My husband’s got this gypsy thing. He sits alone with a guitar whenever he can, picking through brisk Django licks he can never quite catch up to. When he isn’t doing that, he’s studying the history of Gypsy jazz, browsing the Web and listening to music that trips fantastic through…

A little piece of local history rests on the current-day Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design campus in Lakewood, once home to the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. The Isaac Solomon Synagogue, a modest brick-and-stucco Moorish structure, has fallen into disrepair, its paint peeling and its…

As weird as the juxtaposition of Beauty and the Beast and nightclubs may seem, Ballet Nouveau artistic director Robert Mills found a way to meld two of his own personal obsessions into a bold ballet remake of the timeless love story. In Mills’s version, the Beast lives in the sewers…

The allure of Denver’s bustling art district on Santa Fe is a beguiling one for gallery owners and artist collectives. It is, without question, where the action is, a mecca that boils over with an art-loving influx on First Fridays. So when the space vacated by Capsule Gallery at 554…

Adam Lerner, director of the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar, takes his museum’s handle completely seriously. All about experiments and concepts, the Lab is truly anything but a museum. It’s a place, rather, where Lerner hopes the dust will never have a chance to settle. So inviting artist…

“Where Art Is Made.” That slogan really sets the River North Art District, aka RiNo, apart from the rest of Denver’s arts communities. A true working-artist conclave, the once-quiet warehouse district northeast of downtown Denver is home to a burgeoning populace of artists who live, work and exhibit within the…

Let’s face it: It’s a new year, the weather hasn’t been so great and the recent spate of snowstorms delivered a below-the-belt punch not only to small retailers, but to galleries counting on the bounty of the season. The folks at the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, 772 Santa Fe…

Lyons author Sandi Ault has her fingerprints all over Wild Indigo, an auspicious debut mystery novel inspired by Ault’s love of the northern New Mexico landscape and its tangled Indian/Hispanic/Anglo cultures. Open the book and you’ll soon understand that there’s a good measure of Ault’s own personality in the protagonist…

Although he isn’t a physical match for the late Paul Robeson — the powerful African-American singer, actor, civil-rights activist, McCarthy-era blacklistee and All-American athlete — local performer Russell Costen found plenty of ways to embody the big man’s energy when Shadow Theatre Company first staged Philip Hayes Dean’s biographical one-man…

The history of cabaret is a fantastic mixed bag said to have gotten its start in the Montmartre district of late-nineteenth-century Paris, specifically when the famous bohemian hangout Le Chat Noir opened its doors to a motley crew of artist types eager to share their talents in a casual environment…

Foothills Art Center curator Michael Chavez has long been a fan of Colorado artist Wes Magyar and the surrealistic bent of his work. But because Foothills doesn’t traditionally host solo shows, Chavez began to look at other local artists working in related styles. He eventually settled on twelve individuals, including…

Genocide isn’t a pretty subject for an art exhibit or anything else, but it’s one that can be faced from unexpectedly positive viewpoints. Curator Georgina Kolber proves that with dual exhibitions opening today at the Mizel Museum: The Dead Weight of Complacency, a series of educational panels exploring the nature…

An e-town taping is always a two-way street between the performers and the audience, with participatory cues and a behind-the-scenes feel that are nothing but fun. It makes you wonder why e-town doesn’t host family shows more often, tailor-made as it is to the kiddie constellation. Of course, when a…

Why stick to the straight and narrow? CORE New Art Space is starting the year off with a certifiably offbeat duo: iconoclastic quilter/artist J.B. Wilcox, who prefers to call himself a fiber artist (although, as he puts it, he’s “technically an art quilter who’s sick of the ‘Q’ word”), and…

We Jews are known for moving. Throughout history, we’ve always been on pilgrimages or in states of exile; we travel to escape persecution and journey to promised lands. Intrinsic to our culture, the act and consequence of our movement provided the no-brainer theme for a brainy film series hosted by…

I’ve never been much of a Nutcracker fan. Although it starts out rather magically, it’s way too long for antsy children — and adults, for that matter — all primped up in their holiday garb. By about intermission time, it begins to remind me of one of those chaotic Mexican…

It’s the little things that count — at least in Shana Colbin Dunn’s little corner of the world. And the jewelry rep raised in New York City knows her accessories inside and out, so her decision to open an accessories boutique was, well, an act of Kismet. The theme works…

As Dea Webb of Plastic Chapel almost sadly notes, the six graffiti artists included in Deep Freeze: Adjust the Thermostat — an exhibit opening tonight at Webb’s SoBo collectible-toy shop — may soon be too big for her tiny hole-in-the-wall. That’s because all six of them — Biff Baxter, Jason…

Denver’s independent boutiques always agree on at least one point during the holidays: They long to share with you their troves of shoppable riches, the sort you’ll never find at the mall. At least one, the modern-design stronghold Mod Livin’, 5327 East Colfax Avenue, puts its goods where its mouth…

I’m a holiday-light junkie and can’t wait each year for the season of garish and magical outdoings by the Denver Zoo and the Denver City and County Building and that crazy guy around the corner. But in a way, I’m also setting myself up for disappointment, I guess, because these…

I don’t know about you, but the holiday lull after Christmas simply screams “Go look!” And I must obey by bundling up the family to go cruise the mysterious streets in search of the flashiest holiday lights in town. I’m even Jewish, but what the hell; it’s probably some deeply…

Reading was a daily, integral part of my secular Jewish education, no matter what I read. The Earth for Sam, Misty of Chincoteague, Robin Hood, the beautiful advertisements in the New Yorker — all were part of my rite of passage. Our walls were lined with books, and that’s the…