“I always had a good time at Artopia,” says Silas Ulibarri, aka Jolt, the founder of Guerilla Garden. He’s talking about Westword’s annual celebration of the arts, which has evolved a lot over the past two decades but remains one of the best annual parties in town, showcasing the best of…
RiNo’s Helikon Gallery and Studios is currently hosting Spark & Ruin: Anatomy of a Flame, a handsome group exhibit that examines fire, which is a pretty relevant local topic. Though gallery director Cayce Goldberg’s family has owned this particular rail-side property for decades, Spark & Ruin was guest-curated by Raymundo…
Back in 2009, Denver School of the Arts student Quinn Marchman and a group of friends decided to take the lead and create an original production for the school’s annual Black History Month production. Together they wrote, directed, produced and acted in a play about a fictional character named Barry,…
Realism and its derivations are still hot properties in the fine arts, especially in contemporary painting, and this is a good time to immerse yourself in works of this type. Robischon Gallery is highlighting four artists, in separate shows, who are all doing work that riffs on realism. And that’s…
With Louis Silver’s music for The Jazz Singer in 1927, talkies ushered in a new age of recorded sound; what audiences heard when they watched a film took a bold step into completing the grand illusion of cinema. Yet even without recorded sound, the silent film era flourished with hand-crafted scores,…
The musical Next to Normal garnered a Pulitzer Prize for composer Tom Kitt and writer Brian Yorkey and high praise from critics — in part because it dealt with the ugly realities of mental illness, an unusual and courageous focus for a generally upbeat and unrealistic medium. At the center…
For the next ten weeks Denver will experience the ways in which history, violence and three-dimensionalism intersect through the work of Cristóbal Gracia, who was selected to represent Mexico City as a 2015 Biennial Ambassador, alongside fellow Mexican artist Daniel Monroy Cuevas. The 2015 Biennial Ambassadors program is a ten-week…
Cells phones have taken over. We use our phones everywhere — in the car, on the toilet, while we wait in line for coffee or groceries. We even use them in the sacred space of our bedrooms, in our beds, when we are supposed to be sleeping. We’re shameless about…
At first glance, Sharon Feder’s work seems to focus on sweeping, modern landscapes; train tracks and abandoned buildings fill massive canvases, alongside other familiar structures from Denver’s not-so-distant agricultural and commercial past. But she sees the paintings a little differently. “The reason I began painting buildings was because I had…
Westword’s Artopia now includes Whiteout, our annual fashion show. In advance of this year’s art extravaganza, which is going down on February 21 at City Hall, we checked in with the seven designers and boutiques that will be part of the Alice in Wonderland-themed Whiteout to ask what they have…
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. TeJay Mora’s art appears, well, just about everywhere. That’s because this quirky…
After tackling the life of a young Abraham Lincoln for his first graphic novel, Denver cartoonist Noah Van Sciver turned to a more accessible, but no less dramatic, subject for his follow-up: the modern American working class. In Saint Cole, Van Sciver explores the plight of the average man raising…
This week’s openings include recent work from Colorado legend Clark Richert and a former student, an emerging artist solo in a living room, and a curatorial takeover at David B. Smith Gallery. You don’t have to wait until First Friday to see new art; keep reading for the details. Matthew…
When you’re different from others based on who you love, you spend a lot of time thinking about Valentine’s Day and what you’re going to do to celebrate it like a gay rock star. But if you’re still thinking about it now, you’ve waited too long — most of February…
“I’m a stage animal,” confides soprano Angela Brown, who moves from brassy to coy to hilarious in the course of a minute’s chat. She’s the powerful and eloquent exponent of opera, on evangelical course to charm and disarm you. Her one-woman concert, “Opera . . . from a Sistah’s Point…
Denver’s comedy scene is never far from booze. Pretty much every night of the week, in bars across the city, a young comic takes the stage, microphone in one hand, half-full pint of beer in the other. Comic Steve Vanderploeg has closed the gap between comedy and beer by starting…
Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and you can knock yourself out getting those dinner reservations and then finding some kind of activity that will leave you and your loved ready for zzzzzz instead of xxx by the time the night is over. Or you can put your trust in the…
Challenged to create an art show to enhance History Colorado’s companion exhibit to 1968, El Movimiento — a straightforward visual history of the local Chicano rights movement that flourished in the barrio areas of Denver decades ago — Maruca Salazar of the Museo de las Americas came up with a street-smart answer…
I was never very good at math. I blame Mrs. Mercer, my second-grade teacher at Foothills Elementary School, who told me that “boys are good at math and girls are good at English.” It was like a pass for giving up, which is just what I did. And I take…
Zero Spark Gallery 900 Santa Fe Drive Mark Brasuell has been creating abstract paintings for more than twenty years. For most of that time, he exhibited his work at Edge, but just over a year ago, he jumped ship and signed on at Spark, the city’s oldest surviving co-op. That’s…
Westword is under construction. From 10 p.m. Monday, February 9, until mid-morning on Tuesday, February 10, you won’t see any new material on Westword.com — but we’ve got a very good reason. When we return, we’ll do so with a brand-new website and a fresh new look, featuring larger photos,…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we take a look at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. How does a business major with no formal art training go…
