Jonathan Franzen is a great American novelist in large part because he has written a great American novel — two, in fact. Last night’s Pen & Podium lecture at the Newman Center found the charming and occasionally awkward author of Freedom touching on bird watching (an enthusiastic hobby), The Moody…
This week’s feature story, “Buzz Kill,” profiles the Knapper twins, whose cast of street-art icons earned them popularity from fans and unwanted attention from the police. Westword art director Jay Vollmar provided this animated version of the cover, which you can check out below…
Update! Worst postponement EVER! Tonight’s Denver premiere of The Worst Movie EVER! was supposed to be the first event hosted by the Oriental Theater after a chunk of its ceiling fell onto the stage last week. This morning, unfortunately, the city inspector gave it a no-go, meaning that, for the…
Last year, Denver artepreneur Eric Matelski put together a themed Halloween gallery show riffing off Ouija boards. This year, his ode to the witching hour mines a global collection of bogeyman stories, including a few new ones that sprouted from the twisted imaginations of an artist or two. The Bogeyman…
Seems like just yesterday — February, actually — when the last round of the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, with the winners for 2010, was announced. But 2011 will see another group of honorees, because the next awards presentation has been moved up to November 3, the start…
How did Ietef Cavem Vita, otherwise known in these parts as DJ Cavem Moetavation, spend his summer? Under the sun, it turns out: shoveling dirt and planting seeds, growing greens and teaching kids. A food-justice advocate and proponent of mixing up the beats of hip-hop with the kind of backyard…
The recent work of a pair of longtime members of Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173, http://edgeart.org) is on view in the co-op’s front and middle spaces through this weekend. Both artists are abstract painters. In the front is Mark Brasuell: The Second Chance, made up of acrylic and mixed-medium…
Everyone is doing a pop-up these days: restaurants, retailers, and now art galleries. Something about the slightly secretive blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nature of pop-up gets people into a tizzy — or the organizers at least. The Dikeou Collection is the latest venue to give it a go, with a large-scale Styrofoam installation…
The goal is noble. The rules are simple. And the results — well, they vary. In the spirit of both creativity and caffeine, Denver artists celebrated 24-Hour Comics Day this past weekend, the eighth incarnation of this national event, and the participants who eventually conquered the event’s requirements proved even…
Two very public downtown places will introduce new art exhibits today, and both are inviting the public to join in the party. The Alfred A. Arraj Courthouse at 901 19th Street is hosting the work of three contemporary Colorado artists — Gifford Ewing, John Boak and Rick Dula — in…
Standish Lawder is not a fan of digital photography. Part of it has to do with his personal preference: A 75-year-old former pre-med major who switched to art history after taking a fateful humanities class and went on to earn a Ph.D. in it, Lawder has a mind that just…
The big news at this year’s Bordo Bello skateboard-art fundraiser isn’t just that it continues to grow in size. It’s also growing in stature, featuring more works by national design artists, intermixed with rad decorated decks by a fine representation of talented locals. Also, you can bid in advance online…
In this week’s issue of Westword, art critic Michael Paglia examines three shows, one of which is Not All Borthwicks Were Noblemen, which is being exhibited at the Ironton Studios & Gallery through October 22. Paglia writes: “Though there is an elaborate historical narrative that underlies the pieces in this…
Sherry Wiggins’ Prayers for Others is the “heaven” to fellow artist Regina Benon’s “hell” with On Fire at the Ice Cube Gallery. Art critic Michael Paglia reviews both of them in this week’s Westword. Of Wiggins’ installation, he writes:…
When Longmont’s Left Hand Brewing hired Boulder-based Moxie Sozo to redesign its labels a couple of years ago, the results opened a lot of eyes — and landed Left Hand beers on a lot of best-designed beer label lists. As an added bonus, Moxie, a Boulder design and advertising agency,…
Regina Benson’s On Fire was inspired by her trials last summer when Benson was forced to evacuate her home in Golden because of an approaching wildfire. Below (and in this week’s Westword), Michael Paglia writes on her new show and how she came out of the approaching flames…
The right wing likes to portray President Barack Obama as either one of two things: the good-times party animal you can spot in a Tag Team video, or the stereotypical Angry Black Man. Neither image brings to mind a good leader (and both are, you know, quietly racist). But as…
If these walls could talk. Barack Obama left town yesterday without going anywhere near Denver International Airport. After barely three hours on the ground in Denver, which was part of a three-state Western swing, the President headed back to Washington, D.C., without even a drive-by tour of the secret bunkers…
Interpellation: a word I learned in my college critical theory class, which I admittedly skipped almost every day of. The Althusser day, however, I dragged my semi-stoned, semi-drunk ass out of bed and learned some useless philosophy. Interpellation, as it was explained to me, is the act of mirroring. Ads…
Related sensibilities create a resonance between three installations on view right now in RiNo — two at Ice Cube and one at Ironton. In each case, the artist created an all-enveloping environment, and in each one, the shared characteristic is an ethereal or insubstantial element. Another connection is the necessity…
Ever since I pulled off an epic victory in the first Running of the Gays last year, they’ve been there: the sensible size-13 pumps I wore to exact that win, a little battered, one heel broken, smelling of vinegar and stale beer, perched atop my cabinet like a weird trophy…
Though I generally favor dynamic action over quiet contemplation, when I do ponder life’s more pressing philosophical questions, I basically make it my policy to punch the shit out of them with my mind-fist. And so, as the days grow shorter and the nights grow cooler, it once again comes…
