THURS, 6/16 Remember Rumpelstiltskin, that funny little fairy-tale guy who taught the miller’s daughter to spin gold from straw? Well, Rumpel’s not the only one with those powers. Dumpster-diving sisters Kathleen Hackett and Mary Ann Young didn’t get an assist from a tiny man, but they did have a remarkable…
SAT, 6/11 Iraqi intellectual and artistic life essentially ceased to exist under the relentless grip of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime. If you weren’t willing to paint glowing images of the despot, you simply weren’t allowed to be an artist in Iraq, and many people fled the country as a result…
Gregory “Griz” Robinson calls himself “the starving artist of the motorcycle business.” The Pueblo native and longtime motorcycle racer and enthusiast owns the fastest fuel drag bike in Colorado. (It’s so fast, in fact, that he won at Sturgis last year with it.) When he’s not competing, the blue-collar Harley-Davidson…
FRI, 6/3 Americana music cuts a wide swath these days, encompassing just about anything that involves songwriting and singing by, well, an American. But its heart, which is so central to the genre, began pumping long ago from a wellspring fed by the likes of Bill Monroe and the Carter…
SAT, 6/4 Helen Hand knows all about life transitions. Navigating her fifties at a time when younger people of a different mindset seem to rule the roost, she’s also adjusting to a caretaking role with her aging father. And about a years ago, following the murder of her brother, Colorado…
FRI, 5/27 It was the summer of ’81. My best friend, Ron, had just graduated from high school; I’d tossed my cap the year before. We were cruising down the highway in his black 1971 Volkswagen Beetle, windows down, singing at the top of our lungs (me, totally off-key; him,…
Nathan Gebhart, Mike Marriner and Brian McAllister weren’t the first newly minted college graduates to leave the shelter of academe and be overwhelmed by the possibilities. But they just might be the first to turn their bewilderment into a kind of alternative business plan: A few years ago, on the…
Admit it: Like just about everyone else, you aspired to outer-space travel when you were nine years old. Some of us never shake that out-of-this-world daydream to become an astronaut; we still secretly harbor that yearning to zap through meteor showers and past Saturn, seeking to go, yes, where no…
Martinis and lemonade. It puts me in the mindset of cool, comfortable, sophisticated Lilly Pulitzer shifts or a summer breeze lifting the lace curtains, stories above the street, in someone’s ritzy loft. That’s the atmosphere mother-daughter team Patricia and Cassie Brown created when they opened their new Highland home-decor boutique,…
FRI, 5/13 “My characters are really, really simply drawn,” Todd Goldman says of his art. “Simply drawn” is putting it mildly; Goldman’s bright, basic cartoon style makes Keith Haring look like Caravaggio. But there’s no denying the power of that simplicity: Over the past few years, Goldman has turned his…
THURS, 5/12 Meet Murray, a teacup Chihuahua with a tiny, quivering nose, bat ears and deep, mooning eyes that could launch a thousand Keene portraits in a single wink. He greets you with his sliver of a tail tucked daintily between matchstick legs and tender pussywillow paws, looking jaunty, if…
FRI, 5/6 Boulder Arts and Crafts Cooperative exhibit coordinator Ellen Spiller didn’t have a feminine theme in mind when she asked eight Colorado women to take part in the new metalwork show Women of Steel — but that’s what she got. “It turns out that a lot of women are…
SAT, 5/7 Move over, brainiacs, new bookworms are taking over the library: metro-intellectuals. Offering experimental-film and creative workshops designed for “urbane urban dwellers,” The Creative Life is the latest installment of Fresh City Life at the Denver Public Library — and this series is straight-up phat. “A paradigm shift in…
Most armchair historians know that American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark weren’t the first folks to roam the American West. Their famous Shoshone Indian guide, Sacagawea, contributed immeasurably to the expedition’s accomplishments with her knowledge of the territory, interpretation and survival skills. Still, their journey did make life as…
THURS, 4/28 The off-Broadway satire Newsical is coming, and it’s going to be a bona fide celebrity shish kebab. The rowdy roast skewers household headliners such as Anna Nicole and Jacko while also sinking its fangs into any fresh tabloid fodder that slinks across the front page. “We poke fun…
THURS, 4/28 We all want to believe that there are still pristine places around, but reality says otherwise: Park designation in America is often just a protective stopgap meant to halt further damage beyond what’s already been done. With that in mind, veteran park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith ushers in…
MON, 5/2 Bush bashers refer to the powerful triumvirate of George W., Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney as the real “Axis of Evil.” In her best-selling book, Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species, Laura Flanders regards the women in and around the White House as an equally diabolical force. Combining…
THURS, 4/21 The heck with Elvis: What about trail-blazing rockabilly royalty Wanda Jackson? This little lady with a powerful voice came up around the same time and even shared stages with the King, who is said to have encouraged her to loosen up a little and take the rockin’ route…
THURS, 4/21 Dale Chihuly looks like a man of the earth, with his dashing eye patch, wild hair and blue-collar demeanor, so it’s not always easy to connect him with the torrid, delicate hand-blown fantasy worlds he creates from sand and fire. Chihuly could be called the swashbuckler of glass,…
SAT, 4/23 The post-war brainchild of contractor-turned-designer Edward Hawkins, Englewood’s Arapahoe Acres neighborhood has seemingly existed in its own little world for more than half a century, the 124 unique homes hidden enough to remain unknown to most Denverites, yet considered by many to be jewels of mid-century architecture. You…
THURS, 4/14 Adventurous gallery curator Simon Zalkind of the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture will throw Denver an aesthetic curveball tonight with Whispers of Contradiction, a site-specific, collaborative electronic-art installation created by multimedia artist Brian DeLevie of the University of Colorado at Denver and local quantum physicist D.S. Oakley…
A kid’s world stretched as far as you could safely pedal your Schwinn when I was growing up in southeast Denver. Within my own constellation was the Virginia Village Creamery, where all the neighborhood kids went in gaggles to stock up on penny candy, choosing from open jars of jawbreakers,…
