FRI, 6/6 One week, one blank, date-stamped canvas and an urban landscape with distinct boundaries: Those were the limitations given to artists who participated in Paint Our Town: Old, New, Now!, a contest and exhibit opening today at the Art Students League of Denver, 200 Grant Street. Based on the…

SAT, 6/7 Where did you go to read when the summer turned hot, you had nowhere to go, your friends were all away on road trips to Yellowstone or spending their afternoons at some swanky pool, and your back bike tire caught a thorn in a vacant lot and went…

First Fan Fair feeds frenzy SAT, 6/7 Nobody knows for sure how many die-hard Broncos fans are going to show up at Invesco Field at 11 this morning and tomorrow morning for the team’s inaugural Denver Broncos Fan Fair. What is certain is that every current player and coach, as…

The last time around, in the fall of 2000, the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver’s Colorado Biennial was in different hands, while current MCA curator Cydney Payton was wrapping up her tenure at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Payton was never shy at BMoCA (she had her own ideas of…

FRI, 5/23 Partnership, the life and core of the Argentine tango, is a means of exploration for the artists of TangoMujer, an all-female dance ensemble performing in Denver as part of the 3rd Annual Memorial Day Tango Fest. “The girls alternate between leading and following,” says Scarlet Antonia, manager of…

SAT, 5/24 Interstate 25 is more than just a road in these parts: It’s also a vehicle for moving urban culture in and out of the state. As it bisects Colorado, it transports the ideas of myriad fine artists along a path extending from Cheyenne to Albuquerque. Gallery curator Jina…

SAT 5/24 I should have seen it coming: When I was a kid, I watched Japanese cartoons such as Astro Boy, Marine Boy and Gigantor with the utmost fascination. They were weirdly beautiful to look at and never made a lick of sense, and I seriously couldn’t take my eyes…

SAT 5/17 They were different times, to be sure. During the psychedelic heyday of the hippie movement — when denizens of San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom (and Denver’s Family Dog) were rocking, not to mention floating sky-high on just about every drug in the universe, and scruffy kids…

THURS, 5/15 A nice thing about babies: They’re totally camera-ready. Even with their munchkin-esque faces screwed up in agony or anger, they’re strangely cute. But the image of a dewy one-year-old planting his or her face in a birthday cake is certainly a classic, and the well-kept family photo album…

SUN, 5/18 Nina is my darling. I want to take her home, but 800 square feet and four felines tell me that’s not a good idea. Instead, I visit her each weekend at the Maxfund Animal Adoption Center. She’s been there since October, and all she really wants is a…

SUN, 5/18 As part of the third annual City Park Festival of the Arts today, Denver mayoral hopefuls John Hickenlooper and Don Mares will be the main attraction at a mayoral runoff forum. But their lovefest, at 11 a.m. in the City Park pavilion, could be overshadowed by a stealth…

THURS, 5/8 Move over, P.T. Barnum: There’s a new show in town. And instead of giant elephants and bearded ladies, tonight’s unique Sensory Circus features live music, poetry readings, performance art and more.”Your senses will be blown away,” promises Alicia Greenberg, co-founder of the Circus. A graphic designer by trade,…

TUES, 5/13 If you’re dating, you’re obviously mentally deranged or soon will be, but still, we date as much as possible. Why? Guys date because we are on a never-ending quest to see naked breasts. For women, I’m not sure. They find the “perfect man” and immediately begin changing all…

SUN 5/4 Give peace a chance. With the conflict in Iraq almost over, The Nightingale & The Rose Performing Arts Company wants to promote peace. They’ll do it artistically, too, with Middle Eastern Cultural Awareness Week, which starts today at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder.”With everything going…

Douglas Love, the aptly named guiding light of Walden Family Playhouse, couldn’t be happier with the way things are going at the new children’s theater at Colorado Mills. Available tickets are disappearing like magic as Walden’s second full production, Merlin’s Apprentice, draws to a close this week. “We’re becoming the…

SAT 5/3 Boulder Reservoir is still nippy, but that won’t discourage the dozens of wild and wacky teams signed up to participate in today’s 24th annual KBCO/Bud Light Kinetic Sculpture Challenge.The morning’s schedule is overflowing: Load up on carbs for $3 at the 7 a.m. pancake breakfast, a benefit for…

FRI 5/2 Junk, beautiful junk: For some creative types, junk is the very stuff of creation. There’s no end to the wonderful contraptions you can assemble from someone else’s cast-off junk — you can sculpt it, build with it, sew it together or grind it into pulp and make paper…

SAT 4/26 Three cheers for choreographer Deborah Reshotko’s Speaking of Dance: The local company has bravely squeaked through ten years on the planet — not a bad track record in a state that trails the nation in arts funding. But successes of this sort don’t come without a modicum of…

TUES 4/29 Savion Glover, move on over: You can’t be a phenom forever. It’s time to make way for the stars of Tap Kids, a touring show featuring a unique national cast of nine remarkable kids between the ages of ten and nineteen who earned their spots by dancing circles…

SAT 4/26 Lest you forget that outgoing Mayor Wellington Webb and his wife, Wilma, are prime movers behind the new Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, take a look at the mural inside the arched, interior lobby.When the three-story brick library at 2401 Welton Street celebrates its grand opening at ten…

SAT 4/19 Granted, northwest Denver resident Timber Dick is running for city council, but put that aside: Dick and his extended Tillemann-Dick family are good sports to host the first Great Northwest White House Egg Roll on their own front lawn. What is an Easter-egg roll, anyway? “It’s this rather…

Ladies, if your significant other has been pestering you to do a sexy little foreplay number for him, forget the stripper pole and tassels and try Belly Dancing With Dahlia instead. Contrary to popular belief, hip shaking is not a lost art.”You’ll just fall in love with the dance,” promises…