Although he shot thousands of documentary images of Soviet workers, students and wartime battlefields during his long career (and later served as photo editor of the U.S.S.R.’s Life-like picture tabloid Ogonyak), Communist-era photojournalist Semyon Fridlyand remains little known in the West. Until now, that is: The University of Denver, which…

Baseball is back, at least in the sunnier climes of Arizona and Florida, where spring training is under way (the Rockies take on the Chicago White Sox this very day!). So pull yourselves together: It’s time to wipe away last fall’s tears and re-engage. For many of the hard-core fans,…

I don’t know about you, but this is the time of year when I turn into a crab and crawl into a boot and refuse to come out until it’s at least 72 degrees outside daily. I can no longer bear the brown, white and gray landscape or the fierce…

I’ve been doing this cultural beat for a long time now, and I’ve come to realize that things don’t last. Artists are disorganized and sometimes flaky, propelled by great ideas and held back by chancy finances. But those that do usually survive because someone, or in some cases, a whole…

You might suppose that environmental artist Lita Albuquerque, who’s slung giant blue orbs across the barren landscape of the North and South poles to create “Stellar Axis,” a kind of earth-sky star map on ice, has a bit of a Zeus complex. But, in fact, the project comprised the very…

Compiled just in time for last fall’s thirtieth festival, Take 30: The First Three Decades of the Denver International Film Festival — a collection of DIFF anecdotes and memories with photographs by Larry Laszlo — conjures images both old and new between its covers in an ultimate labor of love…

If you thought that all music from Peru sounds like that Paul Simon song with the flutey pan pipes, think again. Away from the heights of the Andes, Peru also boasts an African heritage brought to its coast by a diaspora of slaves from every region of the dark continent…

Reading Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking is no picnic. The critically acclaimed late author and activist, who suffered a breakdown and died by her own hand, minced few words in her award-winning account of the rampaging Japanese occupation of Nanking, China, in 1937, which resulted in the barbaric murders…

As both an artist and an art entrepreneur, Denver’s Jimmy Sellars makes it a point to keep his eye on the international, and thanks to the wonders of the Internet, it’s been a doable task. But that also makes it possible for him to easily pair a local painter and…

Too much of a good thing? Never! Especially not in Denver’s select independent retail wilderness, where lasting long enough to make it can often be a financial struggle. And in the case of these Westword Best of Denver recipients — the Broadway craft supply and hip-wear emporium Fancy Tiger and…

The ladies of Firehouse Quilts do it for free: They make snuggle-sized quilts that are donated to various agencies, from local fire departments to victim advocacy organizations, for children who just happen to need something cuddly and homemade to hug. And now they’re putting out a call to sewing enthusiasts…

The University of Denver’s Center for Judaic Studies continues its year-long series, Shema: What Jewish Culture Sounds Like, this week with a full platter of events, concerts and lectures featuring the Iranian Jewish cantor and ethnomusicologist Galeet Dardashti. A musician and expert on Sephardi and Middle-Eastern Jewish music — a…

Fiber artist, single mother and business owner Deborah Kruger is all those things and more: She’s also Jewish, a feminist and profoundly inspired by the indigenous artists of West Africa and the Amazon, and thus the product of a unique triumvirate that figures in equal proportions throughout her work, in…

Okay, unsentimental slackers, if you didn’t book a romantic table three years ago, you’re probably out of luck tonight, but here’s one you can at least attempt: Culinary cousins Mezcal, 3230 East Colfax Avenue (303-322-5219), and Tambien, 250 Steele Street (303-333-1763), are throwing Kill Cupid parties to celebrate the day…

Considering that it falls on the eve of Israel’s sixtieth anniversary, it’s a happy coincidence that the emphasis on Israeli film is so heavy this year at the twelfth annual Denver Jewish Film Festival, a well-paced ten-day spectacular hosted by the Mizel Arts and Culture Center. “In the past, we’ve…

Tucson artist Kate Breakey found her calling one day in 1995 when a bird she tried to rescue died in her hand, leaving her moved and fascinated by her closeness to the creature’s final moment. By photographing it and, later, more birds, as well as reptiles and flora found dead…

Don’t be fooled by the title: Space Invaders, the new show opening today at the Museo de las Américas, isn’t about little green men or Roswell minutiae. Rather, it refers to what you get when you deconstruct those two simple words — “space” and “invaders.” And the ten artists included…

To Chef William Poole and Loren Penton, his partner in business and crime at their LoHi shop, Wen Chocolates, chocolate is life. Or at least the true meaning of existence: “Wen” is Egyptian for “to exist,” and the bounding rabbit that is Wen’s stylish logo is also its hieroglyphic. To…

From The Taming of the Shrew to thirtysomething, writers have been interpreting and reinterpreting the marital relationship for stage and screen in scrupulous detail for as long as the pen’s met paper. Man and woman, in the most simplistic terms, are what make the world go ’round, after all; “Can’t…

I’m way too old to be captivated by Kidrobot toys, and yet I inexplicably am. If I were richer, I’d have a houseful of Dunnys and Munnys and Zoomies and Labbits and IceBots. But I was raised on a steady diet of DAM troll dolls, Cootie, Gumby and an especially…

Artist Tamar Hirschl, an Israeli by way of Zagreb, knows all too well what it means to be displaced: She arrived in the promised land after losing her father to a concentration camp and living through World War II as a refugee, only to find more unrest in a struggling…

Blue Heaven, for the record, refers to the preference of LAPD retirees for the remote sticks of northern Idaho, which explains why so many ex-cops, both good and bad, are suddenly on duty in Kootenai Bay in C.J. Box’s so-named new thriller. A stand-alone from Box, the Wyoming-based author of…