Many of the holiday markets are staying open to the new year and beyond. Here are just some of the options:
46th Holiday Art Market
Foothills Art Center, 809 15th Street, Golden
Through Tuesday, December 29
Free admission by timed-entry reservation
Also back for in-person shopping is the Foothills Art Center’s Holiday Art Market, a tradition in Golden for nearly fifty years. Foothills will roll out a whole new COVID-control protocol along with its diverse selection of art and handmade goods, including timed-entry reservations, one-way traffic, sanitizing stations and the whole megillah. Prefer to stay at home? Register online for a virtual appointment with a personal shopper. Easy-peasy.
Small Wonders
Edge Gallery Virtual Member Show
Through Thursday, December 31
Edge will be closed throughout December, but its Small Wonders holiday show will be up online through December 31, where you’ll be able to buy directly from co-op artists. Don’t worry: Edge will be back with a spankin’ new invitational show, The Presence of Water, on January 1!
Olde Town Arvada Holidays and Skating Rink
Olde Town Square, 5726 Olde Wadsworth Boulevard, Arvada
Through Thursday, December 31
The City of Arvada and Olde Town Arvada BID continue to support small-town retail and restaurant businesses this holiday season by extending street closures that allow outdoor dining and open-container consumption of alcohol in the Olde Town district. But the star on the top of the tree this holiday season is a new experiment: an ice skating rink. If that doesn’t draw families to Olde Town, nothing will, and it will no doubt feed the holly-jolly mood for strolling and shopping in local boutiques, shops and at the outdoor vendor pop-ups lining the traffic-free streets.
Junior League Virtual Mile High Holiday Mart
Through Thursday, December 31
There’s no way the Junior League of Denver is going to let COVID spoil its 41st annual holiday market, which was originally meant to go partly virtual with a limited in-person component. Instead, as fall pandemic numbers looked bleak, the JLD took a tight turn to expand and go completely virtual, with around-the-clock shopping available through the end of the year. That means you can still grab all your favorite handmades and foodstuffs from the safety of your home base.
A kitchen-sink variety of art from Kanon Collective's Bibelot Show.
Courtesy of Kym Bloom, Canon Collective
Kanon Collective, Art Hub, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Through Saturday, January 2
Bibelot, a French word meaning a small object of curiosity, beauty or rarity, perfectly describes the annual Bibelot small-works show mounted by Kanon Collective. The holiday-ready kitchen-sink selection of artworks no more than twelve inches wide is huge and affordable for the holidays, and opens on First Friday at the Art Hub in Lakewood, where neighboring galleries Next, Core and Edge are all following the trend of holiday-season small-works and member shows.
Art Parts Holiday Bazaar
Bricolage Gallery, Art Parts Creative Reuse Center, 2860 Bluff Street, Boulder
Through Saturday, January 2
Since Boulder’s Art Parts Creative Reuse Center is all about upcycling materials, that's the obvious focus for the center’s holiday bazaar, which features fun handmades, jewelry and other sustainable examples of creative reuse. What could be better than supporting local artists and saving reusable refuse from the landfill? It’s a start.
Winter Art Market
Next Gallery, Art Hub, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
Through Sunday, January 3
This is the time of year when artist co-op members band together for group art sales usually focused on small and affordable works. Next Gallery follows suit for in-person visits, with an option to buy work remotely.
Thirtieth Annual Holiday Miniatures Show
Abend Gallery, 1261 Delaware Street
Through Saturday, January 9
Show goes live online at 10 a.m. Saturday, December 5, or visit by appointment only at 303-355-0950
Abend brings back the annual Holiday Miniatures Show on a virtual platform, and it's a show stuffed full of tiny representational art pieces priced for gift-giving. Dozens of artists who work with the gallery are participating in the exhibition’s thirtieth year, contributing mini landscapes, still lifes, portraits, animal imagery and more. Sweets for the sweet.
DAVA resident artist Michael Keyes shows off his woodcut print inspired by the Congolese Gloria Choir performance held at DAVA last summer.
Courtesy of DAVA
Downtown Aurora Visual Arts, 1405 Florence Street, Aurora
Through January 15
A cobbled-together series of youth art programs at Downtown Aurora Visual Arts, better known as DAVA, helped kids continue to learn and make artwork in live workshops and at home during the pandemic, allowing the nonprofit’s annual holiday show to go on as scheduled with some COVID-regulated changes. Wish, a treasury of work by students and artist mentors Efraín Leal Escalera, Thomas Diess, Michael Keyes and Linda Schmale, opens with a timed-entry-limited shopping day, and then continues during regular gallery hours of Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, through mid-January.
Little Contemporary: Small Works, From Big Artists
Circa Building, 1615 Platte Street
Through January 29
Pop-up art windows are the rage, or at least one of the ways galleries and artists are getting around the hurdles of live art-viewing in the age of COVID. Here’s another to add to your list: Little Contemporary, curated by Brett Matarazzo, places small works by more than twenty Denver artists in the windows of the Circa Building, at the foot of the Highland Bridge on Platte Street, where the art can be accessed any time, day or night.
See ShopLocalColorado.co vendor VogelHaus Vintage for Breyer deer figurines and more.
VogelHaus Vintage
ShopLocalColorado.co
Accessible 24 hours a day
The Horseshoe Market was ready to launch a smaller open-air holiday venue at the Denver Performing Arts Center for Small Business Saturday, but COVID came along and made mincemeat of that plan. But the premier craft and flea market isn’t backing down; it’s just changing course. The Horseshoe’s beefed-up ShopLocalColorado.co virtual marketplace is a diverse vendor directory that mines small-batch businesses you’d usually see in person at the flea; the machine behind the Horseshoe will also be formulating a Holiday Gift Guide and running vendor previews on Facebook and Instagram. Open your laptop. Take off your mask. Are you ready?
2020 Longmont Artisan Market Handcrafted Holiday Directory
Online, through the holiday season
This year’s Longmont Artisan Market canceled its annual event in downtown Longmont, but all is not lost: Longmont businesses, many of which are offering special holiday-season discounts as an incentive, came together to build an online directory that can reach all the way around Colorado, if not the whole wide world. It’s a trend in retailing this year that could score a win for small businesses battling Amazon for holiday shoppers.
Do you know of any markets continuing to the new year? Send details to [email protected].
