David Zimmer is a man of action and few words: A longtime figure in the Denver art scene, he’s something of an art alchemist who straddles a century in his enigmatic works, which bustle with strangely iconic curiosities and found objects, hovering half in and half out of the Victorian…
Big ideas take time to hatch, and for that reason Denver artists Rob Mack and Samuel Schimek have already announced their joint exhibition, Microclimates, which they describe as a large-scale graphic art environment in three distinctive parts and will open in June at Super Ordinary Gallery (a nascent venue that…
Modern commercials rely on our collective impressions of happiness to catch our attention and tell us our lives aren’t good enough. This stupid ad from Pfister furniture does that with an almost sickeningly chummy, romantic dinner scene — but it has a twist, which is both slightly funny and slightly…
“Hipster or Jesus?” a new memeblog Denver Urbanist is linking to Boulderites Chris Znerold and Charlotte Myerberg may seem like all fun and games, but it actually highlights a major cultural challenge: How does one actually differentiate a precious ironic douchebag from the son of our Lord? After all, the…
Whatever else happened in the Denver arts world this year, one thing is certain: Fashion blew up like a balloon with a terrorist in it. At the forefront of that boom, of course, was Mondo Guerra, who took second place in this year’s season of Project Runway and first place…
There’s a pair of compelling solos at Spark Gallery (900 Santa Fe Drive, 720-889-2200, www.sparkgallery.com) that brings together two well-established Denver artists. And although their works are as different as night is from day, the exhibits go together well. On the west side of the gallery is Andy Libertone: Old…
Boulder filmmaker Stacey Steers is a patient artist who animates the old-fashioned way: shot by shot on a stationary animation frame. On Friday at the Denver Art Museum, DAM Contemporaries hosted a screening of her works, including the world premiere of her latest, Night Hunter. It takes one aback to…
The Museum of Contemporary Art’s wildly popular Mixed Taste series kicked off its first ever Winter series on Friday. For the uninitiated: MCA Denver invites two speakers on unrelated subjects to lecture for twenty minutes separately and then answer audience questions jointly. This week’s juxtaposition was Adrian Miller on Chicken…
Love makes people do bizarre things. The acts we have come to recognize as the signposts of romance at its most fervent are nearly identical to the symptoms of mental illness: the racing thoughts, the gloriously inflated self-esteem, the nonsensical spending (compressed rock on a ring, anyone?), the promiscuity, the…
As a longtime live concert photographer, Lucia De Giovanni’s work is entrenched in the local music scene. For her book, The Love Project, Giovanni decided to step away from the stage to capture something a bit more simple: The idea of love. This isn’t her first foray into portraiture–De Giovanni…
Before Dale Chisman’s death in 2008, the artist prepared a number of gigantic piece for a show that would never come to be — financial disputes arose around the work and a proper retrospective of his oeuvre has been on hold in the two years since — until now. In…
We just had one of our first messy snow storms of the year, causing plenty of people to slip and slide around the streets of Denver and curse the snow gods and subsequently the snow plow gods. We decided to catch up with a snow plowman to figure out exactly…
Zipping through the bulk of modern Louisville, with all its bedroom-community developments (it took first place in Money Magazine’s Best Place to Live: Top 100 in 2009), you’d think that most of the Boulder County berg’s Italian coal-mining heritage has all but disappeared. But once you find yourself in the…
Few advertisements manage to be as enjoyable, or more enjoyable than, the show they interrupt. HBO’s new spot for the awesome comedy Eastbound and Down on DVD makes it look easy, with a ridiculous ad that is packed with all the humor and humanity you’d expect from a short film…
It was back in 2007 that MCA Denver first made plans for a major show of new works by legendary Denver abstract painter Dale Chisman. The museum had just opened the doors to its brand-new David Adjaye-designed building, and Cydney Payton, the MCA’s director at the time, had asked Chisman…
There are no plans to erect a statute to Robocop in Detroit, according to Mayor Dave Bing. There is, however, a Rocky statue at the base of the Philadelphia Museum of Art after one was placed at the top of the Rocky steps in Rocky III. While it could be…
The Denver’s Next Improv Star series at the Bovine Metropolis has themes, it seems, and its clearest and strongest are enthusiasm — copious amounts of it — and a nonsensicality so relentless it’s damn near absolute. The show’s third installment on Saturday, which began with a skit that managed to…
Love it or hate, the Super Bowl crosses almost every cultural subgroup in the United States, and as befitting of such a massive national holiday, it also inspires new pop-culture touch points. From Mean Joe Green to Betty White, from Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction to Jim McMahon’s headband, some Super…
While most of the other stops on the First Friday Art Walk on Santa Fe were showing more commercial, high-end art to the wealthy snow-bros in town from Aspen for the weekend, bohemian coffeehouse Yellow Feather was showcasing the music and art of artists geared a little more toward the…
In 1998, cable television Entrepreneur Bill Daniels bequeathed his behemoth mansion on Shangri-La Drive (across from the Target in Glendale) to the city of Denver, to be used as the official residence for the Mayor. Though no Mayor has ever actually lived in this mauve monstrosity since its donation, Mayor…
Since taking office last month, there has been some talk about Mayor Guillermo Vidal officially running for the position when his term ends in July. Though this is apparently hearsay and Vidal has no immediate plans to run, last night’s inaugural Cableland Cultural Jam had us wishing he was. Hardly…
Octogenarian musician/musicologist David Amram’s ties to the Beats hold strong, especially in San Francisco, where jazz and poetry intersected, and in some ways, he’s one of the last grand old men of the cause. It’s no small thing, then, to consider that Amram will be among the presenters, along with…
