“What do you know about Paul Robeson?” internationally renowned baritone Anthony Brown asked writer Andrew Flack a few years back. “I know a little, but show me your notes,” Flack responded. It was New Year’s Eve, and the two men began talking about Robeson’s life, his music, his political struggles…
David Kammerzell put aside his past career as a commercial artist and award-winning media designer at Starz Encore to return to his first love as a painter of retro-laced canvases inspired by the romance and graphics of another time. He calls them an “homage to commercial artists and art and…
Romantic Overgrowth, an interesting and unusual solo at Plus Gallery, showcases work done over the past few years by Melissa Furness, who teaches at the University of Colorado Denver. The show could be seen as a single installation, as Furness orchestrates the same elements throughout: paintings (both her own and…
Whether it’s food, beer, pot or art, Denver is all about showcasing what the Mile High City has to offer. And residents of the Rocky Mountain Warehouse Lofts, at 18th and Wazee streets, take the mission of supporting local artists seriously. They’ve not only decorated the upper hallways with local…
Broadway became the center of Denver’s art world Saturday night as Westword’s Artopia 2014 took over five venues in the heart of town. Artists ranging from Westword cover boy Andrew Novick to zombie portrait artist Stan Yan were on hand to show their work at City Hall and Vinyl, while…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. Artist Natalia Musalem of NM Photography came to Denver because she wanted…
“Buffalo Bill first experienced the Wild West; then, he promoted it,” says Steve Friesen, head of the Buffalo Bill Museum, who has been working tirelessly to hang the new new exhibit Folk, Fine and Funky: Buffalo Bill in Art. The museum has divided the show into several themes: Buffalo Bill…
Artist House Tour Series featuring Eron Johnson
The creative mind behind Comix Brew, which will be Denver’s first free comics-only newspaper, reached his $3,000 Kickstarter goal yesterday and plans to publish the first issue in late April or early May. Lonnie Allen had been thinking about the idea for years, but decided to make it a reality…
Since its founding in 2012, Denver Comic Con (DCC) has become a powerful force; it attracted 61,000 attendees last year, making it the fifth-largest comic convention nationwide. But as in comic books, with power often comes turmoil. Yesterday morning, co-founder Charlie La Greca posted an open letter on a new…
In the last decades of the twentieth century, conceptualism was on the upswing in the wake of pop art and minimalism, both of which have big conceptual components. The cutting-edge work of the ’80s and ’90s was heavy with narrative, and artists often chose representational approaches to tell their stories…
Michael Paglia visits Robischon Gallery and Vertigo Art Space in this week’s review, taking in two group shows. The work at Robischon focuses on six artists and an artist pair, all of whom are working in some way that is related to conceptual abstraction. The show at Vertigo is a…
There have been rumors about trouble among the Denver Comic Con ranks. But today, DCC co-founder Charlie La Greca posted the following letter on a new Save Denver Comic Con website. Hello my name is Charlie La Greca. I am a cartoonist, lifelong comic fan, and lover of all things…
I used to have this recurring dream where I was walking along a strip mall in my grandparents’ neighborhood of Mayfair/Hale. I was always heading to La Bola, a Mexican restaurant we used to go to when I was a kid. I would walk up to the door in broad…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. Suzanne Heintz, a local local photographer and self-proclaimed spinster, recently saw her…
VSA Colorado /Access Gallery is bringing something very special indeed to Santa Fe Drive this month. From 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, February 21, the gallery will open a show featuring original pieces by youth with disabilities, created through the Artworks Corporate Art Venture, a program benefiting kids who…
This week’s cover story, “Beauty of the Beasts,” is all about the matchmakers who help zoo animals find love. Or at least another animal to, you know, mate with. And some animals have a strange way of doin’ it, as explained in our sidebar about weird mating habits. (Did you…
MM Serra is struggling to find a New York City venue bold enough to exhibit Charles Henri Ford’s 1971 surrealist memoir film, Johnny Minotaur. Nobody wants to bite. This experimental classic reflects on teen sexuality with explicit homoerotic imagery. Unnamed institutions refuse to show it because curators believe the performers look like minors and that the film violates basic standards of decency, she says.
Tonight RedLine Gallery and the Art Students League of Denver will present “Towing the Line?,” a panel discussion highlighting prominent women in the arts as part of RedLine’s year-long series titled “She Crossed the Line.” The panelists will discuss their own experiences in the world of art and business, and…
A smart-looking show on display at Pirate combines pieces by three artists who first met in 2006 at Cornell University, which is why the show is called Ithaca, the name of the upstate New York town where the institution is located. It was organized by one of the artists, Pirate…
Every year, Westword gathers our favorite painters, sculptors, performers, musicians and more from around Denver for Artopia, a celebration of all that’s good in Denver’s art world. This year, the celebration is taking over five venues along Broadway. See also: Artopia 2013…
Mark Mothersbaugh is a genius who doesn’t make much of himself; he is what he is and — pretty much like the rest of us — he is Devo. Best known as a founder of the Akron-based punk/new wave band of the same name, his artistic arc — from indie…
