When I woke up on the morning of March 3 and prepared to attend the unveiling of a design for a new downtown museum dedicated to abstract-expressionist genius Clyfford Still, my heart filled with dread. I really didn’t want to see it, and had even less interest in meeting its…
With all the excitement in this country about Chinese contemporary art, the fact that China is a police state is often forgotten. Leave it to the Chinese to remind us with some timely events that reveal the true conditions under which artists live and work there. A couple of weeks…
The Society for Photographic Education (www.spenational.org) will hold its 45th annual national conference at the Adam’s Mark Hotel this weekend, bringing about a thousand professionals in photo-based occupations to town. It’s too late to register, but there are limited day and sessions passes available, as well as an Exhibits Fair…
Kazillionaire, arts donor and fine-art photographer Laura Merage has gotten a step closer to opening what she calls an “art incubator,” dubbed RedLine, by forming a board of directors. The seven-member group includes Merage and two other artists, Lori Bauman and Tom Guiton, and four administrative executives, Sue Renner, Bruce…
When the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver unveiled its fabulous new David Adjaye-designed building last fall (“Smart and Sassy,” October 27, 2007), director and curator Cydney Payton put together seven discrete shows which were presented in each of the museum’s seven clearly defined spaces. Partly because the exhibits all opened on…
Just a hop, skip and a jump across Wadsworth Boulevard from the Lab at Belmar (see review) is the Lakewood Heritage Center in Belmar Park (801 South Yarrow Street, Lakewood, 303-987-7850). In the LHC’s Radius Gallery, curator Robin Anderson has organized Parallel Pathways, a ceramics duet featuring the work of…
Though I try not to use the term “cutting edge” since it likens the art world to a knife as opposed to the soft, puddle-like thing it actually is, I sometimes do it anyway. The reason is because the term so handily describes the virtually indescribable, art-wise. Being on the…
Ivar Zeile is definitely a fan of conceptual art, and he has selected two interesting Colorado painters who work in that manner for a pair of solos on view at Plus Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927, www.plusgallery.com). In the front space is New Frontier, which highlights recent paintings by Dana…
There’s another big blockbuster show coming that’s guaranteed to bring throngs of the great unwashed masses to the Denver Art Museum. They’ll be drawn to the place by the one-two punch of Old Masters and Impressionists, whose paintings and drawings are being showcased in Inspiring Impressionism, opening this weekend. Oh,…
The blockbuster Inspiring Impressionism (see review), at the Denver Art Museum (100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, 720-865-5000, www.denverartmuseum.org), posits the idea that the widely admired style both signaled a clear break with the past and, strangely enough, represented a straightforward continuation of Old Master traditions. Another show at the DAM,…
Four years ago, Westword added a very special component to Artopia: the MasterMind awards. Recognizing that the local arts scene needed a little fertilizer to really get going — and growing — we created a program that every year honors five cultural visionaries, artists and organizations alike, that are working…
Colorado has an important ceramics tradition that stretches back a century. But the ranks of the top artists in the field have taken some big hits over the past decade: Betty Woodman retired from teaching in Boulder and moved to New York; Rodger Lang and Jim McKinnell died; and Nan…
Last fall, the Sandra Phillips Gallery (744 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-5969, www.thesandraphillipsgallery.com) presented a museum-quality show featuring some of Colorado’s most important ceramic artists, including Martha Daniels and Paul Soldner. Before the show opened, Daniels had lunch with Denver Art Museum curator Gwen Chanzit. Daniels — whose own work is…
A couple of years ago, while I was serving on a panel, one of my fellow panelists — I won’t say who — commented that it was no longer relevant where something was made because art had become truly international. I had two words for this would-be theorist: Chinese art…
In 1990, Denver Art Museum director Lewis Sharp hired his old friend Craig Miller to start the Architecture, Design and Graphics department. A gifted and visionary curator, Miller took the ball and ran with it, collecting pieces with abandon. He became especially deft at absorbing entire collections of graphics, and…
The current exhibit at Metropolitan State College’s Center for Visual Art is interesting, though decidedly odd. It’s simply called Story, with no subtitle to help explain the idea behind it. This allowed its organizers, CVA director Jennifer Garner and assistant director Cicely Cullen, to build a group show connected only…
When Mark Travis died at the end of 2007, he had begun working on a series of politically themed pieces that were going to be presented at Space Gallery (765 Santa Fe Drive, 720-904-1086, www.spacegallery.org) this August to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. That plan was scrapped after his…
Before I recommend that you take the time and trouble to check out the impressive if misleadingly titled Impressionist and Modern Masters From the New Orleans Museum of Art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, I want to say a word or two about Blake Milteer, a newish curator…
More than any other artist cooperative around town, Spark Gallery (900 Santa Fe Drive, 720-889-2200, www.sparkgallery.com) has a membership mostly comprising artists with long and established careers. And that’s how I’d describe both Judith Cohn and Sue Simon, who are starring in side-by-side solo shows there. Dust to Dust is…
Last summer, I was part of a panel discussion about the role that our local scenery plays in both contemporary and traditional art, especially — though not exclusively — in the art that’s done in the region. At one point, artist Don Stinson, who was in the audience, made a…
The walls of the William Havu Gallery (1040 Cherokee Street, 303-893-2360, (www.williamhavugallery.com) are covered by The Nature of Things, combining the work of Tracy and Sushe Felix (see review). A second exhibit, Erick C. Johnson, has been installed around the edges, in the corners and outside, with one of the…
On December 14, I got a call from a good friend. Her tone was uncharacteristically formal, so I knew something was wrong. “Mark Travis was found dead in his studio,” she stoically told me. This news was shocking despite the fact that Travis had been in declining health for years,…
