#27: Confidence Omenai Arriving in Denver from Tulsa just a few years ago, Confidence Omenai brought years of hands-on experience to the local performance-poetry scene as a slam poet, author, teacher and activist. She quickly rose among the ranks of Slam Nuba, serving both as a member of the national…
Young gamers will take to the big screen this weekend to battle for the right to represent Denver at qualifiers for the first-ever Minecraft City Champs tournament. Organized by Santa Monica-based Super League Gaming, Minecraft City Champs is a season-long competition that pits teams from twelve cities against each other…
The drag world is still shook from the news that for its ninth season, RuPaul’s Drag Race will leave its Monday-night perch and land on Friday night – not to mention hopping networks from gay pioneer Logo to music mainstay VH1. Producers of the Ultimate Queen Competition at Tracks quickly decided to follow suit; when their highly anticipated local drag battle royale premieres this season, it will be on Friday, March 24.
On International Women’s Day, the Denver Film Society announced the full schedule for its upcoming Women + Film Festival, which will take place April 4-9 at the Sie FilmCenter. For the festival’s seventh iteration, the program boasts sixteen features and six short films that run the gamut of narrative and…
Belly Bliss — Denver’s one-stop center for all things mom — launched a sister studio last month at Stapleton’s hip Stanley Marketplace. Belly Bliss owner Lauren Williams has been busy celebrating the grand opening of her new collective, but we tracked her down to get the scoop on this momtrepreneur’s latest endeavor.
The ACLU may be dismayed at the new president’s war on the media and his campaign to deport undocumented immigrants, but from a fundraising standpoint, Donald Trump has been a boon for the organization. The civil-rights campaigners have raked in record donations this year, raising in one weekend five times what they would normally raise in a year.
#28: Ken Hamel A tech worker by day, Ken Hamel is best known around Denver as one of our art community’s biggest fans and documentarians. Online, his singlehanded arts resource, denverarts.org, keeps readers apprised weekly of gallery openings, calls for entry and other art-related events, while out in the field,…
Westword’s Artopia 2017 celebrated street art and street style. One of the most stylist of Artopia’s artists: Ava Van Deursen, who grew up in a family of artists in Golden, and has always created art. We stopped to chat with Van Deursen about what inspires her art and her fashion, and what it’s like being a working artist in Denver.
#29: Jacqueline Webster Jacqueline Webster is a photographer’s photographer, putting in time in her own studio, but also teaching out-of-the-ordinary techniques to new generations at the Art Students League of Denver and working to bolster the art of the camera as a cheerleader and veteran volunteer. You might not see…
Brian Ball, a father and a server at the vegetarian-chic City, O’ City since 2011, has no paid sick days and no paid time off. When he had a hernia-like abdominal problem on a plane trip from Las Vegas, he wound up in the emergency room for surgery. He was out of work for two weeks as bills pilled up. So his girlfriend and ex-wife teamed up on a burlesque fundraiser.
#30: Corky Scholl A visual storyteller as a television-news photojournalist, Corky Scholl further spreads his enthusiasm for the authentic, human side of life as the keeper of Save the Signs, a Facebook page and a movement dedicated to documenting disappearing urban neon signage in Denver and across the nation. Scholl’s fascination…
This Tuesday night, February 21, at Alamo Drafthouse, Billy Overton, the founder of experimental electronic band Loanword, will do a live film score for Swedish filmmaker Benjamin Christensen’s most acclaimed work, Häxan.
It was a good year for geeks, 1977. Dungeons and Dragons was just hitting the mainstream (and starting to be attacked as evil…which, of course, only fueled its popularity). The Atari 2600 was released, and that was pretty much it for going outside to play for the next decade. And a little kids’ movie called Star Wars was just about to change the world. And in the middle of it all, GenghisCon was born here in Denver. Forty years later, here are ten reasons to celebrate GhenghisCon.
#31: Sally Stockhold Photographer Sally Stockhold doesn’t just shoot pictures: She’s a set designer, costumer, historian, actress and, sometimes, her own subject, caught in the act of living her own wildest dreams and impersonating famous artists and pop figures. A New Yorker who had a successful career as a commercial…
Dr. Frankie Bashan is one of the few speed dating gurus who gears events toward lesbian and bisexual women. Her company, Little Gay Book, will be hosting its first Denver-based speed dating event, Fast Flirting, on Sunday, February 19.
How much do you love Colorado? Downtown Colorado Inc., a nonprofit membership organization committed to building better communities, is hosting another Crushing on Colorado contest, celebrating the people, places and objects that make Colorado a wonderful place to live. You can share your love by snapping a photo “crushing” on…
Billy Riesing, aka “Ghost Lenz” when he’s wearing his photographer’s hat, tells hard-edged stories from a camera’s eye view.
Fashion designer and Westword MasterMind Mona Lucero is a style icon. She knows what she likes and isn’t afraid to share it — or wear it. Her new collection will be presented at the Whiteout fashion show, an annual highlight of Westword’s Artopia, which will be at City Hall on February 25…
February is looking good, with spring fashions on the horizon and events that range from big sales to shows to lovely deals for Valentine’s Day. And if you are single, remember: You deserve some love, too. Here are the ten best fashion events in Denver this February, in chronological order…
A relative newcomer to the Denver photography community, Kia Neill hasn’t wasted any time making her mark on the region, as an artist, a teacher on several platforms, a curator, a museum resident and even an expert snowboarder.
#35: Brian Comber Brooklyn native Brian Comber arrived in Denver in the 80s, where his budding skill as a printmaker in art school led him to Mark Lunning’s Open Press Ltd. studio facility. There, Comber continued to perfect his printmaking technique under Lunning’s wing, while also continuing to draw and…
#36: Ramón Bonilla Hailing from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Ramón Bonilla is in his second year as a RedLine resident and part of the stable at Michael Warren Contemporary in the Art District on Santa Fe. As an artist, Bonilla repurposes techniques from the drafting and mapping sketchbook, reenvisioning the…
