Real and Imagined

Well, after two years of local preparation, the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts 2000 meeting came and went last week in only a few days. But if NCECA’s gone, it’s not forgotten. Temporary though it may be, it’s left behind a legacy in the form of more…

Art Beat

World of New Colors, which closes Saturday at the Bayeux Gallery in the Golden Triangle, is a solo show devoted to the work of Philadelphia-based textile artist Marcia Hewitt Johnson. Johnson creates geometric abstractions with pieces of cloth joined together using quilt-making techniques, as in the two-panel “New York New…

Mile High Fires

It seems like the entire art world has gone potty. Denver’s curators and gallery directors alike are crazed these days, since there are more than fifty local art exhibits in which ceramics take center stage going on right now. It’s enough to make our heads spin like a kick wheel…

Art Beat

The modest Philip J. Steele Gallery does double duty as the entry lobby for the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. But despite this limitation, it’s often a place to see interesting shows put together by gallery director Lisa Spivak. The current show makes the case. Richard Notkin: Passages:…

Wide Open

A new day has very apparently dawned at the still-nascent Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, which is housed in a former fish market in Sakura Square. And the many changes are obvious from the moment visitors hit the brand-new front doors. Some may recall that I have relentlessly criticized MoCAD…

Art Beat

The cryptic phantom institution the Invisible Museum is currently presenting No Zone, sponsored by the Goldfarb Foundation. It’s the second of three exhibits from the IM to be presented at the Market Street Gallery at Guiry’s. The last time, the subject was small abstract sculpture; this time it’s experimental photography…

Say It in French

The unbelievably good Matisse From the Baltimore Museum of Art, which opens to the general public on Sunday at the Denver Art Museum, is the third and final exhibit in a series of blockbusters there that have showcased the School of Paris. It is, hands down, the finest of the…

Art Beat

The turn of the century has put many people in the art world in a retrospective mood, but there are some dealers in the city who are way ahead of the pack — they’ve been looking back at local art history for years. One of these dealers is Elizabeth Schlosser,…

Scene Changes

There are big changes afoot at the little Mizel Museum of Judaica. First, the impending remodel of the BJ-BMH Synagogue, where it is housed, may put the museum out on the street, or at least into storage, and force it to cancel its upcoming schedule. The proposed design for the…

Art Beat

Right now at the Edge Gallery, there’s a quartet of very different shows, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses. In the entry gallery is Theresa Ducayet: Architectural Textile, in which the artist combines sculptures and sewn silk-and-paper collages. The silk collages have small scraps of maps or…

A Little of Everything

Manitou Springs painter Sushe Felix, whose work became well-known in the mid-1980s, has really been on a roll lately. Every time we turn around, it seems like there’s something by her in front of us. One of her abstracted landscape paintings was chosen as the publicity image for the Colorado…

Art Beat

In the main space at Pirate, John Crandall has brought in a handful of abstract paintings for his solo, Infinitely Minute. Several large and aesthetically ambitious paintings have been placed on top of shiny silver paint cans and are lined up leaning against the walls. The most successful of this…

Dynamic Duo

It’s really quite inspiring the way the entire metro art world is focusing, at least briefly, on ceramic artists, a group that is typically unsung, ignored and rarely exhibited around here. A year and a half ago, artist and Auraria art professor Rodger Lang began calling the city’s museums, art…

Art Beat

The O’Sullivan Arts Center is just a couple of big rooms in an old, nondescript building on the Regis University campus. But somehow, there’s always a good show on display, like the impressive Bill Joseph: A Retrospective, which fills the place now. Joseph, who has been making art in Denver…

Winter Wonders

Despite the trends elsewhere, winter in Colorado, as much as fall, is high season in the art world. This may have something to do with the way we handle the colder months. In New York recently, a few inches of snow almost shut down the city. In Denver, on the…

Art Beat

The Edge Gallery is highlighting the work of two artists who couldn’t be more different from one another. In the front space, Gail Wagner features the artist’s sophisticated abstract sculptures; in the back is Wendy Clough: Recent Work, a collection of representational paintings of the landscape. Upon entering Edge, the…

Clay Feats and Printed Sheets

The Mizel Arts Center at the Jewish Community Center is somewhat off the beaten path of the art world, and its fine art division, the Singer Gallery, is just a single room divided into a series of four small spaces. Despite these limitations, however, the Singer is often the place…

Art Beat

Inflections of Style, at the Market Street Gallery at Guiry’s, is a display of small three-dimensional objects created by a wide array of artists, most from around town, a few from across the country, and even a couple from Europe. But it’s primarily a local show — and a very…

Season of the West

In the last 25 years, the visibility of the art world has undergone tremendous changes — upheavals, if you will. For a variety of reasons that range from improvements in mass communication to changes in art education, global artistic innovations are now communicated almost instantaneously. This expedience has led to…

Art Beat

Late last summer, Carla St. Romain opened the Bayeux Gallery in the Golden Triangle. What makes this noteworthy is that the gallery is unique — at least in Denver — because its specialty is contemporary textiles made by local, national and international fiber artists. The name “Bayeux” is a reference…

Two Sublime

On a recent Saturday afternoon, in the up-and-coming neighborhood around First Avenue and Broadway, a steady stream of visitors found their way through the doors of the Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery. At the same time, a client in the gallery’s back office was making a purchase. At one point,…

Art Beat

The Fine Arts Center Exhibition Space, on the third floor of the fine art building at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, is currently presenting Homeless in Denver, a compilation of disturbing photo-based work by longtime Denver artist Annalee Schorr. Over the years, Schorr has explored the ubiquitous…