Among the lines delivered at poetry slams, one is often repeated: “The point is not the points; the point is the poetry.” This has never been more true than over the last week and a half in Denver, when all three of the city’s national teams — Slam Nuba, the…
“While President George H.W. Bush had been known for saying ‘Read my lips,’ I began urging colleagues and reporters to ‘Read my pins.'” — Madeleine Albright. That’s the basic story behind Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection, an exhibit opening Sunday at the Denver Art Museum. A showcase of…
First rule of Soundpainting: You do not have to be a virtuoso. And from there, the sky’s the limit: It doesn’t matter how old you are, what you play — if anything — and whether or not you can even read music. Soundpainting is a kind of improvisational “Simon Says”…
Julie Puma had a month to put together her new show, Let’s Get it Straight, and she diverted from painting, her usual medium, into snapshot aesthetic photography. The biggest challenge for Puma wasn’t the medium, however. Rather, it was spotlighting her own personal life. Let’s Get it Straight” offers a…
Luis Alberto Urrea really is the story he writes in so many ways: A reporter, poet and novelist, he’s covered the illegal immigrant story from the front lines, where he once worked as a relief worker, and found pieces of himself in the fictionalized retelling of the history of his…
With a soldering iron, Mike McClung creates intricate burn outs out of vellum and cold-pressed paper and arranges the paper to create visual arrays. McClung’s work will show in Connections, a new show starting Friday the 13th at Space Gallery. Aside from showing at Space, Art and Soul Gallery in…
Simon Zalkind, curator of the Mizel Center’s Singer Gallery (350 South Dahlia Street, 303-316-6360, www.maccjcc.org), has mounted a show, as so many others have, honoring the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum. His entry, which runs through April 29, is the wonderful Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin, made up of paintings…
Now in its 64th year, the Conference on World Affairs is a five-day mental fest that fires up at the University of Colorado Boulder campus today. Since the first CWA in 1948, thinkers from the forefront and fringes of science, politics, spirituality, medicine, academia and the arts have convened every…
Leon Gallery strives to bring in artists with unique concepts — from Jimmy Descant’s crutches sculptures, commissioning street artist Impossible Winterbourne to make their door sign, to the live circus opening of The Mad Tatters’ surrealistic Cirque Voltaire show. This Friday’s opening promises another dive into a fantastical realm with…
Just as you might be compelled to visit Yves Saint Laurent: A Retrospective again and again during its stay at the Denver Art Museum through July 8, you’ll want to keep coming back to the gift shop, which is bursting with a sense of style inspired by the YSL couture…
In this week’s art column by Michael Paglia, the Westword art critic writes that the images in Out Figured — which closes after Saturday, April 7! — raise “disturbing, or at least edgy, philosophical, sexual, psychological or sociological issues.”…
What’s the funniest damn thing you’ve ever seen on television? The commercials. Specifically, the ones that aren’t trying to be funny, but try instead to sell you a load of crap in three easy payments — the Ginsu knives, slicing-dicing machines and spotless cleaning solutions of the late-night surf. The…
Leigh Cabell says the reason she put off trying to be an artist for so long is that she, like other people, was intimidated by the challenge of making it. “It’s one of those things you want to do, but you’re not sure you’ll be good at,” she explains. So,…
Editor’s note: Westword cartoonist Noah Van Sciver paints the town like nobody else, as demonstrated in his recaps of visits to the Denver Art Museum, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and out own Westword Artopia (Make sure you read Noah’s blog for more comics and wonderment, including his…
Does a beard make the man? It depends on who you ask. Historically, beards were used for warmth, intimidation of protection from enemies, but in modern times, women find beards only about two-thirds as attractive as a clean-shaven man. In Colorado, beards can be a seasonal look for the October-March…
In the annals of the Denver art world, the 2011-2012 season will go down as the year of Clyfford Still. The Clyfford Still Museum opened in November, and many museums and galleries presented shows highlighting the artist’s influence or abstraction in general in order to honor Still’s signature approach. But…
On Friday, the Denver Art Museum played host to Forever Darling 5 fashion show, in conjunction with its monthly Untitled series and the Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective exhibition. This edition of Forever Darling featured eight designers from Project Runway: Michael Costello, Becky Ross, Danielle Everine, Jason Troisi, Julie Tierney,…
The image above — a wonderful posed moment gone awry — caused quite a stir in Denver’s Art District on Santa Fe last year: first, as part of tbellphotographic’s juried show, Is This How I Look?, where Ken Hamel gave it top honors, and again when I did the same…
The West Coast punks are pogoing into town this spring at MCA Denver, Gildar Gallery, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center and other locations, for a series of shows falling under the aegis of Search & Destroy. So-named for the San Francisco ‘zine or the ’70s), the ring of satellite shows…
Becoming sage, by Kasi Alexander, has everything a reader could want: sex, violence, mastering, slaving. And the emotional autobiographical novel also two things that can’t be safe-worded out of — cops and family drama. In it, Alexander, a local author, tells the story of a woman who leaves the vanilla…
There are big openings of shows at the Denver Art Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art that explore international and Californian phenomena — but don’t miss the exhibit opening tonight at Robischon Gallery that touts imagery from right in our own back yard…
“Hello. I’m Johnny Cash.” That was enough of an introduction for the country legend himself, but Cash’s legacy has surpassed that simplicity. In his nearly fifty-year career, Cash played himself in dozens of film and television spots, but his death in 2003 opened the gates for others to take up…
