Colorado’s printmaking tradition is so rich, its influence spreads far beyond state lines. In the first decades of the twentieth century, George Elbert Burr plowed new ground with his color etchings made right here in Denver. In the 1930s Guy McCoy and Paul Gallagher, working in Colorado Springs and Aspen,…
Watching over the nearly completed destruction of I.M. Pei’s Zeckendorf Plaza is reminiscent of those “thinnest books in the world” sold in novelty shops. You know the kind–Honest Lawyers or Inspired Bureaucrats. Unfortunately, the pageless gag in this case could be titled something like Great Denver Buildings. But that’s not…
Putting together a credible exhibit takes three things: space, money and an organizing concept. But in the art world, it’s often those curators or gallery directors with the least space at their disposal–and even less money–who come through with the biggest ideas and the best shows. The latest case in…
The distinction between sculpture and installation is a blurry one–and that makes sense, given that the two mediums are both essentially concerned with artfully occupying space. Many local contemporary sculptors and installation artists test the boundary between the two art forms. But no one knows the territory better than well-known…
Summer is typically the time for the art world to put up its collective feet and relax. But that hasn’t been the case this year, when June and July have been chock-full of exciting and interesting art events. You’d think it was October already–ordinarily the high-water mark for art exhibitions…
The reputations of Pirate and Spark have been rehabilitated in recent years owing to the hard work of their members. Both of these co-op galleries are often the place to find intelligent art shows by accomplished local artists. Surely that’s the case right now with exhibits from versatile painter Stephen…
For the past six months, the Mackey Gallery has presented one large and raucous group show after another–out of character for a place that made its reputation presenting in-depth displays featuring only two or three artists. But it’s apparent that her experience with so many group shows has caused gallery…
When people think today of the Victorian era–if they think of it at all–they imagine a Dickensian world populated with polite yet insufferable prigs and upright if ignorant street urchins. But the latter half of the nineteenth century also marked the emergence of modern and social science–everything from physics to…
In its relatively short history, the Center for the Visual Arts, Metropolitan State College’s gallery in LoDo, has celebrated the diversity of the art world. Sally Perisho, the center’s founding director, has paid special attention to art by women, gays and ethnic minorities. And she has mixed things up: One…
In spite of a century of modern art jam-packed with things like abstraction, minimalism and conceptualism, the venerable tradition of depicting the human figure in art has held on admirably. As the modernist twentieth century comes to a close, artists working with the human body as their subject seem to…
He’s midway through his solo exhibit at the Close Range Gallery of the Denver Art Museum, but Phil Bender still acts embarrassed about all the attention. In fact, Bender’s taken an “Aw, shucks” approach–which works perfectly with his thick Texas drawl–to the accolades heaped on his signature grids of found…
The construction of Denver International Airport has meant many things to many people. For most of us, DIA has meant an extra hour or two of travel just to get to and from the remote facility. To many who were more intimately involved, especially in the airport’s financing and its…
It was in mid-March that Paul Hughes, director of the venerable, twenty-something Inkfish Gallery, announced that he would mount an in-depth exhibit of thirty mostly small works by New York-based kinetic sculptor George Rickey. That fine exhibit, George Rickey: Recent Kinetic Sculptures, is now open at Inkfish and runs through…
Denver’s really starting to look and act like a big city. The traffic in town is getting worse by the day. There’s no place to park either downtown or in Cherry Creek. And we now have a Mark di Suvero sculpture, “Lao Tzu,” sited on Acoma Plaza at the Civic…
Unlike in many American cities, just about every tree, shrub, plant and vine in Denver has been planted and cared for by someone. As early as the 1880s, people were bringing blue spruce trees down from the mountains and planting them among the scrub bushes and prairie grasses, which are…
Spring is here, and that can mean only one thing in the art world–you can’t find a parking space on gallery row in LoDo. When the Rockies take over Wazee Street, plenty of fans park at the two-hour meters that line the street. They can count on getting a parking…
It’s an unexpected stroke of luck to find three of the most important cultural institutions in the mountain West conveniently lined up in a row along Denver’s Civic Center complex. And you could hardly miss the Colorado History Museum, the Denver Public Library and the Denver Art Museum, housed as…
The comet Hyakutake has just passed close enough–9 million miles or so–to be seen from the earth without the aid of a telescope. Just over a year ago, the comet was completely unknown, even to the amateur astronomer in Japan who ultimately discovered it and for whom it was named;…
Only a handful of Colorado artists are genuinely famous–unless, of course, we’re talking about artists who work in ceramics. In that field, Colorado can point to a tradition that has produced many important figures, several of whom are known around the world. Think of Nan and Jim McKinnell, Paul Soldner,…
It’s tempting to compare Denver’s vibrant alternative art scene to a circus. But that wouldn’t be fair to circuses, which have only three rings, as well as an underlying organization and theme. The alternative scene, on the other hand, is governed by anarchy. Literally anything goes at the co-op galleries…
There is no region in the United States more firmly implanted in the popular imagination of the world than the American West. The images are romantic ones and have a long history. A rough-and-tumble Western mining town, for example, is the setting for a Giacomo Puccini opera–chosen, no doubt, because…
Greg Esser wears so many hats in the local art world that he’s reminiscent of Peter Sellers in one of those madcap Sixties comedies in which the British comic plays half a dozen roles. For starters, Esser’s the public art administrator for the Mayor’s Office of Art, Culture and Film…
