The doomed are often a remarkably energetic and productive lot, especially when it comes to creating portraits of their personal horrors. Themes vary in intensity between slow self-destruction and grand devastation, but vampirism covers the full spectrum of ghastliness. This is because the imbalance represents so much to so many…
Although these days the most impressive aspect of the modest bungalows that line the streets of Washington Park and Highland would seem to be their high price tags, they also boast sterling design pedigrees. Originally built to house the working class, these buildings are classic examples of the Arts and…
Some scientists have begun to suspect that we are alone in the universe — unless one considers microbes and bacteria the equivalent of alien friends and neighbors. But little green men and Unidentified Flying Objects captured the public’s imagination long ago, and they remain an international obsession. A case in…
Is there a pattern that connects the various media that are collectively called “crafts”? What does jewelry have to do with glass? Ceramics with quilts? How are they linked to one another? One obvious connection is that all craft items are handmade. Then again, so are paintings and cakes baked…
Last year, Denver artist and commercial art director Jeanie Nuanes King was looking for studio space when she found a run-down storefront on funky South Broadway. “At first I was just going to hang my own work,” she says, “but I always wanted to run a gallery and get out…
Nuncrackers: The Nunsense Christmas Musical is a collection of sketches, songs and sight gags that work best when they’re briskly paced and centered on a single character. During its many multiple-character scenes and lame segues, however, Dan Goggin’s musical revue about the Little Sisters of Hoboken fizzles into a predictable,…
Nothing in Maynard has changed since the Civil War,” says a young woman of her Texas community’s stultifying ways. Consigned to a life of folding clothes, screaming at her three kids and indulging in midday liquor-laced gossip sessions, Hattie’s sweeping assessment doesn’t seem that far-fetched to anyone who’s spent her…
For 17 years, Dorothy Swanson has waged the loneliest battle: keeping good shows on television, a medium that exists as if only to taunt her. You can hear in her voice the strain such a struggle has taken on her. Her voice breaks and softens when she speaks about the…
There’s definitely something weird going on in the British pop scene. Years after tasteful Yanks allowed classic works such as Saturday Night Fever and Grease to dissolve into our vast iconic array, villainous Limey programmers were still hyping them over there. Thus, the dual plagues of disco and ’50s rock…
This is some damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks. And some damn good cherry pie. But I have to tell you something, sheriff: Last night, I had a dream in which a dancing midget talked backward, thus leading me to believe that our killer is a man…
Daniel Salazar’s unique photo-constructions hit you full-on with that secret weapon so common to work in all disciplines of Chicano arts: humor. An acclaimed film documentarian, animator and photographer, Salazar thinks laughter is a great way to open up dialogue, and that’s the point of his ongoing series Machos Sensitivos,…
Here in Colorado, we’re very familiar with the cowboy-poetry phenomenon, but the notion of an Australian bush poet is still a bit exotic. Although only the latter features wallabies and dingoes and mulga trees as part of its lore, the two genres are closely related. And bush poetry, which boasts…
Colorado’s own Chuck Parson is surely one of the most prolific artists anywhere, as his activities of the last year illustrate. When he wasn’t putting in long hours as head of the sculpture department at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, he was feverishly working away in his…
Elizabeth Schlosser Fine Art in Cherry Creek is presenting The Estate of Ethel Magafan, an exhibit of fourteen pieces from the late artist. Magafan was born and educated in Colorado, but she spent most of her career in the art colony at Woodstock, New York. In the 1930s, Magafan and…
Encouraged in no small measure by the fact that Denver’s cultural groups annually outdraw all local professional sports teams combined, several ambitious theater companies have recently elbowed their way onto the city’s crowded stage. Rather than join forces with established organizations that operate their own spaces (and boast loyal followings),…
At the time, it was meant to be read as a great compliment: Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez create comic books for people who don’t read comic books! A publisher or pitchman couldn’t have come up with a more glorious phrase, one magical sentence that would reel in the literate and…
Skeptics will not take easily to the optimism in Thomas Carter’s teen love story Save the Last Dance, and outright cynics may find the whole thing absurd. The notion that a sheltered white girl from shopping-mall country and a knowing black boy from the inner city can dance their way…
Thirteen Days is a suspenseful look at the American government in the grip of a crucial, minute-to-minute, real-life crisis that threatens to destroy the country. No, it is not — as the brief time span of the title makes clear — about the recent election struggles, or the 1998 impeachment,…
Shuffleupagus and Five-Card Nancy are just two of the collaborative art games to be played when the Hector Cartoonists Collective and the Denver Comic Art Festival host a pair of Saturday night free-for-all Cartoon Jam Sessions, designed to lure R. Crumb wannabes out of their closets for some mass hysteria…
Not every resident zipping along the fast track of the rapidly changing Golden Triangle district lives in a luxury loft: Just witness the inhabitants of one modest relic that’s stood along 11th Avenue at Cherokee Street for eighty or ninety years. Heretofore nameless, Row House — so named in a…
In the waning months of 2000, history — or in Denver’s case, historic preservation — marched down the street. The Denver City Council, with the full support of Mayor Wellington Webb, unanimously authorized the creation of a non-contiguous downtown historic district. It includes more than forty buildings that have played…
A sculpture by Robert Mangold, titled “PTTSAAES Denver” but unofficially redubbed “Particle Moving Through Denver” (above), was recently erected on the fairly new leg of the Sixth Avenue Parkway that runs through the still-under-construction neighborhood being built on the former Lowry Air Force base. The sculpture, done in 1999, is…
