An August slowdown arrives on the Denver art landscape after last week’s wild First Friday, but this week’s rollout of new shows prove that quality aces quantity every time. Politics? Chicano culture and activism? Classy artists? Photography to think on? Street art, yard art and more? Bingo. This weekend, you might have time to try everything.
Lio Bumbakini
Art Can, 2500 Larimer Street
Fridays and Saturdays, August 11 through August 24, 4 to 9 p.m.
Next up at the Ramble Hotel’s portable Art Can gallery is freewheeling Brussels-born Congolese artist Lio Bumbakini, a man of the world who will be rocking the can on weekends through August 24 with his colorful, Basquiat-style work with an African slant.
Robin Hextrum: Reimagining the Sublime
Abend Gallery, 1261 Delaware, Suite 2
August 11 through September 4
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 14, 2 to 5 p.m.
Denver painter Robin Hextrum’s lush panels burst with fantasy florals and animals, updating the still life tradition of the Dutch Masters with a wow sensibility all her own. Abend will come alive this weekend with an all-new collection, guaranteed to knock your socks off.
Judy Miranda and Geraldina “Jerry” Lawson, “The Journey Continues Toward Justice, El Movimiento Sigue,” 2021, multimedia installation.
Courtesy of the artists
El Moviemento Sigue, The Movement Continues
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), 1750 13th Street, Boulder
August 12 through September 6
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 12, 5 to 7 p.m.
BMoCA’s Present Box lobby installation space welcomes artists Judy Miranda and Geraldina “Jerry” Lawson, both regulars at Denver’s Chicano Humanities & Arts Council, who’ve created a multimedia complement to the temporary sculpture El Moviemento Sigue, which currently stands outside the museum through next March as a commemoration of Los Seis de Boulder, six Chicano activists who died in a Boulder bombing in 1974. Miranda and Lawson update social justice issues raised decades ago by Los Seis to include today’s struggles of America’s Dreamers and migrants at the border.
Source Material
Colorado Photographic Arts Center, 1070 Bannock Street
August 13 through September 25
Opening Reception: Friday, August 13, 6 to 9 p.m.
Artists and Curators Talk: Tuesday, August 31, noon, via Zoom, RSVP online for Zoom link
The use of source materials by photographers isn’t new; instead it is ever-changing, as the new exhibition Source Materials conveys at CPAC. Comprising a group of photographers cherry-picked by curators Jon Feinstein and Roula Seikaly of the national Humble Arts Foundation, the show traverses a technique that can include imagery that’s been rephotographed, staged, digitally altered, and borrowed from magazines or anonymous family albums to tell larger stories. This is a show that will stick with you for a while.
Eleanor Sabin, Gross Domestic Products
Artworks Center for Contemporary Art, 310 North Railroad Avenue, Loveland
August 13 through September 25
Opening Reception: Friday, August 13, 6 to 9 p.m.
Artworks Loveland hosts Colorado-based artist Eleanor Sabin for Gross Domestic Products, a body of work seeking to expose how our economy is reduced to a matter of dollars, as opposed to a better way of life in tune with nature, as described by the author and activist Wendell Berry. Sabin’s work posits that perhaps we can have both.
Hollis + Lana, Intersections
Christi Palitto, Synthetic Nature
ILA Gallery, 209 Kalamath Street, Suite 12
August 13 through September 5
Opening Reception: Friday, August 13, 6 to 10 p.m.
ILA Gallery hosts the Denver couple Hollis + Lana, artists and muralists who collaborate on works of all sizes in a fantastical and organic abstract style. Also from Denver, Christi Palitto paints on wood panels for Synthetic Nature, which visually connects the man-made and natural sources of imagery.
Detail of “La Alma,” by Emanuel Martinez, La Alma Recreation Center, 1325 West 11th Avenue.
Evan Semón
Denver Muralists and Street Artists, Their Legacy
Converge Denver, 3327 Brighton Boulevard
August 13 through September 30
Opening Reception: Friday, August 13, 6 to 8:30 p.m.
CHAC continues with the second leg of its three-part exhibition, Generations, an Intergenerational Art Show, at its temporary space at Converge Denver. The display pairs groundbreaking muralists both young and seasoned, including such seminal Denver artists as Emanuel Martinez and Jerry Jaramillo, and young artists carrying on the tradition, including JHER 451 (aka Jeremiah Clark) and Jerry Jaramillo’s son, Jay.
Anna Uddenberg, “Cozy Clamp #5 (flash-plug)” (detail), 2018.
Photo by Ed Mumford, courtesy of the artist and House of Gaga
Movement Toward the Other
Evans School, 1115 Acoma Street
August 14 through September 11, Wednesdays through Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m. daily
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 14, 1 to 5 p.m.
Use the 11th Avenue entrance; the exhibition space is located on the first floor in the boiler room.
Black Cube’s Cortney Lane Stell gives Denver a local group project about relationship dynamics in an interesting space: the first-floor boiler room at Evans School, a stone’s throw from the Denver Art Museum. An international set of artists, including locals Scott Chamberlin, Juntae TeeJay Hwang, Suchitra Mattai and Kelly Monico, address different aspects of human relations in a variety of artforms: video, sculpture, installation and performance, all pulled together gracefully by Stell.
Yard Art, Vol. 2
100 Gaylord Street
Saturday, August 14, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, August 15, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The Yard Art gang, a group of local artists working in different styles and techniques for outdoor pop-up shows in the Denver Country Club neighborhood, keeps growing, as evidenced by this August installment’s varied congregation of nearly twenty people wielding paintbrushes. You can’t go wrong here— there’s something for everyone and live music by the Paranoid Image Band on Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.
Ridgway Rendezvous vendor Jeremy Monroe upcycles scrap metal and junkyard finds into sculptures.
Jeremy Monroe
Ridgway Rendezvous Art & Craft Festival
Hartwell Park, 201 Railroad Street North, Ridgway
Saturday, August 14, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, August 15, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Ridgway, a small town tucked into a valley in the San Juan mountains, is a bit of a drive, but if you’re in the area, it’s worth checking out, and if you’re not — a road trip awaits. The Ridgway Rendezvous, run by Weehawken Creative Arts, is a surprisingly stroll-worthy juried outdoor art fair, loaded with work by more than a hundred artists, crafters and food vendors from across western Colorado. And in other news, the scenery is stunning.
Marie Watt (Seneca), “Butterfly,” 2015, reclaimed wool blankets, satin binding, thread, cotton twill tape and tin jingles.
© Marie Watt, courtesy of the Denver Art Museum
Art Is a Verb: Art & Activism
Denver Art Museum, via Zoom
Tuesday, August 17, 6 to 7 p.m.
Fees: $22, free for Museum Friends and students
RSVP in advance
The DAM’s virtual lecture series Art Is a Verb, inspired by the collaborative exhibition Each Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, draws to a close (as does the show, on August 22) with a panel talk on Art & Activism, with local speakers and artivists Stephen Brackett, Gregg Deal, Adri Norris and Danielle SeeWalker, who’ve all done their fair share of creating politically driven work.
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