A recent stroll through the popular teen retail store Hot Topic got me all geared up for Halloween. Seeing the skeleton jewelry, the fake blood-splattered wedding veils and tiaras and the slashed-up fake body parts gave me a warm feeling in my heart. Then I scoped the female costumes and…
Get to the art of the matter tonight, at a free panel discussion — complete with refreshments and a DJ — in support of the Urban Arts Fund. This graffiti-prevention program of Arts & Venues Denver produces unique opportunities for young people to participate in diversionary art and leadership programs…
During the twentieth century, one new public building was constructed in the greater Civic Center area for each decade. But it’s been a very different story in the current century: By my count, eight new landmarks have been built in the mere twelve years since 2000. Some, like History Colorado,…
The 2012 Mayor’s Design Awards, announced last night, celebrate a range of notable projects across six categories: I Wanna Live Here!, Oh, Pioneers!, Use It Or Lose It!, Eye-Catcher!, The City’s Gotta Eat! and Goin’ Rogue! This year’s winners include restaurants, breweries and livable properties, as well as such cultural…
Though Dia de los Muertos is officially November 2, this Saturday’s Day of the Dead Artist Trading Card Workshop should provide some good preparation. From 12:30 to 4 p.m., galleries in the Navajo Street Art District are inviting artists of all kinds to create miniature pieces of work in the…
At 11 a.m. today, a small group of dignitaries led by Mayor Michael Hancock will gather at the McNichols Building at the edge of Denver’s Civic Center (just named a national landmark) to cut the ribbon on the classical structure’s new lease on life. Built in 1910 as a Carnegie…
Davy Rothbart is famous for his love of detritus. Ten years ago, he launched FOUND Magazine, an exuberant, low-fi celebration of things left behind: love letters, Post-It notes, journal entries, birthday cards, shopping lists and other strangely revealing minutiae of human existence. FOUND’s pages are hilarious and heartbreaking; often, they’re…
We love our cons in Colorado, and there’s no con more splendid than MileHiCon, which unfolds this weekend at the Hyatt Regency Tech Center — for its 44th year. By tradition, MileHiCon is about books, but it’s also about the many worlds of genre fiction, from tried-and-true science fiction to…
Though it may seem unlikely as you stew in I-70 gridlock, Colorado is an excellent place to enact your high-speed racing fantasies. Or at least, Playground Games seems to think so. Forza Horizon for the Xbox 360 is an open-world racing game that takes place in our fair state, against…
Timothy Standring, curator of the Denver Art Museum’s exclusive exhibition Becoming Van Gogh, traveled the world for several years to beg and borrow the show’s more than seventy paintings and drawings. It wasn’t an easy task. “People aren’t going to loan works by van Gogh, arguably the most well-known artist…
Michael Paglia visits Robischon Gallery in this week’s review, taking in work by three different artists. The main show focuses on Judy Pfaff and her installations. There is also a small show featuring Ana Maria Hernando, and a larger one with pieces from Katy Stone. Continue reading for photos from…
The visual arts in Denver reached an obvious high point in the fall of 2006, when the Denver Art Museum opened the Hamilton Building. But some runners up, date-wise, would have to include the following year, when MCA Denver moved into its new building, and last season, when the Clyfford…
If you missed the second presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney last night, you might not be able to understand your friends’ jokes this morning. Aside from an aggressively unexpected use of the phrase “gang bangers,” last night also featured the much-memed line in which Romney mentioned “binders…
The inaugural Art Meets Beast at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver was a surprise hit in 2010, featuring local chefs and arts enthusiasts in a mashup of mammoth proportions. And now the beast is coming back, with a two-day exploration of art that will culminate in a bison feast…
Melissa Borrell has been making jewelry for years — stylish, lightweight metal or 3D-printed nylon necklaces and dangling earrings in clean, sculptural shapes. But recently, she’s had a hankering to create something larger and less functional. The result goes on display at PlatteForum when her installation, tessellate, opens tonight with…
Denver has become the leading destination for all things related to the marijuana industry, especially now that Colorado sits on the precipice of a decriminalization law with Amendment 64, and a cutting-edge show by Dampie, a progressive artist who specializes in hemp-culture art, just opened at HoodLab, the gallery located…
One of the great historians of our time, Dustin Lance Black is responsible for some great dramatic portrayals of our country’s past. Whether his subject is Harvey Milk, J. Edgar Hoover or the California State Supreme Court, Black is painstakingly thorough with his research and masterful with his storytelling. While…
What is dasHAUS? Created in Germany, the compact pavilion demonstrates the most up-to-the-minute green technologies in home-building, from the sleekest of sustainable materials to renewable energy systems. Packed full of bright ideas, dasHAUS started a fourteen-city tour of the U.S. a year ago; now it’s at home in Denver’s Sustainability…
To celebrate the Great American Beer Festival, which is in town right now, and the release of its newest beer, End of the World Midnight Wheat, the Shock Top division of Anheuser Busch hired artist Stan Herd to create a massive piece of crop art in Lochbuie, near Denver International…
The tradition of the small-town social is vanishing even faster than Colorado’s small towns. All the more reason to head out to the eastern plains this weekend for The Big Feed, a unique blend of art show, county fair, hoedown and foot-stomping celebration of rural culture unfolding at the rodeo…
Not all art has to have meaning. Some of it is made just for the hell of it, because it’s fun to make art — and sometimes that art ends up being beautiful. Or not. Munny shows tend to fall into this second category, just because it’s cool to see…
Mayor Michael Hancock, Arts & Venues Denver and the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs just announced the 2012 recipients of the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts: Denver’s Art District on Santa Fe, Denver Ballet Guild and Emmanuel Gallery. The awards will be presented at a free, public celebration…
