Visual Arts

Denver has a lot going on when it comes to street art.

Between the Biennial of the Americas, CRUSH and the city’s already vibrant cultural life, Denver is beset by so many festivals, concerts, screenings, openings and shows this week that it would be impossible for even the busiest bees to experience more than a fraction of the entertainments awaiting them.

On August 29, 2017, local Denver artists John Hastings, better known as RUMTUM, and Pat Milbery teamed up to do a year-long-awaited collaboration at the Globeville bar, Fort Greene.

The Institute for New Feeling has joined forces with the Black Cube Nomadic Museum to poke fun at the exploding enhanced water industry. The end product is a bottled water called Avalanche, manufactured complete with its own vending machines, which they’ll market, taking an absurdist approach, as a recycled beverage made fresh again by human usage.

Robert Schaller of the Handmade Film Institute will conduct a pinhole motion picture camera workshop and screen some of his work this weekend at the SIE FilmCenter.

Sommer Browning is a poet, but she’s opting to take a chance by turning her own garage into a creative incubator where artists, writers, performing artists and filmmakers can all mingle freely. Browning calls it Georgia Art Space, and the pop-up venue makes its debut this weekend with an exhibit by artist Joshua Ware.

In September, the Biennial of the Americas and Crush 2017 descend over Denver for a mash-up of enlightened cross-cultural discourse and gritty urban street art. Art goes on, in the galleries and in the streets; here are some of the places both will intersect this weekend.

A conversation with the Director of the Colorado Film School, Brian Steward, now entering his second year in the position.

Visionary Denver architect Charles Deaton erected a handful of remarkably original structures in the middle of the twentieth century. His most famous work, the “Sculptured House” in Genesee, is unofficially known as the Sleeper house; his bank in Englewood will be celebrated on September 7.

When artist Emily Camp lived in Buffalo, New York as a child, her mom would tell her to pack her bags; they were going to the city
 for the weekend. That intrepid spirit rubbed off on Camp, now 21. Instead of renewing her lease on her Glendale apartment in January, she’ll load her car (currently a Jeep Patriot, although she’s on the lookout for a larger sprinter van) with art supplies and embark on a painting tour of the fifty states, paid for by sales of her art via a GoFundMe campaign.

While the Labor Day holiday has strayed from its collectivist roots, it’s still possible to enjoy some of the finest entertainment that Denver has to offer on proletarian wages. Here are ten events that cost less than ten bucks, and six are free.

Kick back and kick off your Labor Day weekend with art. Here are six First Friday openings all set smack in the middle of metro-area arts and cultural districts.

Jamil Jude, an up-and-coming young director whose relationship with Curious Theatre Company artistic director Chip Walton goes back over six years, is currently in Denver rehearsing the cast for Appropriate, which opens September 2. Jude is very enthusiastic about Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play.

Joel Swanson is one of the region’s top conceptual artists. Not only is his work relentlessly intelligent, but it’s also relentlessly beautiful, as seen in Joel Swanson: Sticks & Stones at David B. Smith Gallery.

Over 700 unique works of art by Colorado artists deck out the new Kimpton Hotel Born Denver.

Though Denver is awash in hot-ticket entertainment all weekend long, Westword hasn’t forgotten about all the Johnny-come-lately readers with empty pockets and nothing to do.

There are more than 1000 ants in the Boulder basement art gallery where Jacob Lemanski sits cross-legged, explaining how he got from biking across continents to building ant farms. All four walls of the room host what Lemanski calls Ant Spaces: thin layers of soil and brightly-hued sand set between glass and illuminated by LEDs that change color. The ants tunnel through the soil, creating slowly-shifting patterns in the dirt to reveal the background image of the Carina Nebula. In a word, it’s mesmerizing.

Colorado Ballet has been going through big changes, including the exit of principal dancer Sharon Wehner.

A second wave of I-70 viaduct street art has brought out nearly thirty local artists. The community can view the new installations on Saturday, August 26 from 2-6 p.m.

Say goodbye to summer vacations and hello to a new season of arts and culture: Here are six ways to get a head start on fall exhibits.

The artists at current shows at the William Havu Gallery and Tina Goodwin Fine Art are all taking their own routes to the same goal: using old-fashioned representational imagery in some kind of contemporary way.