Ignorance is bliss, but in Denver’s art world, it’s much more than that. These days it’s seen as being the best indicator of personal integrity. A good example of this can be found in the city’s approach to public art. In that arena, art disciples are outnumbered more than ten…
In the last thirty years, Japan has gone a long way toward establishing total world domination of the camera industry. At both the high and low ends of the market, Japanese cameras–Pentax, Canon, Minolta, Nikon–aren’t just the ones that predominate, they’re the ones that have become household names. If Japan’s…
Increasingly, it seems as though every coffee shop or restaurant in town also fancies itself a gallery. Drop a stone in Cherry Creek or in LoDo and, likely as not, it will fall on an art show. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s getting any easier to find truly good…
Pity Colorado Springs if you must. Today it’s known primarily for its right-wing politics. But as recently as the early 1950s, the city was famous mostly for its art–a lot of which was left-wing. Hard to believe? Perhaps. But it’s a message that Manitou Springs painter Tracy Felix wants to…
For the denizens of the art world, it’s not runs, hits and errors that are on our minds every October, but runs, drips and errors–in acrylics or oil paint or wood or pencil. Right now there are at least a score of worthwhile events being presented in one or another…
The paintings and sculptures in the current show at Denver’s Artyard Gallery were completed in the last five years, but they still provide a look back at the city’s nascent contemporary-art scene of the 1960s. Reunion joins Robert Mangold, a household name and old-guard wizard of local contemporary sculpture, with…
Fall has arrived, and with it the most desirable slots in the exhibition schedules of the city’s art galleries. This time of year, excellent solo shows by established artists seem to pop up nearly everywhere. Among the most notable this autumn are a fine pair of exhibits that feature the…
Maybe it’s the way the mountains emphatically hit the sky, or perhaps it’s those seemingly infinite flat prairies. Whatever the reason, many artists working in Colorado have looked to the firm, straight line as the principal means to their artistic ends. One of the most prominent of those practitioners is…
The five artists featured in the current exhibit at Auraria’s Emmanuel Gallery, Elemental, don’t constitute a school. Neither are they working in the same style or even in the same media. Yet brought together, pieces by Jeff Starr, Dean Habegger, Frank Shaw, Rodger Lang and Scott Chamberlin produce a consistent…
It’s hard to imagine, but at one time regional growth meant something more than the grand opening of another shopping center or the umpteenth big-box hardware store. In the 1970s, new construction also meant a cultural coming of age for metro Denver. The decade began with the completion of the…
Because it was made by an artist and is meant to portray America’s recent art history, the film Basquiat, which opened a couple of weeks ago at the Mayan Theater, has sparked a groundswell of interest in the art community. Perhaps only a psychiatrist is truly qualified to interpret painter…
Being home on the Front Range in August brings new meaning to the old cowboy song about the skies not being cloudy all day. After all, it’s the too-clear sky that leads to that searing, oppressive heat. But there’s an upside to all that blazing sun: the clear light that…
Colorado’s printmaking tradition is so rich, its influence spreads far beyond state lines. In the first decades of the twentieth century, George Elbert Burr plowed new ground with his color etchings made right here in Denver. In the 1930s Guy McCoy and Paul Gallagher, working in Colorado Springs and Aspen,…
Watching over the nearly completed destruction of I.M. Pei’s Zeckendorf Plaza is reminiscent of those “thinnest books in the world” sold in novelty shops. You know the kind–Honest Lawyers or Inspired Bureaucrats. Unfortunately, the pageless gag in this case could be titled something like Great Denver Buildings. But that’s not…
Putting together a credible exhibit takes three things: space, money and an organizing concept. But in the art world, it’s often those curators or gallery directors with the least space at their disposal–and even less money–who come through with the biggest ideas and the best shows. The latest case in…
The distinction between sculpture and installation is a blurry one–and that makes sense, given that the two mediums are both essentially concerned with artfully occupying space. Many local contemporary sculptors and installation artists test the boundary between the two art forms. But no one knows the territory better than well-known…
Summer is typically the time for the art world to put up its collective feet and relax. But that hasn’t been the case this year, when June and July have been chock-full of exciting and interesting art events. You’d think it was October already–ordinarily the high-water mark for art exhibitions…
The reputations of Pirate and Spark have been rehabilitated in recent years owing to the hard work of their members. Both of these co-op galleries are often the place to find intelligent art shows by accomplished local artists. Surely that’s the case right now with exhibits from versatile painter Stephen…
For the past six months, the Mackey Gallery has presented one large and raucous group show after another–out of character for a place that made its reputation presenting in-depth displays featuring only two or three artists. But it’s apparent that her experience with so many group shows has caused gallery…
When people think today of the Victorian era–if they think of it at all–they imagine a Dickensian world populated with polite yet insufferable prigs and upright if ignorant street urchins. But the latter half of the nineteenth century also marked the emergence of modern and social science–everything from physics to…
In its relatively short history, the Center for the Visual Arts, Metropolitan State College’s gallery in LoDo, has celebrated the diversity of the art world. Sally Perisho, the center’s founding director, has paid special attention to art by women, gays and ethnic minorities. And she has mixed things up: One…
In spite of a century of modern art jam-packed with things like abstraction, minimalism and conceptualism, the venerable tradition of depicting the human figure in art has held on admirably. As the modernist twentieth century comes to a close, artists working with the human body as their subject seem to…
