I was going to do the gonzo journalist thing and participate in last night’s chalk pastel class at Xcentricity Gallery, led by Corrina Espinosa, but I thought I would make all of the other students feel bad if I busted out my mad pastel skills. That’s a lie: I knew…
It’s been a busy sixteen months for Handsome Little Devils. In October 2011, the vaudevillian comedy troupe took its Squirm Burpee Circus act — a blend of acrobatics, juggling and juggling — to Broadway, enjoying a successful run at the New Victory Theatre and getting positive reviews in such little…
Colorado is no Hollywood, but the state does have a rich film past, if not an active film present, as detailed in our cover story “The Reel West.” Today, in an effort to jump-start the state’s movie business, lawmakers will debate a plan to increase incentives for filmmakers to shoot…
In this week’s art column — “The Faculty Triennial documents Colorado’s art history as it races by” — Michael Paglia writes of the Faculty Triennial at the University of Denver: The current exhibition, the Faculty Triennial, is part of his continuing program to “document and to stimulate Colorado’s art history,”…
Legendary illustrator John Powers Severin, whose 60-year career in the comics world stretched from the dawning of MAD magazine to the Silver Age at Marvel to a gay revival of the Rawhide Kid and beyond, died over the weekend at his southeast Denver home. He was 90 years old. “Truly…
In January we reported on a handful of homegrown Colorado ski companies making handcrafted and custom skis that stand up to or surpass anything else on the market. If we’d waited a few weeks, we could have added another local brand to the mix: Silverton-based Venture Snowboards. For the last…
Theresa Anderson may not be the first artist to incorporate text and art — Da Vinci’s journals testify that written language can contain aesthetic merit. But according to contemporary standards, what Anderson does in many of her drawings — adding an original narrative element — defines her as a conceptual…
Indian artist Bunky Echo-Hawk is an old soul in a cutting-edge suit — his bright paintings, slabbed with blocks of blinding color, mix traditional and pop imagery and ideas, resulting in a body of work that’s funny, sad, stridently satirical and very smart. He’s therefore an excellent choice as a…
Stroll through the romance shelves at any Barnes & Noble, and one subgenre stands out like Harrison Ford in Witness. In a territory marked by heaving chests and flexing muscles, Colorado Springs Christian writer Beverly Lewis keeps sex under her bonnets. But while her Amish romances feature more hand-holding than…
Love was in the air on Friday night at Zip 37 in the Navajo Street Art District, where the show LoveSick opened to the public. The exhibit, which features nine artists contemplating the meaning of being lovesick, was curated by artist Katie Hoffman, who unveiled her own piece, Heloise and…
While writing this column over the years, I have frequently thought about how my chief calling is to compose a rough first draft of the art history of Colorado done right as it races by. This kind of instant historicizing has a following in the scholarly world, and someone who…
Last night the Bar Car on Colorado Boulevard was again invaded by Amberama Martinez and her Bar Car First Sunday Art Show, which featured voodoo dolls and bracelets made from Scrabble squares, among other works for sale…
We’ve reported on the Denver Zine Library’s fundraising campaign and what a little extra cash will mean to the volunteer crew that maintains this Denver treasure, located somewhat obscurely at 27 Social Centre in Jefferson Park. And though the DZL is already more than halfway to its goal of raising…
Whether they want to wow women with their poetic prowess, find the perfect insult to highlight their intelligence or tame an unruly “shrew,” people have long been adapting Shakespeare’s stories to their own lives. And, of course, savvy marketers have been retooling the playwright’s classic plots to create their own…
“I think a lot of people are stiff toward just going to see an art show, because it can be a little bit on the boring side,” says curator Jazmin Montano. But, she insists, you won’t get bored at this one. On Saturday night, Enlightening the Dark, at Eden, will…
Monster Jam is in Denver this weekend as part of its 2012 tour, and 2011 MVP Bari Musawwir, driver of the Spider-Man truck, took some time out of his busy schedule (driving awesome trucks, doing sweet tricks, crushing cars) to talk to us about his job, and why getting in…
The Denver Art Museum’s Design Council plans to celebrate art and fashion tonight at Design After Dark: Bespoke. More than 30 art objects were created specifically for the event, and they’ll be on display and up for auction Friday night at 445 Broadway. Here’s a first look at some of…
When Mother Nature dumped snow on Denver last Friday, more than a few galleries and businesses decided to shut their doors, first Friday or no. A blizzard of confusion resulted, as many show openings and other events were postponed to later dates — many of them this weekend. Here are…
Adam Gildar, Westword MasterMind (Class of 2011), is having a hard time getting used to saying “I” rather than “we” when speaking about happenings at his South Broadway gallery: Formerly known as Illiterate and managed by three partners including Gildar, it’s now re-entering the art-scene fray as Gildar Gallery, run…
Every building has a history, and the sordid past of Niwot’s Manifest Gallery influenced the theme of its new show that opens tonight: Red Light: Tragic beauties and other objects of desire. Turns out that in the 1970s, the building that now holds the gallery was a brothel — and…
It all began with a handful of cameras. “The exhibit came about because we have a collection of cameras at the museum we were interested in learning more about,” says Jennifer Kuehner, director of the Aurora History Museum. “We realized that our collection starts in the ’20s and ’30s, and…
Gusterman’s, a silversmith shop in Larimer Square, represents an old-world ideal of master craftsmanship. The shop, more than thirty years old, sells objects and jewelry created in-house, and the silversmiths, Mary Eckels and Jamie McLandsborough, will create whatever you want, in front of you. Their gallery is full of small…
