Dale Chisman, who died in 2008, was one of the most significant abstract painters to have ever worked in Colorado — a roster that includes the likes of Vance Kirkland and Herbert Bayer. But Chisman wasn’t just a great artist. He was also a great arts advocate, with his efforts…
The continuing appeal of abstraction some hundred years after it was developed in France by the gods of art history — Picasso, Matisse, Braque and on and on — is both astounding and predictable. Astounding because, like hip-hop, it seems to be an inexhaustible source for newness; predictable because arrangements…
This I know is true: Comic books aren’t easy. Banish the idea that they are from your minds immediately before you proceed. Sure, artists like Noah Van Sciver (creator of Westword’s weekly 4 Questions strip) make it look easy, but a comic artist is kind of like a god-figure who…
After more than six months of residency at the Denver Art Museum and its accompanying marketing blitz, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs closed yesterday to head to its next destination in St. Paul, Minnesota, where it opens in February. Along with it, the 26-foot-tall statue of Anubis,…
There’s no time like the present. It’s time to get gallery-hopping, and the first First Friday of the year has plenty to offer. Such as:…
KIROTV in Lynwood, Washington recently reported a story about a real-life superhero named Phoenix Jones who stopped a car theft by chasing the man down the street. Weird, but not unheard of in this post-Kick-Ass world. In fact, there is an entire website devoted to these real world superheroes –…
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers has been trying to get on Facebook for over a year. Due to issues with the social networking site’s indemnity clause — which says Facebook is not responsible for one user suing another — Suthers last April ordered all state agencies and institutions to take…
Since it finally feels like winter, it seems appropriate to begin throwing “official” holiday parties. Consider the Gorinto Pedicab Holiday Party the first one of the new year, going down tonight at the Mercury Cafe. $5 gets you in the door for a night of bands, booze and jug music,…
We’ve all heard that eyes are the “windows to the soul,” which is just one of the many things that makes it so unsettling when those eyes are replaced by fucking mouths. Indeed, in this strange, often disturbing internetz world, Mouth Eyes, in spite of its seeming innocuousness, is one…
Quietly, in December, the Kirkland Museum opened a new installment of its ongoing Colorado art survey, a range of 51 art and decorative works, most of them culled from the museum’s collection and many on view for the first time. The show’s particular focus is on works by past members…
The dark empire of Church of Scientology, well known for its extensive real-estate holdings, expanded its reach in Denver yesterday by throwing down $8.5 million in cash money on a new facility to house its secretive minions. Believed by its adherents to be the one true path to enlightenment and…
If anyone is in need of further proof that we live in strange and litigious times, they need look no further than the gossip that’s arisen around the first episode of ABC’s The Bachelor, which aired yesterday. A slap in the face delivered by contestant Chantal O’Brien to bachelor Brad…
The newly rehatched Denver Art Talks, hosted by Eric Matelski, will hit the new year running by featuring designer/seamstress extraordinaire April Hoy as its first guest of 2011. Hoy has stitched her way through many behind-the-scenes professional layers: She’s a stage costumer, a corset-maker, a textile restoration worker, a pattern…
Lower Snooki in a ball in Times Square on New Year’s Eve while The Situation and other cast members lead a Guinness-breaking fist pump. That was MTV’s original plan, but the authorities shot it down. They’re doing it in Jersey instead. Season three of the show starts next week, and…
This doctored stop sign is remarkable partly in that it’s persevered, untouched, for quite a long time — most suitably, in a neighborhood where people of every faith and stripe live side by side: Africans from across the Dark Continent, South Asians, Russians, retirees, young singles, Muslims and Orthodox Jews…
The town of Lafayette, Indiana was up in arms over a couple of snow penises that popped up in a neighborhood after a big snowstorm. Town folk were terrified of the giant snow penis sculptures, causing a confused state of frenzy and frustration before police showed up and laughed at…
Colorado is a regional art center with literally thousands of artists displaying their work in venues around the state that are as varied as coffee shops and museums. Here’s a list of ten artists who made a difference with their work last year. It’s a wide-ranging group that includes one…
For as good as we have it here in the USA, we definitely miss out on some amazing media due to the prudish nature of much of our culture. Not so in the land of the Danes. The Danish Road Council is a million times cooler than any DOT in…
Dana Cain is the lady with her thumb in a million pies: The local maestra of event-planning throws several well-attended collectors expos, art shows, parties, chocolate fests each year. Her latest — and biggest — project is next summer’s Denver County Fair. But Dana is also an avid art collector…
The gossip blogs are abuzz today about the Lindsay Lohan PR machine’s reaction to a movie in the works that’s reportedly based on her. In one corner, filmmaker Charles Castillo, who has repeatedly mentioned Lohan’s name with regard to his upcoming Dogs in Pocketbooks, but claimed today that the movie…
As a social phenomenon, probably the most interesting thing about celebrity death hoaxes is that they are a social phenomenon at all. There’s no point to them. They’re not particularly funny (aside from the resulting lulz if the celebrity in question gets all offended about it), and they have the…
Sorry to let you down, ladies, but it seems Hugh Hefner — commonly known as “The Sexiest 84-year-old since Bea Arthur died” — went ahead and put a ring on it. The lucky lady? The 24-year-old Crystal Harris, who made her name on the reality series The Girls Next Door,…
