A principal leitmotif of Colorado’s history is the influence of Mexican culture. Though not equal in legend and lore to the cowboys and Indians, it has been more enduring. Mexican explorers coined the state’s name, and the southern half was actually once a part of Mexico. Thus Mexican-Americans have been…
For its fall opener, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (1513 Boulder Street, 303-455-8999) is presenting the theme show Recreated Realities. Though a wide variety of mediums are on display, from primitive pinhole to up-to-the-minute digital, all of the photos were created by assembling multiple images. The photographers included are an…
It’s hardly news that Denver is a sports town — think of all the money the city has thrown at its professional sports teams in recent years — but this is something of an art town, too. Those of us in the visual arts march to a different drummer than…
The Camera Obscura Gallery (1309 Bannock Street, 303-623-4059) opened in the 1970s, making it the granddaddy of Colorado’s photo galleries. Its creator, octogenarian Hal Gould, a photographer and curator, is the granddaddy of local photo enthusiasts. Fifty years ago, even before he launched the gallery, Gould began to collect photos…
The summer will be over sooner than we think. Culturally speaking — though not in terms of the weather — it’s set to end with Labor Day weekend. Everyone knows what Labor Day means in America: Halloween candy is in the stores, new episodes of The Sopranos are scheduled for…
Andenken Gallery (2110 Market Street, 303-292-3281) is hosting its Fourth Annual Summer Group Show, which is made up of works from artists represented by the gallery and by those who rent the studios on the lower level. Though Lauri Lynnxe Murphy is the new director of Andenken, she inherited this…
The Denver Art Dealers Association, which uses the marvelously arty DADA for short, came up with the idea of having members present coordinated exhibits in August featuring new art and new artists. Officially known as the “Introductions” series, the idea was predicated on the fact that nothing happens in the…
Space Gallery (765 Santa Fe Drive, 720-904-1088) usually has a group show, but right now there’s a group of shows — a pair of solos up front and a painting quartet in the back. First up is LuCong: Figurative Realism, which is hung in the north half of Space. The…
It’s hardly news that a multimillion-dollar house has been put up for sale in the suburbs of Denver. What makes this particular offering newsworthy, however, is that the big-ticket property in question is not a stucco monstrosity with a design that recalls some imaginary past (unlike most others of its…
Charles Deaton, the creator of the Sculptured House wasn’t the only local architect with a flair for the theatrical. James Sudler was one, also. Whereas Deaton was a self-taught high school graduate who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, Sudler was a bon vivant Yale grad — and one of…
The Arvada Center is unquestionably one of the most important art venues in the state. A midsized facility with a respectable budget, the institution incorporates several theaters, numerous meeting rooms, various workshops dedicated to diverse pursuits such as ceramics and ballet, and — of greatest interest to those in the…
The two solos at the Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173) are installed together as a single show, with the dividing wall pushed to the back. It’s amazing how grand the space is without that wall. It’s not unprecedented to connect the spaces, but it is only rarely seen. Even…
Mark Masuoka, director of the Carson Masuoka Gallery, has put together the very impressive Ambient Lux, a group show featuring installation art that can be readily compared to the installation-filled biennial now playing at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. As many will recall, Masuoka launched the MCA’s biennial series with…
The Colorado Photographic Arts Center (1513 Boulder Street, 303-455-8999) is presenting its annual summer feature, the members’ show; this year’s edition has the prosaic if eloquent title CPAC Members Juried Exhibit 2003. Membership in CPAC is not limited to serious photographers, meaning that amateurs are also represented in the ranks…
The Colorado Rockies — the mountains, not the baseball team — have attracted painters for more than a hundred years. But it’s the period between 1900 and 1950, without question, that is the most significant for Colorado landscape painting, with scores of accomplished artists working here at that time. It’s…
The truly wonderful summer show at the Robischon Gallery (1740 Wazee Street, 303-298-7788), Divining: Art and Water in the West, provides Denver gallery-goers with some badly needed psychological refreshment on these hot, dry days. It’s water, water everywhere — at least by implication, because there’s not a real drop in…
The drought of the past few years has been on nearly everyone’s mind, making water a timely topic around here for politicians, gardeners and even artists. In doris laughton: theSplatphenomenon2003, multimedia artist Doris Laughton takes the shape of a drop of water hitting a hard surface — the ‘splat’ referred…
The Cordell Taylor Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927) was originally situated in Salt Lake City; it moved to Denver in 2001. The gallery maintains a Salt Lake connection, though, and from time to time pairs artists from the two cities. That’s exactly what’s happening now with sight unseen, an exhibit…
For the past ten years or so, the Denver Art Museum has presented one important exhibit after another, focusing on art from the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first ones of the twentieth. As a result, Denver audiences have enjoyed numerous explorations of such relevant topics as…
The exhibit ReconFIGURED: Persons and Personas of the Permanent Collection, on display at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (30 West Dale Street, Colorado Springs, 1-719-634-5581), includes an eclectic assortment of pieces that range widely in style and date. One standout among this mixed bag is the institution’s famous John…
On the morning of Thursday, June 12, Mayor Wellington Webb and First Lady Wilma Webb, among a host of political and art world luminaries, dedicated the most expensive sculpture ever erected in Denver, “The Dancers,” by international art star Jonathan Borofsky. The public was invited to the event, and I…
The commercial strip that lines Tennyson Street in northwest Denver has changed a lot over the last few years. Whereas once it was a collection of thrift shops and laundromats, it is now home to loft buildings, coffee shops and specialty stores. In the last category are Metro Frame Works…
