Talking to the Dead, which went up on the wall of the MacSpa the other day, is all about the occult as a commodity. Featuring a series of artsy Ouija Boards created by local artists and juried by Eric Matelski, the show reflects the season smartly and with panache, accompanied…
There are thousands of blue-collar jobs in the world, but few have the cultural appeal of the bike messenger. As Denver has become more bike-centric over the years and more people have been saddling up, the bike messenger’s job has taken on a glamorous appeal. But their heavy bags filled…
Over the last decade or so, Colorado has seen an incredible museum-building boom that is completely unprecedented in the state’s history. New structures include the Kirkland Museum, the Hamilton Building of the Denver Art Museum, and MCA Denver. In addition, a substantial yet subdued addition was made to the iconic…
Because it’s a slow news day, each Wednesday, we bring you the best of our weird internetz world in a collection of loosely related items about whatever topic we happen to come up with. Today, we’re bringing you Kitler: Cats that look like Hitler, because animals that look like people…
A recent national study of sexual behavior conducted by Indiana University concludes that American men think they are better in bed than they actually are. The study claims that 85 percent of men reported that their partner had an orgasm during their most recent sexual event, while only 64 percent…
Hunter S. Thompson could have been a Canadian. Sort of. In 1958, the then-struggling New York City reporter applied for a job at the Vancouver Sun newspaper in British Columbia. According to an entertaining story by Canadian Postmedia News, he was inspired by a Time magazine profile of the paper’s…
A solo show by artist Michael Whiting, known for his sculptures of large painted steel squares combined to create iconic “pixilated” forms of animals or figures, opens later this month at Plus Gallery. And if all goes well, the show will coincide with the unveiling of “Rhino,” a self-explanatory, large-scale…
The parallels are uncanny: two abstract impressionist painters who lived more or less during the same time, whose work developed along similar lines, both with strong ties to Colorado. One was Vance Kirkland, who lived and worked here most of his life, the other, Clyfford Still, who ended up with…
Advertising agencies work tirelessly to come up with new ways to tell us the same thing over and over again: “Hey, buy our shit. Don’t you want to be happy? Thankfully though, there are always a few ridiculous ads that make it through the brainstorming sessions of the world’s copywriters…
Scientists say nearby star Gliese 581 hosts a planet within the “habitable zone,” meaning someday, when we finally make Earth un-inhabitable, we’ll have a place to escape to. But long before that, hyper-rich folks the world over will be taking pleasure cruises to the new glamorous destination in the stars,…
First Friday on the first of October? Sounds like a witching hour to me. There’s a distinct chill in the evening air, but don’t let that stop you from painting the art districts red…and azure, sienna, viridian, alizarin crimson and any other color you can think of. Pull on your…
Nothing says Colorado better than an artful skateboard deck: The perfect union of our predilections for outdoor sport and DIY thinking speaks visual volumes about living on the edge, being casually modern and bursting with pride for the state’s magnificent climate. The folks at the Colorado branch of the American…
Greg Giraldo was rushed to a hospital on September 25th after failing to appear for a scheduled gig. He passed yesterday and will be sorely missed by comedy fans the world over. Sadly, it seems all the best comedians find their way out via drug overdose. To celebrate Greg Giraldo’s…
There are many jobs in this world. Some are so bizarre, you probably don’t know they exist; others seem so great, you can’t believe people get paid to do them. To highlight some of these jobs, we’ve started a new series about people actually working in the field. This week,…
Well, this is awkward. Earlier today, Joel Warner wrote a post about the stupidity of blogs about memes, and now here we are with a stupid blog about memes. But by gum, it’s Wednesday, and Wednesday is the day we bring you the best of our weird internetz world in…
First there were blogs, wherein people would opine about stupid subjects. Then there were Internet memes, which involved people sharing stupid subjects with web-buddies (think “The Tron Guy” and local hero Leeeeroy Jeeeenkins!) Now there are memeblogs, a perfect union of the two. How do we know such things? As…
In the pale light of dawn yesterday, an odd thing appeared in front of the Westword office: a sculpture, roughly four feet tall, made of wire and duct tape. Crafted to resemble an open hand, the sculpture sported an array of colors and textures, along with a couple of painstakingly…
Dana Cain is the lady with her thumb in a million pies: A local maestra of event-planning throws several well-attended collectors expos, art shows, parties, chocolate fests each year. Her latest – and biggest – project is next summer’s Denver County Fair. But Dana is also an avid art collector…
The season opener at Plus Gallery (2501 Larimer Street, 720-394-8484, www.plusgallery.com) is Kate Petley: One Big Dream, on view in the main space. It’s mostly made up of the Colorado-based artist’s cast-acrylic abstractions but includes other sorts of work as well. For a while, Petley was getting super-experimental, but with…
Alternative art will bloom tonight in unexpected places when the Denver Theatre District hosts Illiterate Gallery at Primebar, 1515 Arapahoe Street, for one of its periodic salons in downtown locations. “They approached us to hang artwork on the wall there for two hours,” says Adam Gildar of Illiterate. “We’ll have…
When I got up Sunday morning, zipped up my skirt, slipped into my lacy stockings and sensible black pumps, did 50 one-armed pushups and ate a raw steak, I had one objective, and one objective only: to win. Sure, Running of the Gays was a jokey charity event to benefit…
Artist, humorist, DJ and man-about-town Bill Amundson has been part of the Denver landscape for more than thirty years, and I’ve known him for most of that time. Far, far away in a another life, I managed the Ogden Theatre, which was then a prehistoric Landmark repertory cinema, and Bill…
