Arts & Culture

“In order to be a strong ecosystem where artists can thrive, we have to have a healthy amount of cross-pollination” says Libby Barbee, Arts in Society and Programming manager at RedLine. It’s that aim, along with a vested interest in socially- and community-engaged art, that anchors the 48 Hours Summit, a free and open-to-the-public August 11-12 series of talks, workshops, and visual and performance art related to the gallery’s annual theme, (dis)place.

Ron Campbell quit animating after fifty years in the trade to try his hand at painting. His subjects of choice: the characters he had once inked to life: the Smurfs, the Jetsons, Scooby Doo and especially the Beatles.

It’s hard to write about a play that’s so secret that even the actors haven’t seen the script until the lights go up onstage, but we thought we’d give a try, because Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit Red Rabbit seems to be worth the trouble. Censored and unable to leave his native country, Soleimanpour managed to send the script of his one-actor play out into the free world beyond Iran’s borders, where it’s graced numerous international stages since 2011, including a nine-month run last year in New York at the Westside Theatre,

First Friday is over and the crowds have left the streets, but the art must go on — and it will, at these six openings and events.

Taking advantage of the gallery’s floor plan, Michael Warren Contemporary is currently presenting solos by Kelton Osborn and Andrew Roberts-Gray that bookend a group show.

At least four hundred poets have descended on Denver, heads full of memorized verses, for the National Poetry Slam.For those who can’t distinguish a slam poem from a verbal fistfight or the recitation of iambic pentameter, or simply readers curious about what to expect, Westword got on the phone with Executive Director Suzi Q. Smith and her right-hand woman in planning the event, local poetry and art advocate Danielle Brooks, to demystify slam poetry.

Australian artist Craig Walsh, whose eerie and inspiring projections of human faces on trees are already an internet sensation, will bring his large-scale, site-specific installations to Colorado for the Breckenridge International Festival of the Arts.

From massive arts institutions to high-end commercial galleries and DIY spaces, Denver boasts an array of venues to check out first-rate art.