Wyoming quilter Anne Olsen arrived at her avocation by way of boredom: She’d already dabbled in other crafts and grown weary of them. Blessed with a husband who does the cooking, “looks after himself” and frees up a lot of her time, Olsen decided to try quilting and found the…
Buntport Theater wants you to get out from in front of your TV set to enjoy some live midweek theater. And how do they implement that agenda? Well, they stage a serial sitcom with an enticingly affordable entry fee twice a month, from October through April, and hope they can…
After nearly twenty years, the Museum of Outdoor Arts, whose collections have been buffeted from port to port looking for a final resting place, continues to experience growing pains. But since moving to airy new digs, the museum shows new confidence. It’s put down solid roots while still pursuing the…
They haunt Christmas Eve afternoon, those hollow, credit-card-clutching wraiths who just plumb forgot: last-minute shoppers loaded down more by guilt than by packages to give. As far as we know, there is no rehab center where recovering Scrooges can check in and out. So the next best thing may be…
Nationally recognized folk artist Eppie Archuleta is weaving again in her San Luis studio. The octogenarian, who comes from a long line of weavers, abandoned her loom a short while ago. She was depressed after the recent deaths of her husband and her mother, Agueda Martinez, who passed away at…
If you grew up Jewish and American in a certain time and place, Yiddish — that linguistic mishmash of German, Hebrew, drama and high sarcasm — was always in the background, if not at the forefront, of your everyday life. Perhaps your grandparents used it among themselves; perhaps your parents…
For the past few years, Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art has simply closed its doors on “A Day Without Art,” a global observance of World AIDS Day, December 1, that was first introduced in 1989. But this year, the museum staff wanted to do something more high-profile while still preserving…
People were shocked a few weeks ago when New York City firefighters and police officers scuffled during protests at Ground Zero; the firefighters wanted to continue digging out the remains of their brothers with full manpower. And while this spectacle was disheartening, there are some cases in which a little…
‘Twas the day after Thanksgiving, when cash-strapped Ocean Journey Announced plans in the works for something quite corny. The seaweed was waving, the anemones wiggled, Knowing SCUBA-diving St. Nick would soon snorkle for giggles. The morays and mantas were snug in their caves While bevies of plankton danced through the…
A writer of sociopolitical depth far beyond his thirty years, PEN/Hemingway Award-winner Akhil Sharma says he looks to “bad” writers — “the ones where you can see most easily what they’re attempting to do” — for inspiration and instruction. One example: Ernest Hemingway himself, namesake of Sharma’s prestigious literary award…
Colorado’s virtual Women of the West Museum can be accessed only by computer, but its commitment to the interactive spread of knowledge and culture doesn’t stop online. WOW has become involved in artist/youth mentoring programs and has released Expanded Visions: Four Women Artists Print the West, a portfolio featuring diverse…
Like his many fantastic creations over the years, Lonnie Hanzon is a bit of magic himself: His credits sparkle like the bejeweled Christmas trees he’s shipped off, piece by piece, to Neiman Marcus in Dallas, or the meticulously detailed mechanical environments and displays he’s installed everywhere from the 16th Street…
In the last decade, Boulder dance maven Danelle Helander journied to the far reaches of the world to complete a four-year cultural-exchange project with Boulder sister cities. With that behind her, she says, she went to Mali on a new mission last summer — without any preconceptions. “I knew from…
This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen it before: When East High graduate Thaddeus Phillips hits the stage for his solo performances PlanetLear and The Tempest, both abbreviated versions of the Bard’s mainstream works shown under the collective banner of Shakespeare¹s Storms, Lear chills on the golf course while Prospero…
When times get tough in the world, as they no doubt have, there are two things you can do to ease the stress: First — what a no-brainer — you can simply do something. And then you can eat, because there’s no better way to affirm to yourself that you’re…
Think of jazz photography, and you must think of Herman Leonard, the shutterbug whose moody shots of the ’40s and ’50s jazz pantheon of 52nd Street and Harlem capture the soul of that musical era like the backlit wisps of smoke so often seen drifting through his famous frames. Those…
It’s not your old-fashioned chinoiserie, jade Buddhas and the like: In the European and Asian art markets, cutting-edge contemporary art from mainland China is the hottest thing on wheels — or oxcart. From the galleries of Beijing and Shanghai to the hallowed halls of Sotheby’s, this art — which may…
Capital punishment: yes or no? It’s a hot issue that’s not likely to cool down soon. But one important consideration is often missing from all the fiery dialogue, notes local director Chip Walton of the Curious Theatre Company: the human element. “It’s easy on either side to forget that you’re…
Forget Julia. The heck with Angelina Jolie. Modern-day Hollywood may boast its fair share of sculptured and big-lipped babes with personality to spare, but these girls don’t know the meaning of glamour. And if the film world is given to comic-book views, so are its actresses: Rather than appearing larger…
William Wegman’s life went to the dogs long ago. He’s been turning weimaraners into objects of art since the early ’70s, when he first began to photograph Man Ray, the progenitor of his weimaraner kingdom. But this labor of puppy love isn’t over yet; in fact, the man/dog relationship that’s…
At Chatfield Nature Preserve, the corn is high. Really high, as in nine feet tall, a rise tall enough to cover the pate of the old Corn King Giant. Grown from a special hybrid cornseed planted expressly because of its superior loft, it covers 5.3 acres of land, the sun-kissed…
Be prepared: A night at the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus owes far more theoretically to Tod Browning’s Freaks than it does to Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. Started seven years ago in New York by graphic artist turned fire-eater Stephanie Monseu (aka Philomena) and her lover/mentor, Keith Nelson (Mr. Pennygaff),…
