Jerry De La Cruz was born and raised in Denver and first expressed his artistic talents by winning a coloring contest at the age of seven. Although his solo at the Museo de las Americas, A Road Well Traveled: An Art Life Retrospective: Jerry De La Cruz, doesn’t go back…
“You don’t have to see the shed, I normally wouldn’t get excited by a shed,” says Tim Roberts, co-owner of Counterpath Press, a Westword MasterMind, as he jiggles the key in the lock anyway. Inside are boxes of books: experimental poetry, performance manuscripts, transcripts. Roberts opens a box and digs…
Downtown Aurora Visual Arts started small in 1993 in a vacant storefront, eventually taking over the rest of of the building as other tenants emptied out. The initial space was one where they had to make do, notes DAVA director Susan Jenson, and that’s what they did: The organization’s free art-education…
Over the weekend, Station — a street-style retailer and art gallery new to the Five Points neighborhood — joined forces with Far Out Zines to host a zine-themed art show and zine swap. Photographer Ken Hamblin III was there to record the evening. Now see the full AMAZiNE! slide show…
Transplants, let me try to explain why it seems like the natives hate you. I’ve read any number of comments in Westword talking about how “mean” and “unwelcoming” the natives are, and how we’re all just haters who need to get over ourselves. I’ve also written a fair amount about the…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. “It’s pronounced ‘keel,’ like the keel of a boat, or to keel…
We’re hesitant to tell you about Pon Pon, because once you know about this boozy, beautiful, artistic spot at 2538 Walnut Street, it will be harder for us to get a seat at the bar. Still, the place is so great we can’t resist sharing the news. Paul Garcia and…
It’s a new year, and time to celebrate new work: From fresh reinterpretations of classic schools of art to tattoo imagery and a hands-on way to celebrate modern environmentalism, there’s plenty to choose from in 2016. Tear, Cut & Paste: The Art of Collage Art Gym Denver Through February 14,…
Like a beacon of art house film hope, Video One took up residence in a converted house on the corner of 6th Avenue and Downing about four years ago. Though its paint color is more muted than the bright purple-y hue the structure wore in its past life as consignment…
Montbello and Green Valley Ranch: Never been there? The far northeastern Denver districts out by the airport do seem to be worlds unto themselves, cut off from the rest of us by parcels of Aurora and Adams County, and that’s why Denver’s civic health club, Warm Cookies of the Revolution,…
A Denver-centric art exhibit opens tomorrow at the historic Crystal Palace in downtown Aspen, and it could be the coolest show ever in that mountain town. ALL THE FEELS will feel a little something like the “nostalgia of music that still tickles the hair on the back of your neck, the…
Focus. Squirrel! While I don’t “officially” have ADHD (I’ve been tested, and it was borderline), living inside my brain is a source of constant distraction. My friends have noticed this on hikes, where every bit of minutia — the way the light hits a stone, and “what kind of bug…
When CORE New Art Space formed 35 years ago, Denver’s art scene looked very different — artists found that in banding together and creating a cooperative environment, they could thrive. This Thursday, December 31, the gallery celebrates three and a half decades of surviving the city — a tale of a…
As I look back at what has changed in Denver’s art scene over the past year, I feel that first I need to pause and fondly recall two key players who are no longer with us, each of whom led long and illustrious lives that enriched the Mile High City…
This list involves a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. The artists who ignore the gallery and take to the streets to paint their murals are among the most hard-working in the city. Narrowing it down to ten is a near impossible task, but subjectively, we have chosen our favorite…
What got people talking in 2015? On Westword’s arts blog, the hottest topics spanned everything from inner city woes and ugly buildings to the most Colorado-iffic ways of escaping both. Without fanfare, here are our ten most-read arts blogs of 2015. 10) Film on the Rocks 2015 Schedule Announced “Outdoor…
In October 2013 I had a pop-up show in New York, and I was there the week before hanging it with my friend Brittany Schall, who had curated the work. We spent late nights in the gallery hanging things from the ceiling (it was a borrowed space; we were not…
Considering the cornucopia of art venues in the Denver area — galleries, art centers, museums, artist-cooperatives, pop-ups, and even wide hallways — and the hundreds of exhibits presented inside them over the last year, it comes as no surprise that the Mile High City is starting to get some real traction as…
Part of a generation of modernists who emerged in northern New Mexico in the 1970s, Zachariah Rieke has been influenced by both abstract expressionism and Japanese calligraphy. A selection of his abstracts can be seen in Surface Tension, a group show at William Havu Gallery that combines paintings and sculpture…
On the bad days, Jim Stevens would curse and throw tools across his art studio, frustrated by his inability to create like he did before he lost his sight. He’d just come off a rough seven years: losing his vision, his wife, his job and his artistic ability in quick…
Joseph Koncilja is a longtime preservationist who’s working to save historic structures in Pueblo. His interest in the vintage built environment extends to neon signs, which he has been collecting for years. Because of a preservation ordinance in the southern Colorado town, neon signs aren’t allowed on buildings facing the…
Every year we endlessly debate the “meaning of Christmas.” Fox News stages its traditional “War on Christmas” show, commentators lament the crass commercialization, and decorations inch up in store stocks until they compete with pumpkins for space. And on Christmas Eve, families everywhere gather around a traditional nativity, with baby…
