Urban adventure races and downtown scavenger hunts have become old hat in adrenaline-conscious, wheel-happy Colorado. But when AIGA Colorado, the regional design association, decides to put on an outdoor event, you know it’s going to be of a very different type. To that end, letterpress typographer Rick Griffith of Matter…
The Arvada Center galleries will greet the summer with a cheerful set of shows, Faces, Places & Spaces, which open in unison tonight with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. and remain on view through August 26. Two artist nights, each with a panel discussion and meet-and-greet, are also…
If you’re reading this, someone you know — and probably you, too — uses Instagram, the smartphone photo app that has approximately 1 gazillion users, was sold last month to Facebook for $1 billion and, most important, is the latest vehicle for everyone to take photos of themselves in the…
Keith “Scramble” Campbell’s studio moves around: sometimes it’s at the Five Points Jazz Festival, sometimes at the Fox Theatre and other times it’s at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. In fact, Campbell has painted at so many concerts that he has created a database-driven web site where you can look up one…
Pat Milbery wears many hats (and helmets), but professional musician is not one of them. That doesn’t deter him from being curious about the art form, however, and pushing that interest into the unknown. Over the winter, Milbery teamed up with Pretty Lights Music artist Michal Menert and Colorado-local clothing…
With a taste for new art and old buildings and a love of hard work, Mina Litinsky was one of the handful of people who invented LoDo as an entertainment district. She opened a pioneering business there, the Sloane Gallery (1612 17th Street, 303-595-4230), in the early 1980s — before…
Lakewood Gulch, a trickling tributary in west Denver that feeds into the South Platte River, was once a pretty good place to disappear. The area was overgrown and full of as much concrete as it was weeds; many people used it for what street artist Peter Miles Bergman calls “unsanctioned…
There are endless lists to be made about Wes Anderson films: best music moments, best drug references, best Bill Murray scenes…. Fans of Anderson treasure every second of his films, often committing whole passages to memory; many can mimic the characters on screen, and they’re always up for a repeat…
Chalk art is one of the most ephemeral forms of art — but there’s nothing transitory about the Denver Chalk Art Festival, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this past weekend in Larimer Square. Christopher Morgan was on hand to capture these masterpieces; see the complete slide show here. Follow us…
The pattern that connects the artists included in Material Abstraction, which runs through the end of this month at Robischon Gallery, is the way that each exploits the unique properties of their particular medium. And what a batch of mediums they use: automotive lacquer, vinyl and recycled objects…
Broadway has become a major contender on First Friday, and the crowds turned out to welcome the arrival of the Ladies Fancywork Society’s new brainchild, Lowbrow, a gallery that celebrated its grand opening Friday night. “It was great to see so many people come out to support us — many…
Prepare to be amazed. Prepare to be inspired. Prepare, perhaps, to reflect less favorably on your own accomplishments. It’s time for TEDxMileHigh, two days of performances and events that start with the first-ever TEDxYouth@MileHigh today from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. The main event runs from 1 to 6 p.m. tomorrow…
Looking to start a new chapter? Head to Alicia Bailey’s Abecedarian Gallery, a tiny, meticulously curated book-art gallery on Santa Fe Drive, for the last day of the Artists Book Cornucopia III exhibition. And it’s going out in style, with a special edition of Westword MasterMind Katie Taft’s Action Figures…
The streets of Larimer Square and the surrounding area will lose their monotone drab as over 200 artists take part in the 10th annual Denver Chalk Art Festival this weekend. The Denver Chalk Festival not only aims celebrate the history of it’s own conception, but also the history of chalk…
It has been a long and winding road for photographer Sigri Strand. Beginning her bachelor’s degree program in 2001, she found herself living in New York City for a while before finishing her studies in photography at the University of Colorado Denver a decade later in 2011. That same year,…
Even if you haven’t read about the Ladies Fancywork Society, you’ve likely seen their fancywork — known as “yarn bombs” — around town. LFS often works in the dead of night, wrapping random, urban objects in a comforting knit sweater, giving the pedestrian telephone pole or bike rack an intimate,…
When we think of the art of Taos, the first image we usually conjure up is the landscape, colored in the tones of the mountain Southwest. Yet that’s not what all Taos art turns out to be, especially in contemporary times, as artists continue to flock to northern New Mexico…
The term “weird artist” may seems like an oxymoron. Contemporary art in itself is weird: it breaks apart the structural rules put in place before the Modernist movement and asks the viewer to suspend disbelief in order to transcend into an unrealistic world. Yet, some art is just weirder than…
I met Jenny Morgan within twelve hours of stepping onto the filthy and gorgeous streets of Manhattan for the first time in 2007. I was assisting Sarah Cass on a photo shoot of one of Jenny’s portrait subjects, and I have been following her work religiously since that moment. This…
Curious Theatre Company cracked open a whole new fascination for troubled color-field artist Mark Rothko with its production of the engaging play Red, in which the painter and his assistant discuss the meaning of life and art while painting a fresh canvas onstage. And just as the play offers a…
Burning Man is hands-down the biggest celebration of life, art, music and culture that America has ever seen. The week-long event held in the days leading up to Labor Day in the Black Rock Desert — roughly 120 miles north of Reno, Nevada — will have approximately 50,000 people in…
When I parked the car on Tennyson Street Friday night, I was still two blocks away from the Oriental Theater — and I could already hear the Whomp Truck thundering bass-heavy music into the night air as a prelulde to Cirque Voltaire III: Blitzkrieg. And as I walked to the…
