Visual Arts

The cornerstone of any library is in its stacks, where living records in the form of books and media sit, waiting to impart knowledge and share stories. When tasked with curating a show for the shelves of MCA Denver’s Open Shelf Library space, artist Derrick Velasquez began by deconstructing the library aesthetic and finding parallels in life, bringing together what might seem like a scattered group of collections in repose.

This past September Sandra Phillips relocated her namesake gallery to a smallish storefront on West 11th Avenue near Bannock Street which is just a block away from the Denver Art Museum and the other attractions of the Civic Center Cultural Complex.

“When we’re done with this conversation, I’m going to look like a big bum,” says Teresa Castaneda, laughing as she stands by the front door of her home on Elati Street. She’s petite and tan, and a shock of gray curly hair frames her face like a wave. It takes…

Two excellent shows at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center — Force/Resistance and Don Coen: The Migrant Series — have special resonance in the age of Trump.

History repeats itself. So does “famous artist” Phil Bender’s art. Denver’s artists are getting priced out of the city, again. And when Pirate: Contemporary Art goes to Lakewood, Bender and his multiplying art will go, too.

Tara Rynders leads a double life as a registered nurse and a dancer, but the opposing disciplines are more alike than you’d think, at least in Rynders’s creative universe.

Travel can be rough for vegans hellbent on sticking to their plant-based diet. But Dave Paco is here to help.

The female perspectives represented by each of these Denver artists are not delicate nor flimsy but supremely badass; their expression is powerful, non-gendered, non-liner and not-of-this-world.

Comedian Charlie Murphy, who performed frequently in Denver, passed away on April 12 in New York City.

The new Kirkland Museum, honoring Denver’s premier artist of the mid-twentieth century, won’t open for visitors until mid-2018, but a tour of the project shows it’s a true landmark in the making.

Divisions, Wonderbound’s latest performance, runs three consecutive weekends and is the launch of Denver’s Flobots tour supporting the hip-hop act’s third album, No Enemies.

Jeffrey Keith doesn’t want to bullshit people. And in the case of Storm Warning: Artists on Climate Change, a show Keith curated for the University of Denver’s Vicki Myhren Gallery, that mission felt all the more compelling because of the urgency of its subject matter. “So much art in this…

Artist and Westword MasterMind Ravi Zupa doesn’t want the public to forget that police continue to kill unarmed black people – even as the actions of President Donald Trump’s administration have jerked attention away from criminal-justice reform and the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Removing tattoos for free is not an ordinary service offered by tattoo shops, but All Sacred is no ordinary tattoo shop. The hybrid tattoo shop meets nonprofit is currently in the market for a tattoo removal laser with the goal to offer the service of free tattoo removal for former gang members, criminal or otherwise, giving priority to those who tattoos have affected their quality of life.

There’s always good reason to catch a Phil Bender solo at Pirate: Contemporary Art, but this current effort, straightforwardly titled Phil Bender, has the added attraction of being thoroughly poignant. Though not Pirate’s last show, it will be Bender’s last at the co-op’s longtime home in northwest Denver, which the group will soon leave.

A host of national comics creators will descend on DINK, Denver’s premier independent comics convention, at the McNichols Building on April 8 and 9. But DINK also prides itself on nurturing the local scene. Listed in alphabetical order, below are just a handful of the notable Denver-based artists and writers…

My first psychic was about six feet tall, with a plume of yellow hair that recalled both Phyllis Diller and Big Bird, a chain smoker who read my future — rather accurately — by flipping through a deck of playing cards. She punctuated important moments in the reading with jabs…

For almost ten years, Jaime Kopke has been devising ways for museums and other cultural organizations in the Denver metro area to engage their audiences, beyond serving as reliquaries presenting art and information behind a symbolic wall of glass.

Stop by the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Denver for a creative pick-me-up at “Sense of Place: Creating Urban Adventure.”

Last year, Charlie and Jeff LaGreca stood in the center of the Sherman Street Event Center with grins on their faces. The two brothers had brought the unlikely to life: The inaugural installment of DINK, the largest independent comics convention in Denver history, was in full swing around them. Artists,…

Mark Sink, organizer of Denver’s Month of Photography, has also curated Between the Medium: Seeing Photographically at RedLine.

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts announced its 39th season, Monday, April 3 for both the DCPA Theatre Company and Off-Center.