Peter Illig’s solo (see review) is rocking the front of Pirate: a contemporary art oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058), making it a hard act to follow. Luckily for us, emerging artist Warren Kelly, whose show children’s games is installed in the Associates’ Space, stands up to Illig’s more ambitious endeavor…

It’s the biggest art news of the summer — but don’t get excited, because it’s not necessarily a good thing: The + Zeile Judish Gallery is now minus Judish and has changed its name to + Gallery. Both the story and the new name strike me as ridiculous. I spoke…

A few years ago, University of Colorado regents made the rash decision to abandon the school’s Health Sciences Center campus in east Denver and move it to the Fitzsimons campus in Aurora. As illogical as that idea was, there’s no second-guessing it now, because it’s a fait accompli. Departments of…

Members of the Denver City Council and community leaders have been talking a lot lately about improving East Colfax Avenue. And I have to admit, even if I love the honky-tonk character of the street — and I do — it does look pretty shabby in places. This is strange,…

In the intimate gallery at the front of Artyard, (1251 South Pearl Street, 303-777-3219), Kansas artist Marc Berghaus is the subject of the solo Linguistic Utopias, #1. Berghaus has been exhibiting his sculptures in the area for a few years; just in the past few months his work has been…

There are a number of noteworthy changes under way at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Now, surely I’m not the only person in the area who cringes when the word “change” is used in the same sentence as “Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.” Others will recall, as I do,…

There’s a great new gallery called weilworks (3611 Chestnut Place, 303-308-9345) that just opened this past spring. It’s located across the street from Ironton, in the industrial neighborhood north of downtown. Unlike most of the businesses around here — including Ironton — weilworks is housed in its own custom-designed structure,…

There’s a magnificent retrospective at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art devoted to the work of the late John David Rigsby, who was a major powerhouse in Colorado’s art scene. Dots, Blobs and Angels surveys more than forty years’ worth of the remarkable artist’s paintings and sculptures. The year 1993 was…

In the front room of Pirate: A Contemporary Art Oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058) is the notable solo Telling Fantasies, which features recent paintings and drawings by Denver artist Irene Delka McCray. McCray’s style is realistic, and she’s thoroughly accomplished technically. She revels in accurate renderings of fabric folds and…

There’s an unusual convergence of related art shows at many of the state’s galleries, particularly those in Denver. Scores of venues have arranged their schedules to feature the topic of weaving (broadly speaking) in conjunction with the sixteenth biennial meeting of the Handweavers Guild of America, taking place at the…

Here’s a delicious irony: Many of the artists exploring what’s inaccurately called “the cutting edge” are in their fifties, sixties and even seventies, while many of the twenty-somethings are into traditional art. Go figure. This youthful interest in traditional art is amply demonstrated by an important show titled cadence at…

Repetition is a key to all human endeavors, from music to math to the sciences, from the spoken word to the written one. And don’t forget history and the social sciences, which are all about repeating things. In the fine arts, too, repetition is basic and, as far as I…

Earlier this season, Cordell Taylor Gallery and Ron Judish Fine Art merged into the new +Zeile/Judish Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927), and everyone must have known that some of the artists they each represented would have to go. There were just too many of them. Owner Ivar Zeile, partner Ron…

I think it’s exciting to watch the Denver Art Museum’s new Frederic C. Hamilton Building rise out of the ground, as it has been doing over the past few months just south of West 13th Avenue along the vacated axis of Acoma Street. Currently, the Daniel Libeskind-designed structure is merely…

Last summer, the ILK co-op all but disappeared, and for a long time, its space, just inside the main entrance of Pirate gallery, was not only closed, but boarded up. Then a new crew of members, headed by artist and writer Troy Briere, took over and began to present shows…

For a long time, art done in the Western states during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was held in low regard. It suffered in comparison to both earlier Western art and art done in New York during the same time period. But things have started to change during…

Currently, there’s a touching two-part exhibit at the Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173) that honors Roger M. Beltrami, a long-time co-op member who died earlier this year. The show, birds of a feather, has two parts: In the front space is a memorial presentation featuring Beltrami’s own work, and…

Is it just me, or does it seem like the art world is the midst of high season? Nearly everywhere there’s some exhibit that’s worth taking in — and that’s really weird because the season should be shutting down for the summer. Ordinarily, June, July and August are the least…

Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955) is currently presenting a three-artist group show with the meaningless and universally applicable title Contemplation. The exhibit brings together the work of Boulder sculptor Anne Shutan and Denver painters Eric Michael Corrigan and Angela Larson — or does it? All three artists…

The story had been circulating for months: Fresh Art Gallery was closing for good, and the newish +Zeile/Judish would be moving into the sharp-looking spot at Ninth Avenue and Santa Fe Drive. And it was lots more than a rumor. Not only had the tale been spread around by Jeanie…

There’s an extremely unusual show at Capsule (554 Santa Fe Drive, 303-623-3460) called Justin Beard: Second Hand Smoke. The handsome exhibit represents a very strong early showing for a young emerging artist who’s just out of art school. Capsule director Lauri Lynnxe Murphy describes Beard’s installation as being “very cool…

Well, I’ve decided to make it official and issue a formal statement on the matter: I hate juried shows. They’re the slums among group shows, and it’s hard to believe they’re still being done. I don’t even know why I still go to see them. The problems with juried shows…