Arts & Culture

Denver new media-artist Kristin Stransky’s FabLink 3-D-printed dress required ten pounds of nylon fiber, more than 800 hours of 3-D printing time, and 150 to 200 hours of assembly and fabrication time to make. The dress was assembled from hundreds of tiny links, each link hooked to the others by twelve even tinier rings. Stransky says it takes twenty to thirty hours to print every fifty links and an hour to print fifty rings.

This weekend, six Colorado playwrights will see their words brought to life in staged readings at the Vintage Theatre’s first-ever New Play Festival. The intimate Aurora venue opened up submissions for the festival last December as a way to reach out to the Colorado writing community and also meet playwrights’ need to have their plays read as a step in the editing process.

Denver Arts & Venues and the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs have announced the recipients of the 2017 IMAGINE 2020 fund, a city grant that gives up to $5,000 for new cultural programs.

The First Friday of August brings new sights and sounds to art districts all over Denver and beyond. Where will you end up? We have some suggestions.

When the new Velorama Festival descends on RiNo August 11 to 13, you’ll be able to U-lock your cruiser to new, hand-crafted bike racks. In line with the festival’s ties to the Colorado Classic bicycle race, the RiNo Arts District has sponsored the creation of five artisanal, mountain-evoking bike racks by contest winners Mitch Hoffman and Tim Omspach.

Longtime Colorado Springs sculptor and installationist Sean O’Meallie spent ten years in the ’80s and ’90s pitching gizmos and pull toys as a toy inventor, commuting to toy fairs in Manhattan with storyboards in hand. He and his New York-based business partner “never scored it big,” he says, but he did take something valuable away from the experience.

The Western: An Epic in Art and Film is truly epic, as well as full of gimmicks. But when the curators are so knowledgeable and the quality of the material is so high, even gimmicks can’t detract from a great show, and the ideal summer blockbuster for the Denver Art Museum.

August has arrived, but just because the summer is reaching its final days doesn’t mean that Denver’s entertainment calendar is fizzling too.