On December 14, I got a call from a good friend. Her tone was uncharacteristically formal, so I knew something was wrong. “Mark Travis was found dead in his studio,” she stoically told me. This news was shocking despite the fact that Travis had been in declining health for years,…
Ivar Zeile, the owner of Plus Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927) has often described his approach to showing contemporary art as “eclectic,” and in his case, that means embracing competing ideologies at the same time and in the same shows. The problem with this approach is that offerings of this…
The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver opened its brand-new David Adjaye-designed building at the corner of 15th and Delgany streets less than two months ago. I love the building and the fact that the upstart institution managed to construct a high-style facility by an internationally famous architect, and I focused on…
The idea for a quartet of solo shows at Sandy Carson Gallery (760 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-8585, www.sandycarsongallery.com) began when owner Sandy Carson decided she wanted to mount an exhibit devoted to Toronto hotshot Tony Scherman, one of the foremost encaustic painters anywhere. Encaustic, by the way, is a wax-based…
As you might imagine, I see a lot of art shows in the course of doing my job. I figure that since this time last year, I’ve seen something like 250 exhibits — not counting the informal efforts in restaurants and coffee shops that I encounter in everyday life. It…
In 1890, Benjamin F. Woodward, a tycoon who helped bring the telegraph to Colorado, commissioned Denver’s premier architect, Frank Edbrooke, to design a mansion. Edbrooke, who had just completed his masterpiece, the Brown Palace Hotel, worked in the Richardsonian-Romanesque manner, the most important architectural style of the day. Constructed of…
It’s hardly a new observation to say that the invention of photography revolutionized the visual arts; it’s trite, but true. Before photography, the best way to capture the appearance of exterior reality was to paint it. Once people could take photos, however, the idea of painting as a window on…
In Sporting and Recreation: Furniture, the current exhibit at Ironton Studios and Gallery (3636 Chestnut Place, www.irontonstudios.com), Chase DeForest has a lot of fun adding narrative content to things like sideboards and chairs. The items all reference some kind of leisure activity like a game. But DeForest is also interested…
I’m wary of art with political subtexts, because it’s usually pretty bad, and the shows that feature it are often long on explanatory text and documentary videos and short on artistic content. So when I walked into the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art to view the enormous eco-themed Weather Report:…
The Dairy Center for the Arts (2590 Walnut Street, Boulder, 303-440-7826, www.thedairy.org) is an impressive facility, but the building definitely needs some work to make it more appealing and less gloomy. Maybe now that Judy Hussie-Taylor, the former deputy director of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, has taken over as…
There’s nothing new about working at the intersection of art mediums, especially pieces that combine aspects of both painting and sculpture. Take, for instance, those bas-reliefs from antiquity. Since they are three-dimensional, they’re technically sculptures, but because they were meant to be viewed from one side only, they’re actually more…
With the opening of the Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton Building last year and the unveiling of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver last month, the city’s gallery owners have really stepped up to compete. The happy result has been a season crammed with first-rate offerings — something that wasn’t so common…
Is it possible to create intelligent work with Bosco chocolate syrup? Obviously it is, since Vik Muniz has done it over and over again, in addition to other credibly contemporary creations using string, dirt, magazine ads, backhoes and skywriting airplanes. Muniz’s actual medium is photography, which he uses to record…
Even before he took over as the able director of the Sandy Carson Gallery (760 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-8585, www.sandycarsongallery.com) a few years ago, William Biety had spent decades in the art world and had developed relationships with artists from around the country. That’s half of the backstory to Michael…
From the end of World War II through the 1970s, American culture hit one of those golden ages that dot the history of humanity every hundred years or so. The country’s wealth led to a renaissance in science, literature, drama, film, painting, sculpture, architecture and design. Accomplishments from this period…
Bill Joseph, who died in 2003, is best remembered as a sculptor, and several of his pieces are prominently sited downtown. These include the Christopher Columbus monument in Civic Center Park, the bronze eagle on the United States Courthouse on Stout Street, and the Beaumont Fountain, west of Broadway on…
Twenty years ago, there was little if any interest in the history of Colorado art, aside from turn-of-the-last-century landscape painting; that stuff never got old, while everything else did. But as the 1990s dawned and people began to think of the imminence of the 21st century, there was a lot…
Sculptor Bob Mangold and his wife, Peggy, an art dealer, are both in their seventies, and given their many contributions to the local art world (including being among the founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art), they are living cultural treasures in Denver. That makes their gallery (which doubles as…
Last week, as I stood at the corner of 15th and Delgany streets and took in the nearly finished Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, a part of me still couldn’t believe it had actually happened. In just over a decade, this little, privately funded and perpetually-strapped-for-cash institution had grown from a…
Don’t expect to see Movado watches, Venini vases, Barcelona chairs or any other luxury item in Substance: Diverse Practices From the Periphery, the large and ambitious design show at Metro State’s Center for Visual Art in LoDo (1734 Wazee Street, 303-294-5207, www.mscd.edu). Instead, curator Lisa Abendroth has given the show…
The idea of creating contemporary art that refers back to traditional art while still breaking new ground is called conceptual realism. Though the movement embraces a range of expressions, what connects it all is recognizable imagery used to some kind of conceptual end, and often with a sarcastic, sardonic or…
Last weekend, during the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) convention in Denver, the Denver Art Museum announced the hiring of Darrin Alfred (pictured) to the newly created post of AIGA assistant curator of graphic design. He was introduced by DAM director Lewis Sharp and AIGA executive director Richard Grefé…
