There’s a magnificent retrospective at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art devoted to the work of the late John David Rigsby, who was a major powerhouse in Colorado’s art scene. Dots, Blobs and Angels surveys more than forty years’ worth of the remarkable artist’s paintings and sculptures. The year 1993 was…
There’s a great new gallery called weilworks (3611 Chestnut Place, 303-308-9345) that just opened this past spring. It’s located across the street from Ironton, in the industrial neighborhood north of downtown. Unlike most of the businesses around here — including Ironton — weilworks is housed in its own custom-designed structure,…
There’s an unusual convergence of related art shows at many of the state’s galleries, particularly those in Denver. Scores of venues have arranged their schedules to feature the topic of weaving (broadly speaking) in conjunction with the sixteenth biennial meeting of the Handweavers Guild of America, taking place at the…
In the front room of Pirate: A Contemporary Art Oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058) is the notable solo Telling Fantasies, which features recent paintings and drawings by Denver artist Irene Delka McCray. McCray’s style is realistic, and she’s thoroughly accomplished technically. She revels in accurate renderings of fabric folds and…
Repetition is a key to all human endeavors, from music to math to the sciences, from the spoken word to the written one. And don’t forget history and the social sciences, which are all about repeating things. In the fine arts, too, repetition is basic and, as far as I…
Here’s a delicious irony: Many of the artists exploring what’s inaccurately called “the cutting edge” are in their fifties, sixties and even seventies, while many of the twenty-somethings are into traditional art. Go figure. This youthful interest in traditional art is amply demonstrated by an important show titled cadence at…
I think it’s exciting to watch the Denver Art Museum’s new Frederic C. Hamilton Building rise out of the ground, as it has been doing over the past few months just south of West 13th Avenue along the vacated axis of Acoma Street. Currently, the Daniel Libeskind-designed structure is merely…
Earlier this season, Cordell Taylor Gallery and Ron Judish Fine Art merged into the new +Zeile/Judish Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927), and everyone must have known that some of the artists they each represented would have to go. There were just too many of them. Owner Ivar Zeile, partner Ron…
For a long time, art done in the Western states during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was held in low regard. It suffered in comparison to both earlier Western art and art done in New York during the same time period. But things have started to change during…
Last summer, the ILK co-op all but disappeared, and for a long time, its space, just inside the main entrance of Pirate gallery, was not only closed, but boarded up. Then a new crew of members, headed by artist and writer Troy Briere, took over and began to present shows…
Is it just me, or does it seem like the art world is the midst of high season? Nearly everywhere there’s some exhibit that’s worth taking in — and that’s really weird because the season should be shutting down for the summer. Ordinarily, June, July and August are the least…
Currently, there’s a touching two-part exhibit at the Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173) that honors Roger M. Beltrami, a long-time co-op member who died earlier this year. The show, birds of a feather, has two parts: In the front space is a memorial presentation featuring Beltrami’s own work, and…
The story had been circulating for months: Fresh Art Gallery was closing for good, and the newish +Zeile/Judish would be moving into the sharp-looking spot at Ninth Avenue and Santa Fe Drive. And it was lots more than a rumor. Not only had the tale been spread around by Jeanie…
Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955) is currently presenting a three-artist group show with the meaningless and universally applicable title Contemplation. The exhibit brings together the work of Boulder sculptor Anne Shutan and Denver painters Eric Michael Corrigan and Angela Larson — or does it? All three artists…
Well, I’ve decided to make it official and issue a formal statement on the matter: I hate juried shows. They’re the slums among group shows, and it’s hard to believe they’re still being done. I don’t even know why I still go to see them. The problems with juried shows…
There’s an extremely unusual show at Capsule (554 Santa Fe Drive, 303-623-3460) called Justin Beard: Second Hand Smoke. The handsome exhibit represents a very strong early showing for a young emerging artist who’s just out of art school. Capsule director Lauri Lynnxe Murphy describes Beard’s installation as being “very cool…
American art in the post-World War II period is generally considered by scholars to represent a high point in recorded history. In the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, American modernism dominated the world, and the greatest painters, sculptors, designers and architects were working in this country. This cultural dominance is still…
Though the ordinary fare at Gallery Sink (2301 West 30th Street, 303-455-0185) is photography, work in other media is featured from time to time. Painting is the mode showcased in Jeremiah Coleman Teutsch: Six Married Couples and One Lonely Mountain Man, hung in the formal main gallery, and installations make…
It’s safe to say that no matter when you go to the Singer Gallery at the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, there’s always something worth seeing. But to describe the current offering as being merely worthwhile would be a major understatement, because Jules Olitski: Half a Life’s Work: Selected…
Located across the street from the west side of the Denver Art Museum, next to the venerable Camera Obscura, is the city’s coziest little art shop, the Emil Nelson Gallery (1307 Bannock Street, 303-534-0996). Into the warren of small rooms that once made up the first floor of an old…
There’s an important exhibit at the Denver Art Museum that’s being given the royal treatment, which makes sense, because it’s filled with regal pieces. The blockbuster is Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521-1821, a mammoth endeavor that includes more than fifty paintings, many of them monumental in…
California-based photographer Rick Nahmias was researching famed TV journalist Edward R. Murrow when he came upon Harvest of Shame, Murrow’s 1960s documentary about the dreadful living conditions of farm workers. The film inspired Nahmias to revisit the topic, and the results are the dozens of wonderful photos that make up…
