#27: Leah Brenner Leah Brenner calls herself a “collector, adventurer and quiet curator with a taste for the witty and rebellious.” She came by her passion for culture and what makes humans tick while studying anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder; she’s put that interest to work helping…
Literary events aren’t always book-signings and they don’t always happen in book stores. This week you can get your fill of Chicano poetry and theater at two concurrent festivals in Denver or be inspired by an Iranian immigrant’s transformational words. Wordfest Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center April 20…
This weekend in Denver galleries, you can travel around the globe to South Africa with a passport, visit an unromantic animal world or — dude! —prepare for 4/20 with a show of out-of-this-world blown-glass sculpture. Boom! Here’s where to feast your eyes on artwork from all walks of life. Susanne…
It was back in 1998 that Denver’s flea-market renaissance began with the Ballpark Market, which brought its European-style ambience to Larimer Street near Coors Field. Since then, we’ve had markets hawking antiques and geegaws under viaducts and car-boot sales in parking lots and, eventually, a new, tenacious brand of flea…
Fourteen-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is one busy kid, what with having to save the world and all. As youth spokesman for Earth Guardians, a worldwide environmental nonprofit founded by his mother, Tamara Roske-Martinez, the eco-savant speaks at TED talks, writes and delivers raps against fracking, choreographs hip-hop dances and travels the…
April is shaping up to be a month of big ideas in three dimensions in local gallery spaces, with shows that focus on scale, mixed media and quirky manifestations of artfulness. Here’s a selection of galleries where you jump on the big-art bandwagon or just have a good time this…
#28: Daisy McConnell Curator, administrator and artist Daisy McConnell helps to keep Colorado Springs up-to-date — and sometimes even ahead of the pack — on the arts front, as director of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Galleries of Contemporary Art, otherwise known as GOCA 1421, the campus gallery,…
A trio of unique collaborations take the stage this weekend, bringing combinations of dance, theater, words and visuals to audiences in search of new ways of looking at life, both high-flying and down-to-earth. Here’s how to take a trip into space or venture through life’s backyard without ever leaving your…
#29: Phil Solomon In the realm of experimental film, Phil Solomon is a name to remember: His work has been oft-awarded, screened internationally and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Biennial in New York. For nearly 25 years, he’s been sharing his pioneering techniques and inspiring…
This week opens the book with a focus on Colorado authors (including Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, the subject of this week’s Westword cover story) and a new ripple in the metro-area book-store biz. Here’s how to support your local authors and your local bookstores. Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, Fig Boulder Book Store…
The return of winter be damned, First Friday is going down tonight all over metro Denver. Grab your coat: Here are a few hot new shows and events to ward off the chill. Margaret Neumann: Inscapes Macky Gallery, CU-Boulder campus April 3 through June 7 Opening reception and expert talk:…
Collage jumps the boundaries of photography, sometimes using ready-made images or layered photographic techniques in unexpected juxtapositions to make a statement. Its rightful place as part of Month of Photography 2015 will be made clear this weekend, when Denver Collage Club comes late to the party at Robert Anderson Gallery. In…
How big a Game of Thrones fan are you? Some of the city’s most dedicated GoT watchers gathered Tuesday night at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House for a first look at the highly touted bloodbath that will be Season Five, which officially premieres on HBO on April 12. Photographer Danielle…
Book-lovers can turn the pages this week with a very different pair of Colorado genre authors or immerse themselves in the world of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe at a class co-sponsored by Lighthouse Writers Workshop and the Art Students League of Denver. Whether you fancy sci-fi, noir fiction or…
You don’t have to wait until First Friday to see new art in Denver — there are plenty of shows up right now that include thought-provoking content that’s just plain beautiful. Here are a few exhibits opening tonight to get you started. Joel Swanson: A.K.A. David B. Smith Gallery March…
After wedding photographer Dylan Burr fell in love with the nineteenth-century art of wet-plate collodion portraiture, he sought a platform wherein he could continue to experiment with the old-school images, but for a humanitarian purpose. He found one in the Neighbours Project, a collaboration with Denver homeless shelter the St…
Boulder Arts Week will bring bold fare to venues around that town this weekend, from a homegrown, one-man tour de force at the Dairy Center for the Arts to a complex and completely original performance-in-progress at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Meanwhile, Town Hall in Littleton just wants to…
Denver’s hemispheric Biennial of the Americas is always catching flak in retrospect, but the team programming this year’s event, now in its third incarnation, have already been hard at at work for the past year conceiving a Biennial with lasting power and a theme that couldn’t be more relevant: Now!…
This week’s book events will take you to climes both exotic and dangerously extreme, but also deep into the depths of the human heart at a talk with one of the planet’s most esteemed modern novelists. The details follow. Bill Giebler The Best Travel Writing, Volume 10: True Stories from…
March continues with a rush of new shows, including several Month of Photography entries and a summer-ready exhibition presented by RedLine at the McNichols Building. Here are a few suggestions of where to head this weekend to see and be seen. Cody Day and Brenda LaBier Sync Gallery March 20…
#30: Chris Bagley Filmmaker/videographer Chris Bagley studies the fringe artists of Denver and beyond, embedding himself in DIY culture concerns to create documentary portraits of musicians as well as music videos, including Wesley Willis’s Joyrides, a 2008 doc about the late savant musician that he co-directed with Westword MasterMind Kim…
Spring has sprung, and theater is blooming across town. This weekend a world premiere will launch this year’s greatly expanded Athena Project Festival, while the longstanding Evergreen Players light up the foothills with a collection of one-acts and the Arvada Center puts audiences on the edge of their seats with…
