William T. Wiley, art’s great old hippie, has been both revered and ridiculed. A leading proponent of the Bay Area Funk School that also included such San Francisco Art Institute cohorts as Robert Arneson and Roy DeForest, Wiley helped pave the way for art to take itself less seriously. And…
SUN, 8/22 Attend today’s unique African Market at Augustana Lutheran Church, and you will never again think of Africans as a generic people. That’s the goal of the event, says Phil Gazley of Lutheran Family Services, a sponsoring organization that provides resettlement services to refugee groups from around the globe:…
SAT, 8/21 Watching the hellish Eco-Challenge Adventure Races on television may have kept some would-be daredevils frozen to their couches. Anyone tempted by the extreme concept but hoping to avoid undue pain (leeches, anyone?) would be better served by today’s Denver Oyster Urban Eco-Adventure Race. The event gets going at…
WED, 8/25 Denver’s El Centro Su Teatro proudly traces its roots back to the 1960s theatrical-political actions of Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, which supported César Chavez and the United Farm Workers grape boycotts, and later evolved into the prototypical Chicano theater group. Such solidarity is just part of…
FRI, 8/20 Play all the folk music you want; it’s no good without the folks. To that end, Swallow Hill Music Association is putting on the Swallow Hill Folk Festival, its annual gathering of pickers and fans dedicated to the perpetuation of true American roots music. Four Mile Historic Park,…
Colorado has been a regional center for ceramics for just over a century. The reason is obvious, at least to gardeners and structural engineers: It’s all that darned clay. This readily available natural product led to what I call a “clay rush” beginning in the 1890s. In the late-nineteenth and…
The Sandra Phillips Gallery (744 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-5969) has kept a pretty low profile since it opened last summer. Though I’d heard of it, I didn’t have any idea where it was. In retrospect, this is strange because it’s right across the street from Space and just a few…
Dots, Blobs and Angels. Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting an enormous solo that is dedicated to the late David Rigsby, an artist who played a big part in the local art scene in the ’70s and ’80s. The exhibit was organized by director Cydney Payton, who installed it…
Of this summer’s three productions, The Comedy of Errors is the one most in tune with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s slogan, “Shakespeare Under the Stars.” It’s funny, bright, relaxed and magical, the perfect amusement for a soft summer night. Comedy of Errors is an early work based on the comedy…
Menopause The Musical is as much a phenomenon as a piece of theater. As my friend and I entered the New Denver Civic Theatre, we walked into a wall of laughter and chatter. There were women everywhere — in twos and threes, in throngs, elderly women, middle-aged women, young women…
Antony and Cleopatra. Director Robert Benedetti states in the program notes that he has brought a Hollywood sensibility to this text, but the CU production remains stagnant and difficult to follow, perhaps because so many of the actors garble their lines. Antony has been neglecting his duties in Rome for…
A good friend likes to say that there’s only one kind of great pop song: the song that someone had to create, as though the writer and performer had no choice. The song can be corny or cynical, upbeat or downhearted — it doesn’t matter. All that counts is that…
The return to the screen of the ravishing Chinese actress Gong Li, who may have the most expressive face in film, should be cause for rejoicing among her millions of admirers around the world. After starring in a series of memorable and politically controversial films directed by her former paramour,…
Say hello to a pop-cinema masterpiece. This new Japanese import opens with a massive thud not unlike Godzilla’s footfall, and its cinematic legacy stretches back almost as far. It’s got crafty Samurai action, hilarious bits of business, insightful observations into the human condition and geysers of kitschy computer-generated blood. Oh,…
The final installment of the gory trilogy that launched, then buoyed up, horrormeister Sam Raimi’s directorial career, 1993’s Army of Darkness, goes for broke in the outrageous plotting department. The innocent hero, played by a wisecracking Bruce Campbell, is transported back to the fourteenth-century stamping grounds of King Arthur –…
Comedian Kathy Griffin’s days as Suddenly Susan’s funny-voiced female sidekick, Vicki, may be gone — the sitcom ended in 2000 — but the wry-comment queen is still popping up all over the place, whether it’s in an Eminem video (“The Real Slim Shady”) or as host of the reality show…
Thursday, August 12 The sky is falling, the sky is falling! But we’re talking about the annual Perseid Meteor Shower, so you have nothing to fear. A magnificent show is a possibility tonight, particularly around and after midnight (weather permitting), thanks to this year’s coinciding dark moon. But DU astronomy…
Denver goes to the theater, and that’s a fact. From touring shows and homegrown, big-time productions at the Denver Performing Arts Center to independent projects funded by grants and realized through the sheer grit of small companies, the metro area supports quality presentations on many stages. Hand in hand with…
On vacation in Vancouver, Denverites Cal Smith and David Citizen wandered into a fragrant Chinese spice shop and fell in love with the place. More important, they noted that Denver had nothing like it, and in an entrepreneurial moment, decided to try their hand in the spice business when they…
Imagine an indoor, glow-in-the-dark miniature golf course that feels like Alice in Wonderland meets Tron — with a dash of Dr. Timothy Leary thrown in. That’s the Putting Edge in Westminster. If you’re looking for tunnels and giant windmills, you won’t find them here. This “carpeted country club,” located in…
SAT, 8/14 Chas Gale took one long, sensuous step into the world of Argentine tango in 1997 and never looked back. “People always say they didn’t find the tango, the tango found them,” Gale says, and he was no different. “I tried swing dancing and dabbled in salsa, and then…
SUN, 8/15 It’s a left! And a right! And a left! And a . . . Does it seem like the body politic is reeling under the assault of the current presidential election? Or does it appear as if some folks are ducking their responsibility to make a choice in…
