Each spring, lindy hop king Frankie Manning returns to Denver, like the swallows to Capistrano, for a weekend of dance, dance and more dance. The octogenarian’s history as a dancer dates back to the heyday of the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, where he helped invent the original lindy moves. When…
The Mercury Cafe’s indomitable life force, Marilyn Megenity, has seen it all — good, bad and ugly — in the many years she’s been running the place. So if she personally endorses something, it’s gotta be good. Right now she’s touting the Middle Eastern Peace Dance, which is held the…
First of all, there’s no need to arrive single, but if you do, there’s no need to be shy. Nor do you have to be accomplished on the dance floor, though you’ll see plenty who are. Known for its friendly regulars and non-threatening atmosphere, the forty-and-over Sunday-night Sharp Images dance…
Wife-swapping is dead? It simply ain’t so. If you’ve always wanted to have group sex with a charming, friendly group of people — and do a little drinking and dancing beforehand — you’ve just hit the jackpot. Formed in 1969, the Golden Circle is Colorado’s oldest and most legitimate swingers’…
Collecting art has never been an inexpensive hobby. But even the poorest aesthete can build up a cachet of original works at an Art Trading Card swap, where painters, drawers and doodlers convene to barter tiny masterpieces. The cards are only two by three inches — about the size of…
The homegrown blockbuster Retrospectacle, which opened last fall at the Denver Art Museum, has been described as a “Dianne Vanderlip lovefest.” That’s because it highlights Vanderlip’s 25 years as curator of the museum’s modern and contemporary art department, a job that was created specifically for her. The exhibit includes many…
After World War II, American pop culture hit Japan like a tsunami. Tokyo, for example, is filled with Yankee Doodle standards like skyscrapers, neon signs and McDonald’s. This influence extends to the arts, as well, and Cydney Payton, director of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, tapped into the trend with…
Denver sculptor Emmett Culligan made a splash when he first emerged on the scene a few years ago, and since then, he’s gotten relentlessly better. His latest efforts were featured in Emmett Culligan, at Judish Fine Arts in February. The fabulous monumental sculptures on display had gravity-defying features, with big…
If your ideas about Western art are limited to bronze statues of cowboys and Indians, Salient GROUND at Robischon would have quickly dispelled them. In this show, two great Colorado painters translated the familiar tradition into something new. Don Stinson romanticized the ruins of motels, gas stations and drive-ins by…
It’s hard to believe it’s already been four years since William Havu opened his flashy gallery in the Golden Triangle, and even harder to remember that the neighborhood — now an urban enclave – was simply a deserted mess. For his anniversary last fall, Havu dedicated an exhibit to some…
The growth of modern painting from 1900 to 1950 as it played itself out in Colorado was the topic of the impressive Colorado Collections II, which hung in the Denver Public Library’s Vida Ellison Gallery. All of the big names from that time were featured, including Birger Sandzén, Vance Kirkland…
The quirky and elegant paintings in the Bob Koons exhibit Nearness of Distance at Carson-Masuoka Gallery were fresh off the easel — and they looked it. Koons, who showed related work earlier at Edge Gallery, transforms old master paintings into contemporary ones. After choosing a landscape from art history, he…
While kids right out of art school can often score a co-op gig if they’re lucky, they almost never wind up at a top gallery — especially one like Judish Fine Arts, a stunning space in a Victorian stone church in northwest Denver. But that’s precisely what happened to John…
Young Boulder artist Joseph Shaeffer has some pretty wild and extreme concepts — like using the attractive and repellent properties of magnetic fields to make sculptures. In Continuum, at the now closed and sorely missed Andenken Annex, Shaeffer employed magnets to keep his sculptures together or apart, depending on his…
The breathtaking Manuel Neri at Robischon Gallery was a stunning display of works by one of the greatest Bay Area artists ever. Neri has used the figure as a taking-off point for his sculpture for almost fifty years, ever since his first child was born to the first of his…
The informal space in the front of Artyard took on an elegant formality when Rokko Aoyama’s solo, Visual Itch, was on display. Though Aoyama lives in Colorado, she was born and raised in Japan, and the island country’s taste, materials and subject matter dominated this show. The Japanese snack Manju…
When the Colorado Photographic Arts Center was founded in 1963, the art crowd held photography in disrepute. But times change, and the medium now has an assured place in the visual arts. To celebrate its fortieth anniversary, CPAC did something special: It mounted the exhibit Betty Hahn, which spotlighted the…
Even though Street Level was all about New York, it was organized right here in Denver by Simon Zalkind, who saluted his former home town by painting the gallery walls a yellow the exact shade of the mustard at Nathan’s on Coney Island…
Roach Studios has been a fixture on Broadway since the 1970s, but the enterprise itself dates back to 1936, when the late Otto Roach established it in Lakewood. The specialty of the house then — as it is today — was custom photo enlargement. In 1958, Roach sold the business…
The unforgettable An American Century of Photography was presented last summer at the Denver Art Museum, and the sprawling twentieth-century survey included some of the most important images ever produced. Curator and connoisseur Keith Davis made selections from the heavy-duty collection of Kansas City’s Hallmark Corporation, which has acquired famous…
The Rule Gallery’s Universal Limited Art Editions, which opened in February and is still on display, showcases fine prints by a who’s who of contemporary artists. The top-drawer New York printmaker of the exhibit’s title provided its fine prints, including some by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Terry Winters. ULAE…
Ceramic artist Jun Kaneko has pushed the clay vessel to the limits, throwing pots that are much, much larger than he is — many of them towering more than ten feet tall and weighing thousands of pounds. This fall, Carson-Masuoka partner and gallery director Mark Masuoka organized a major show…
