In photographer Jerry Uelsmann’s visionary world, nothing is necessarily where it’s supposed to be: A tree and the earth in which it’s rooted float eerily above a lake, leaving a reflection on the water below. A spectacularly lit carpet of clouds drifts above the four walls of an artist’s studio…

Roger McGuinn seems satisfied. And he should be: After setting musical standards in rock and roll music with fellow Byrds Gene Clark, David Crosby, Gram Parsons and Clarence White, McGuinn — who got his start working with such folk luminaries as the Limeliters and Chad Mitchell Trio — has quietly…

Thomas Buckner only interprets living composers. An expressive, theatrical baritone (and the grandson of IBM founder Thomas Watson) who’s part performer, part perpetual student, part impresario and 100 percent avant-garde, he’s sung the modern operas of Robert Ashley and jammed with synthesizers, electronic-music environments, computer screens, sculptures, all manner of…

When local historian and native nice Jewish boy Phil Goodstein steps up to the podium at the Mercury Cafe this Friday evening to speak on Blarney! Denver¹s Wild Irish Heritage, it’ll be as Phil O’Goodstein. Or, in fact, that’s “Oy Goodstein,” an honorary appellative he’ll enhance with a fake Irish…

Ah, those were the days. Rockin’ with Alan Hodges and His Nite Owls. Cruising your T-Bird to the Frosted Scotchman. Catching fouls at Bears Stadium and swilling Duffy’s soda pop. The names weren’t nationally known, but the ethos certainly was: ’50s Denver, like most other urban centers across the States,…

As any mother of a library-going three-year-old will tell you, returning 21 thin picture books on time every three weeks is easier said than done. There’s always at least one shoved under the bed, to be found days — or months — later, unread and buried in dust bunnies. But…

The once-upon-a-time life that photojournalist-turned-author/mom Deborah Copaken Kogan — five-foot-two and barely two steps out of Harvard — formerly led seems unthinkably harsh: Her first major photography gig found her in the back of a truck in war-torn Afghanistan, wrapped head to foot in a blue burka, the only woman…

If high society threw a gala for homeless people each year, and the recipients of their charity were actually invited to the party, it might end up resembling Bag Ladies Ball, an interactive theater experience that’s the brain- and heartchild of local playwright/director Melvyn Benetti. There’s dinner, dancing and a…

Most folks in Colorado could only watch with interest when the Westminster Kennel Club met at Madison Square Garden last week for the most elite of canine competitions. Though Westminster’s incredible parade of spit-shined dogs, groomed hair by hair and led around the ring by formally attired professional handlers, was…

Valentine’s Day falls just in the nick of time — ’tis the season when our gonads traditionally get fired up for spring, the season of procreation: You know, the birds, the bees, all that good stuff. But in the age when fast cars creep along the highway, bridled and bound…

Flight and inspiration share common ground: They both begin with the fine art of taking off. For men of color in the segregated ’40s, the two came together with blinding precision at an Army airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama. There, 450 black men trained to be fighter pilots against overwhelming odds,…

Search your memory — if you’re really, really old, you’ll remember him as Ensign Parker, bumbling his way through McHale’s Navy opposite Ernie Borgnine. But if you’re simply old, you know Tim Conway as the idiot savant of sketch comedy, the innocently good-natured goon who walked all over straight man…

Born Charles Anderson, typeface designer/ font punk Chank Diesel is the ultimate product of his times, right down to his nom de plume: “As a kid, I wanted to be called ‘Chelé,’ because I thought I was a great soccer player. But the mean kids across the street paid more…

Here in Colorado, we’re very familiar with the cowboy-poetry phenomenon, but the notion of an Australian bush poet is still a bit exotic. Although only the latter features wallabies and dingoes and mulga trees as part of its lore, the two genres are closely related. And bush poetry, which boasts…

Daniel Salazar’s unique photo-constructions hit you full-on with that secret weapon so common to work in all disciplines of Chicano arts: humor. An acclaimed film documentarian, animator and photographer, Salazar thinks laughter is a great way to open up dialogue, and that’s the point of his ongoing series Machos Sensitivos,…

Not every resident zipping along the fast track of the rapidly changing Golden Triangle district lives in a luxury loft: Just witness the inhabitants of one modest relic that’s stood along 11th Avenue at Cherokee Street for eighty or ninety years. Heretofore nameless, Row House — so named in a…

Shuffleupagus and Five-Card Nancy are just two of the collaborative art games to be played when the Hector Cartoonists Collective and the Denver Comic Art Festival host a pair of Saturday night free-for-all Cartoon Jam Sessions, designed to lure R. Crumb wannabes out of their closets for some mass hysteria…

Don’t call him God’s Gift — Robert Gift is not a religious man. Yet every Christmas season, he settles himself into the bell tower at the City and County Building to ring its enormous and poorly tuned chimes — an admittedly thankless, if unique, job that’s required him to learn…

When potter Bob Smith realized a few years ago that he was in his 25th year “of being a clay guy” in Colorado, it also occurred to him that he wasn’t alone. But he realized, too, that there were other craftspeople in the state who hadn’t made it to the…

The inherently conservative quality of Christmas entertainment — The Nutcracker and its ilk — has always been, well, an indelibly hard nut to crack. It takes something as inimitably elegant as the silky touch of a Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn arrangement to ever make such fare swing more than your average…

Oral history plays a major role in the magic created year in and year out by Denver’s Su Teatro ensemble, whose early acts of Chicano guerrilla theater, performed on the streets during grape boycott demonstrations years ago, have metamorphosed into fully staged productions. And so it goes with the group’s…

Looking for Christmas entertainment that’s off the beaten path? Nancy Cranbourne and Patti Dobrowolski, last seen together in these parts at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Theater in their hit show 2 Women Avoiding Involuntary Hospitalization, have been coerced into a holiday followup at BMoCA, based on the same…