Coming Full Circle

Golden-based sculptor and installation artist Carley Warren has been a fixture on the Colorado art scene for decades. Along the way, she’s developed a unique signature style that refers to nature and human relationships — not through representational work, but by conveying the ideas conceptually, using simple forms carried out…

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Colorado & the West. This is the tenth summer in a row that David Cook Fine Art, the state’s premier purveyor of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century material, has presented a group show dedicated to historic Western art. This year’s version is anchored by more than two dozen oil paintings and watercolors…

Art Noir

Foothills Art Center’s latest exhibit, STARK: Life in Black and White, “is basically about what happens when you strip away color and its associations,” says curator Michael Chavez, who selected five artists working in black and white. “And they’re not all photographers, either,” he notes. “There is photography, but there’s…

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Charlene Harlow and Linda Campbell. In the west gallery at Edge, co-op member Charlene Harlow has unveiled a suite of unusual abstract paintings in the exhibit New Work by Charlene Harlow. These paintings are bold in several ways: The colors are loud, and she’s used some difficult juxtapositions of tones…

La Malagua celebrates the Loteria at Museo del las Americas.

Maruca Salazar became the director of the Museo de las Américas (861 Santa Fe Drive, 303-571-4401, www.museo.org) in the fall of 2009 and unveiled her first show, La Malagua, a couple of months ago. The exhibit highlights the work of a collaborative group of artists based in Puerto Vallarta and…

Bamboozled

On Christmas Day, 1945, American serviceman Walter Lutz found himself — as did so many others of his comrades — in Japan. He was stationed there with the United States occupation forces immediately following the end of World War II. But Lutz’s life would take a decisive turn that day,…

Artful Detours

Local painter Rita Derjue’s specialty is wildly colored neo-Fauvist watercolors of the Western landscape, and her latest efforts are now on view in Roadblock at Artists on Santa Fe. You can see them today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. or wait until tomorrow’s First Friday reception, from 6 to…

Child’s Play

Artist Sharon Brown and her husband, Rex, own the Pattern Shop Studio in the RiNo district. It’s a unique place that’s not only their home and Sharon’s studio, but also a gallery. For The Collectibles, the Browns have invited three artists — Tracy Weil, Danyl Cook and Jimmy Sellars —…

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Charlene Harlow and Linda Campbell. In the west gallery at Edge, co-op member Charlene Harlow has unveiled a suite of unusual abstract paintings in the exhibit New Work by Charlene Harlow. These paintings are bold in several ways: The colors are loud, and she’s used some difficult juxtapositions of tones…

Herbert Bayer gets his due at Z Art Department

There’s no argument that Herbert Bayer, who lived in Aspen from 1946 to 1974, is the most important artist in Colorado history. He was internationally famous when he moved here, having been associated with the Bauhaus in Germany before World War II. And he embraced a wide range of artistic…

Ray Tomasso’s paper works fill the Byers-Evans Gallery

Works on paper are a standard feature of the art world, even if works made out of paper are not. Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, however, a generation of artists began using paper as their medium — and Colorado artist Ray Tomasso was at the forefront. It’s…

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Looking for the Face…. The half-dozen shows at MCA Denver are collectively titled Looking for the Face I Had Before the World Was Made. Adam Lerner, the museum’s director, acted as lead curator for the exhibits with new hire Nora Burnett Abrams acting as his assistant. Michaël Borremans is a…

Colorado Clay takes shape at the Foothills Art Center

Colorado artists have been making ceramics since the turn of the last century, but it wasn’t until the 1970s and ’80s that the scene here really hit its stride. This was a time when a group of artists whom I call the “greatest generation” were routinely producing world-class work. Luminaries…

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Looking for the Face…. The half-dozen shows at MCA Denver are collectively titled Looking for the Face I Had Before the World Was Made. Adam Lerner, the museum’s director, acted as lead curator for the exhibits with new hire Nora Burnett Abrams acting as his assistant. Michaël Borremans is a…

Edge members put on a good-looking show

Among the city’s cooperative venues, Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173, www.edgeart.org) is almost always interesting. Because the membership is diverse and quite accomplished, shows here are often surprising and always worth viewing. A friend had contacted me about In the Manner of Pollock, a solo made up of recent…

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Looking for the Face…. The half-dozen shows at MCA Denver are collectively titled Looking for the Face I Had Before the World Was Made. Adam Lerner, the museum’s director, acted as lead curator for the exhibits with new hire Nora Burnett Abrams acting as his assistant. Michaël Borremans is a…

John Bonath blurs the edges at Camera Obscura

Hal Gould just turned ninety, and not only is he by far the oldest gallery director around, but his photo gallery, Camera Obscura (1309 Bannock Street, 303-623-4059, www.cameraobscuragallery.com), which he runs with Loretta Young-Gautier, is one of the oldest in the country. That said, there’s nothing old-fashioned about the place,…

Painting to Music

After years of doing representational paintings, Craig Marshall Smith suddenly changed course ten years ago and started creating abstracts. “I took an inventory of what I’d done,” he says, “and I realized that my work was not really notable. All along, I’d had this affection for Motherwell, Kline and Diebenkorn…

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Allen True’s West. Allen Tupper True was Denver’s premier muralist during the first third of the twentieth century. Sadly, many of his commissions have been painted over or were lost when the buildings they were in were demolished. In an act of cooperation, the three big cultural institutions on the…

John Bonath blurs the edges at Camera Obscura

Hal Gould just turned ninety, and not only is he by far the oldest gallery director around, but his photo gallery, Camera Obscura (1309 Bannock Street, 303-623-4059, www.cameraobscuragallery.com), which he runs with Loretta Young-Gautier, is one of the oldest in the country. That said, there’s nothing old-fashioned about the place,…