indistinguishable from a tidy downtown museum in appearance and atmosphere. This has to do both with the relentless high quality of the offerings there and the venue’s enormous size. As you can imagine, that means there’s…
The inimitable Westword cover boy Rick Griffith and his ink-spattered crew at Matter Studio normally toil with their sleeves rolled in a letterpress world that bridges classic craftsmanship and modern design, hand-running hip posters and other printed matter on the old-fashioned machinery of another time. But once a year, they…
Gene Sobczak, who was a VP and marketing guru for the Colorado Symphony Orchestra when he left in 2007 to head the Arvada Center, will soon be making beautiful music with the CSO again: The symphony board has appointed him to replace interim director Jim Copenhaver, who returned this fall…
We can all get behind Toys for Tots, the perennial U.S. Marines-sponsored holiday toy drive that provides gifts for kids who might not otherwise have anything under the tree to unwrap. But artists and hipsters like to do things in their own arty-hipsterish way. Going to Walmart to buy the…
There once was a Grinch who hated Christmas. By extension, he also hated a group of creatures called Whos who loved Christmas, and so one night he snuck into their village and stole all of their Christmas presents, which did not deter them from celebrating Christmas anyway, and then the…
Since 1998, Bryce Widom has been creating the chalkboard art at Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery, as well as its sister restaurants, Southern Sun and Vine Street Pub. Given the directive to “do something with the seasons,” Widom created an artistic vision — a world of nature, magic, myth and…
Do you know why Hello Kitty has no mouth? Because she speaks from the heart… She also has a hypnotic, straight-up obsessive effect on American consumers that hasn’t seemed to flag since her debut in the States in 1976. This ubiquitous, mouthless Sanrio-creation has become a veritable fetish for women,…
The opening of the Clyfford Still Museum last month has prompted a resurgence of interest in early abstraction in Colorado, from the 1940s to the 1970s. In the beginning, Still was way ahead of even the most advanced artists here — as well as those in New York. Some Colorado…
Update: Due to technical difficulties at the Giving First website, Colorado Gives Day has been extended until noon tomorrow. Go ahead. Knock yourself out giving! Read on: It’s Colorado Gives Day, and since the stroke of midnight, nearly 1,000 Colorado nonprofits have been collecting donations in just about any charitable…
When I’m not interviewing drag queens, reviewing concerts and rating Santas for Westword, I’m working at Shirt Folding Store. For twenty hours a week, I fold shirts (and, more important, jeans) alongside other part-timers, who in their other jobs might be bank tellers, professional eBay auctioneers, art-history majors and spoken-word…
As part of the event hoopla surrounding the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, Curious Theatre will be putting on a play about Still’s life. “[The Clyfford Still Museum] wanted to make a neighborhood artistic connection,” says Curious education director Dee Covington. Over a year and a half in the…
First lines are particularly important to Susan Orlean, which makes it that much tougher to start an article about someone who has written about almost everything herself. The New Yorker author’s most recent book, released more than ten years after her last extra-long-form non-fiction endeavor, The Orchid Thief, begins with…
If you’ve always wanted to be part of the Capitol Hill People’s Fair, this is your chance. Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods is now taking applications for the 41st incarnation of this popular annual event, which always features booths with handmade arts and crafts as well as food, non-stop entertainment and…
The Colorado Symphony Orchestra has been working hard to make it into the black for the 2011-2012 season by adding extra shows, making personnel cuts, pushing its fund raising and promising, in general, to do things differently. But it’s unlikely that a planned $90 million renovation of the Boettcher Concert…
The last time we talked to Longmont artist Gamma Acosta, he quietly reminded us that there’s redemption in street art, and many of the kids who come out of the tagging culture, spray cans in hand, have talent that can raise them above the low-rent materials of the street. That…
When people picture an artist’s life, they usually envision something romantic: Gene Kelly in An American in Paris, opening the window to his rooftop Parisian studio, letting in the morning light while singing “I Got Rhythm,” and dancing out the door to make a living selling art on the streets…
