Art Attack: Thirteen Ways to See Art in Denver This Weekend

More galleries and museums are now open, albeit under safety restrictions, making art-viewing a little less spontaneous — but no less fulfilling. Masks are required across the board, as is limited or timed-entry visitation, so beware: We don’t need any sick artists.

On the positive side, this week is hoppin’ with new and continuing shows. Get started at these thirteen destinations:

Jen Rose, Flight of the Polychromatic Zooids
Firehouse Art Center, 667 Fourth Avenue, Longmont
Through February 7
Visits on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday by appointment only (email info@firehouseart.org at least 24 hours in advance to schedule); walk-in visits with five-person limited capacity on Friday and Saturday
Jen Rose’s installation, suspended from the ceiling in shimmering layers, might remind you of piano strings floating in an ocean current. It’s not off-target at all to see it that way: Flight of the Polychromatic Zooids floats in tandem with a musical soundtrack from composer David Thompson, and is meant to resemble an underwater experience.

Jesse Mathes, Memory Boxes
Balefire Goods, 7513 Grandview Avenue, Arvada
Through February 28
Metalsmith Jesse Mathes’s handcrafted memory boxes are not only right at home in a jewelry shop, but they also serve the important role of protecting small objects infused with personal meaning. Mathes fashions her own memory houses to match the object held within, and is looking forward to doing the same for others as commissioned works. The beautiful boxes on display are therefore not for sale, but an enticement to order one of your own. It’s kinda hard to resist.

Patrick Marold, Posts
Dennis Lee Mitchell, Smoke Drawings
Bill Amundson, Select Drawings
Yoshitomo Saito, Small Bronze Works
William Havu Gallery, 1040 Cherokee Street
Through February 27
Havu Gallery has a full house of artists on display though the end of February, beginning with sculptor Patrick Marold’s installation of vertical shapes (you might recognize Marold’s name in conjunction with his seven-acre installation, Shadow Array, at Denver International Airport) and Dennis Lee Mitchell’s Smoke Drawings, created by delicately burning a paper surface with an acetylene torch, leaving behind smoky floral shapes and wispy shapes indicative of a landscape at night. On the mezzanine, Denver favorite and expat Bill Amundson returns with a new collection of one-of-a-kind colored-pencil drawings that will make you laugh, while sculptor Yoshitomo Saito shows small bronze works in the salon. We call that an eyeful.

Wood.Works
Carley Warren: Three Pieces
Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, Arvada
January 21 through April 25
RSVP online in advance for timed-entry slot
Arvada Center curator and gallery director Collin Parson delivers the second in what might become an ongoing series of exhibitions focused on artists working with specific materials (Paper.Works started everything in 2017). Wood.Works naturally showcases regional artists who primarily work with wood, and it’s quite a spread. Carley Warren: Three Pieces works as a companion show in the Theatre Gallery, telescoping in on the artist’s signature works, which always connect three wooden shapes at right angles.

Rough Gems 1: Exclamation Point
Union Hall, The Coloradan, 1750 Wewatta Street, Suite 144
January 21 through February 13
Curatorial Talk with Alli Lemon: 5 to 6 p.m. Thursday, January 28
RSVP online in advance for timed-entry slot
Union Hall reopens to the public and hosts its second Rough Gems series of open-call and collaborative curatorial projects. First up is Exclamation Point, a group show of works by diverse women artists, curated by Alli Lemon. Get your calendar out: Rough Gems shows continue on February 25 with Mirror Mirror, curated by Mary Grace Bernard and Genevieve Waller, and Object Empathy, curated by Kiah Butcher, on April 1.

New Ideal
Rule Gallery, 808 Santa Fe Drive
January 22 through March 6
Opening Reception: Friday, January 22, 5 to 8 p.m.
RSVP online in advance for timed-entry slot
The group show New Ideal at Rule aims to blow old-school art criticism out of the water by putting on display contemporary artwork that bends genders, breaks through classical ideals of perfection, equalizes female subjects and skews Casanovian views in the era of the Me Too movement.

New Year / New View
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, 1201 Bannock Street
January 22 through March 14 (members-only preview January 21)
Admission: $8 to $10 (members free)
RSVP online in advance for timed-entry slot
The Kirkland is open to visitors and jumping into 2021 with an exhibition of newly acquired and never-before-seen works from the Colorado & Regional Art collection in diverse mediums ranging from paintings and drawings to ceramics, mobiles and a solar etching by such beloved artists, both old and new to the collection, as Edward Marecak, Al Wynne, Nan and James McKinnell, Lynn Wolfe and Edward Goldman.

Women’s Caucus of Art Colorado Chapter, Beyond the Surface
Core New Art Space, Art Hub, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
January 22 through February 7
Opening Reception: Friday, January 22, 6 to 9 p.m.
WCACO hosts a member show, Beyond the Surface, of works imbued with deeper meanings through the use of specific materials and personal processes. Think of it as an invitation to understand decisions made in the creation of an artwork.

Jennifer Jeannelle, Navigating the Overwhelm
Leah Swenson, Tragedy of the Commons
Pirate: Contemporary Art, 7130 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
January 22 through February 7
Pirate’s nest dual member show is painfully fueled by current events: There is no question where Jennifer Jeannelle is going in Navigating the Overwhelm, an emotional processing of pandemic, politics, the broken economy and the trashing of the environment. We can all find a little bit of our own 2020 demons in that. Jeannelle is hosting related performances every Friday during the run of the exhibition. Alongside her, Leah Swenson sticks to climate change in a new set of collages.

Colorado Abstracted: Five Artists Capture the Transcendental Experience of Nature
Littleton Museum, 6028 South Gallup Street, Littleton
January 22 through February 27
Reservations required in advance of visit at 303-795-3950
Virtual Tour available online
Patricia J. Finley, Annamarie Mead, Lydia Riegle, Janet Rundquist and Cyncie Winter all contribute abstract paintings inspired by nature to Colorado Abstracted, a show that owes a debt to the Western spirit and the landscape and natural beauty of Colorado.

No Show
Bitfactory Gallery, 851 Santa Fe Drive
January 22 through February 11
Bitfactory brings back its annual No Show invitational, which gives sixteen selected artists free rein to explore the outer limits of their chosen art genres. Whatever you’re looking for, it’s gonna be there.

Dreams in Bloom: Photos by Fares Micue
Freyer-Newman Center, Denver Botanic Gardens, 1007 York Street
January 23 through May 16
Dreams in Bloom, a flowery photography show, upholds the intersection of subject and medium that celebrates both the reopening of the Freyer-Newman Center galleries at the gardens and the biennial arrival of Month of Photography. Micue’s gorgeous portraits festoon human figures with bright blooms as a metaphor for the blossoming of human potential.

Alex Nazari
LMP PDA, Lane Meyer Projects, 2528 Walnut Street
January 25 through February 7
Works by Colorado Springs native Alex Nazari, now living and working in Los Angeles, will be featured in the vitrine window display at Lane Meyer Projects, and is donating 100 percent of all sales of artwork to the Summaeverythang Community Center, which offers free organic-produce box donations in the Watts and South Central Los Angeles districts.

Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to editorial@westword.com.