When Mark Travis died at the end of 2007, he had begun working on a series of politically themed pieces that were going to be presented at Space Gallery (765 Santa Fe Drive, 720-904-1086, www.spacegallery.org) this August to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. That plan was scrapped after his…
The current exhibit at Metropolitan State College’s Center for Visual Art is interesting, though decidedly odd. It’s simply called Story, with no subtitle to help explain the idea behind it. This allowed its organizers, CVA director Jennifer Garner and assistant director Cicely Cullen, to build a group show connected only…
Clyfford Still Unveiled. A master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, painter Clyfford Still was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. His antisocial behavior led to a situation where 94 percent of his artworks remained together after he died — a staggeringly complete chronicle of his oeuvre that…
More than any other artist cooperative around town, Spark Gallery (900 Santa Fe Drive, 720-889-2200, www.sparkgallery.com) has a membership mostly comprising artists with long and established careers. And that’s how I’d describe both Judith Cohn and Sue Simon, who are starring in side-by-side solo shows there. Dust to Dust is…
Before I recommend that you take the time and trouble to check out the impressive if misleadingly titled Impressionist and Modern Masters From the New Orleans Museum of Art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, I want to say a word or two about Blake Milteer, a newish curator…
Clyfford Still Unveiled. A master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, painter Clyfford Still was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. His antisocial behavior led to a situation where 94 percent of his artworks remained together after he died — a staggeringly complete chronicle of his oeuvre that…
The walls of the William Havu Gallery (1040 Cherokee Street, 303-893-2360, (www.williamhavugallery.com) are covered by The Nature of Things, combining the work of Tracy and Sushe Felix (see review). A second exhibit, Erick C. Johnson, has been installed around the edges, in the corners and outside, with one of the…
Last summer, I was part of a panel discussion about the role that our local scenery plays in both contemporary and traditional art, especially — though not exclusively — in the art that’s done in the region. At one point, artist Don Stinson, who was in the audience, made a…
Color as Field. It’s no exaggeration to say that Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975 is one of the best shows presented in Denver in a generation. Filled with a who’s who of American art — Still, Rothko, Frankenthaler, Stella — it’s like a brief vacation into a world where…
Ivar Zeile, the owner of Plus Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927) has often described his approach to showing contemporary art as “eclectic,” and in his case, that means embracing competing ideologies at the same time and in the same shows. The problem with this approach is that offerings of this…
On December 14, I got a call from a good friend. Her tone was uncharacteristically formal, so I knew something was wrong. “Mark Travis was found dead in his studio,” she stoically told me. This news was shocking despite the fact that Travis had been in declining health for years,…
American Art Invitational. Art, like politics, can be divided into liberal and conservative camps, with contemporary art representing the left and traditional art the right. But unlike politics, where the baton can pass back and forth between the two opposites, the art world has been run decisively by the liberals…
The idea for a quartet of solo shows at Sandy Carson Gallery (760 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-8585, www.sandycarsongallery.com) began when owner Sandy Carson decided she wanted to mount an exhibit devoted to Toronto hotshot Tony Scherman, one of the foremost encaustic painters anywhere. Encaustic, by the way, is a wax-based…
American Art Invitational. Art, like politics, can be divided into liberal and conservative camps, with contemporary art representing the left and traditional art the right. But unlike politics, where the baton can pass back and forth between the two opposites, the art world has been run decisively by the liberals…
The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver opened its brand-new David Adjaye-designed building at the corner of 15th and Delgany streets less than two months ago. I love the building and the fact that the upstart institution managed to construct a high-style facility by an internationally famous architect, and I focused on…
American Art Invitational. Art, like politics, can be divided into liberal and conservative camps, with contemporary art representing the left and traditional art the right. But unlike politics, where the baton can pass back and forth between the two opposites, the art world has been run decisively by the liberals…
In 1890, Benjamin F. Woodward, a tycoon who helped bring the telegraph to Colorado, commissioned Denver’s premier architect, Frank Edbrooke, to design a mansion. Edbrooke, who had just completed his masterpiece, the Brown Palace Hotel, worked in the Richardsonian-Romanesque manner, the most important architectural style of the day. Constructed of…
As you might imagine, I see a lot of art shows in the course of doing my job. I figure that since this time last year, I’ve seen something like 250 exhibits — not counting the informal efforts in restaurants and coffee shops that I encounter in everyday life. It…
American Art Invitational. Art, like politics, can be divided into liberal and conservative camps, with contemporary art representing the left and traditional art the right. But unlike politics, where the baton can pass back and forth between the two opposites, the art world has been run decisively by the liberals…
In Sporting and Recreation: Furniture, the current exhibit at Ironton Studios and Gallery (3636 Chestnut Place, www.irontonstudios.com), Chase DeForest has a lot of fun adding narrative content to things like sideboards and chairs. The items all reference some kind of leisure activity like a game. But DeForest is also interested…
It’s hardly a new observation to say that the invention of photography revolutionized the visual arts; it’s trite, but true. Before photography, the best way to capture the appearance of exterior reality was to paint it. Once people could take photos, however, the idea of painting as a window on…
Artisans & Kings. For its first extravaganza of the season, the Denver Art Museum has unveiled a sprawling blockbuster in the Frederic C. Hamilton Building that focuses on the royal collections from the Louvre. You don’t have to know much about art to have heard of the Louvre, so Artisans…
