Leo Franco is a veteran of the Denver art scene, showing his work at Spark Gallery and Zip 37 on a regular basis. But he still has to work a second job. In fact, he laughed when asked if he was a full-time artist. Hard. “I have two kids in…
In the past three months, Civic Center Park has been lived in, spray-painted on, used as a venue for First Amendment freedoms and even set on fire during its tenure as the physical and ideological home to Occupy Denver. This month, the well-loved and well-used park earned national attention on…
The stunning Robert Adams: The Place We Live, at the Denver Art Museum, closes on New Year’s Day, so this is your last chance to see it. The show highlights the photography of Adams, who became famous in the 1950s by taking pictures of development as it encroached on Colorado’s…
There are few things in this world more terrifying or awe-inspiring than the experience of witnessing a nerd achieve his life’s dream. There are probably more than a few cases in which this involves Star Wars or, if pressed, its nemesis that ends in Trek, but Charlie Ross’s has got…
Though not part of an ambitious series of events like Pacific Standard Time, our own MCA Denver is participating in the same zeitgeist anyway, with West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977. The show, organized by director Adam Lerner and his wife and co-curator, Elissa Auther,…
Graffiti-art aficionados will agree — Street Cred, the exhibition now at the Longmont Museum, earns its title. Direct from new Longmont director Wes Jessup’s former workplace, the Pasadena Museum of California Art, it offers an in-the-moment overview of California graffiti writers, as well as a local showcase tailored in-house by…
The Westword office is closed until Tuesday, December 27, and this blog will be taking a break until then — although Show and Tell writers are definitely out and about, experiencing everything this city has to offer. We suggest you do the same; there are hundreds of activities featured in…
Bicycle vs. Homing Pigeon vs. Moped from Village Voice Media on Vimeo.We’ve been rolling off lists this week like there’s no tomorrow, and maybe there isn’t, considering that pesky 2012 Mayan prophecy and all that. Earlier this week, Jef Otte presented his 10 best moments in Denver arts list, riffing…
If you missed kART Across America at the Denver Starz Film Festival, the time you have left to see it on the big screen is limited. So if you can avoid your holiday plans for one more day, see it tonight. The film, directed by Denver natives and thoughtful funny…
Sandi Calistro got her first tattoo in Maine when she was sixteen, and later decided to become a tattoo artist. Accompanied by her dad, she came to Colorado and sold her flash sheets (the sheets of art on the wall of a tattoo parlor) door-to-door at tattoo shops. A local…
“Imagine how cool it would be if you were an eighth grader visiting the Judicial Center and you saw a word that you had submitted in the art,” says Jon Sarche, public information coordinator for the Colorado Judicial Department, on its current art endeavor. The department is asking middle-school students…
The art of the West’s introduction to the world came in the 1970s, when paintings and photos from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suddenly became highly sought after in the marketplace. By now, this kind of emblematic Western work — stunning landscapes, charming scenes of cowboys and Indians…
The Cheap Christmas Crapfare at the Museum of Contemporary Art was a festival of joyful hipsters, free eggnog — and the finest paper plate wreaths in the city. Part of MCA Denver’s “Black Sheep Fridays,” Friday evening’s crappy craft-making party was lively, and there was plenty of crap to keep…
Update, 12:30 p.m. Monday: Watch the video of Sunday’s flash mob at FlatIron Crossing below and see photos from the “Party Rock Anthem” flash mob. Eric Rosenberg calls it the “Rick Saga” on his blog, where the Denver Flash Mob co-founder writes about con-man Rick Strandloff, aka Rick Duncan, the…
The lights are very bright on Broadway, and 2012 is shaping up to be the year that SoBo, with its growing lineup of independent shops and boutiques, second-hand emporiums and quirky dining spots, becomes a solid destination. The biggest news on the hip and funky stretch of Broadway between First…
It’s not too early to make plans for the second annual Denver County Fair — which has been moved to the second weekend in August, starting on Friday, August 10 and running through Sunday, August 12, with extended hours. “We won’t be up against the Dragon Boat Festival, the last…
Nederland santera Catherine Robles Shaw usually sticks to the basics when creating her lovely retablos — plaques depicting the saints that are hand-carved and painted in a folk style that’s been handed down over hundreds of years in northern New Mexico and Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Contemporizing the old art…
Editor’s Note: Cartoonist Noah Van Sciver brings us his trip to the Denver Art Museum in this web comic. Make sure you read Noah’s blog for more comics and wonderment…
Denver has Sun Spot, a giant dog sculpture created out of dog tags outside the new municipal animal shelter. Now Boulder has Alfie, a huge rooster made out of more than 3,000 pieces of old farm equipment by longtime local artist Robert Bellows. The sculpture was dedicated this past weekend…
Though the Robischon Gallery (1740 Wazee Street, 303-298-7788, www.robischongallery.com) is a commercial enterprise, it’s indistinguishable from a tidy downtown museum in appearance and atmosphere. This has to do both with the relentless high quality of the offerings there and the venue’s enormous size. As you can imagine, that means there’s…
The inimitable Westword cover boy Rick Griffith and his ink-spattered crew at Matter Studio normally toil with their sleeves rolled in a letterpress world that bridges classic craftsmanship and modern design, hand-running hip posters and other printed matter on the old-fashioned machinery of another time. But once a year, they…
Gene Sobczak, who was a VP and marketing guru for the Colorado Symphony Orchestra when he left in 2007 to head the Arvada Center, will soon be making beautiful music with the CSO again: The symphony board has appointed him to replace interim director Jim Copenhaver, who returned this fall…
