Step out of the ordinary and see something new, starting with the following shows and events:
Trine Bumiller, Garden of Eden
Emmanuel Gallery, 1205 10th Street Plaza, Auraria Campus
Thursday, June 16, through August 5
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 16, 5 to 7 p.m.
Trine Bumiller, widely known for her magnification of nature’s details on large, decorative paintings, goes a step further with her installation at CU Denver’s Emmanuel Gallery by acknowledging the stark, lovely building’s original purpose as a place of worship. As Bumiller points out, the Christian, Islamic and Judaic faiths all speak of an archetypal perfect garden, where life goes on undisturbed by adversity. For this show, she applies the metaphor of original sin to climate change and the modern decimation of nature by humans. Bumiller’s paintings circle the gallery like Orthodox icons, bathing the space in gorgeous hues and natural forms.
Kelly Austin-Rolo Fine Art Exhibition
Gallery at Fellowship Denver Church (gallery@fdc), 1990 South Broadway
Opening reception: Thursday, June 16, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Denver encaustic and mixed-media painter Kelly Austin-Rolo carved herself a solo of new works at the Gallery at Fellowship Denver Church. Explore her handsome, architecturally angular and textural work at the opening, with food, drink and live music by Carrie McCune of Mama Magnolia and Americana singer-songwriter Patrick Dethlefs. Register for the free reception in advance at Eventbrite.
Angela Craven and Kristina Davies, Marked Inquiry: An Exploration in Abstraction and Mark-Making
Bell Projects, 2822 East 17th Avenue
Through June 26
Abstract painters Angela Craven and Kristina Davies, whose joint exhibition Marked Inquiry opened earlier this month, found commonality in exploring the role of mark-making as a creative tool in non-objective works. Both employ what might look like random scribbles to viewers, but for artists, they are intuitive roadways through a composition — a means to an end. The show runs through June 26 if you’d like to visualize along with Craven and Davies, or visit Bell Projects online to see the images at home.
Barbara Baer, Biophilia
Annalee Schorr, Emergency
Margo Espenlaub, Cara Hubbell and Jerry Johnson, North Gallery
Spark Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, June 16, through July 10
Opening Reception: Friday, June 17, 5 to 9 p.m.
Last Look: Sunday, July 10, 1 to 4 p.m.
Spark members Barbara Baer and Annalee Schorr share the main gallery this month, filling the space with Baer’s quartet of sculptural installations representing the natural elements of river water, rock, air movement and sunlight, and Schorr’s metaphorical reimaginations of aluminum emergency blankets painted with design patterns borrowed from the textiles of immigrant cultures: serapes, rugs and woven or quilted blankets. In the North Gallery, the trio of Margo Espenlaub, Cara Hubbell and Jerry Johnson compare and contrast their individual works with similar threads of color or composition.
Babe Walls at Pride
Thursday, June 16, through June 18
Adams County Pride: Saturday, June 18, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Riverdale Regional Park, 9755 Henderson Road, Brighton
The female artists of Babe Walls will be representing later in August at Standing Rock in North Dakota, but first they’re polishing their formidable mural-making skills in Brighton, as special guests of the inaugural Adams County Pride event. Twelve artists will create six murals over three days in Riverdale Regional Park, and you can watch them at work. On Saturday, they’ll finish up, show off the murals and help the LGBTQ community of Adams County celebrate Pride with water activities, drag shows and more fun in the sun.
Clerestory Window, designed c. 1912 by Frank Lloyd Wright, oak and clear glass with zinc caming.
Photo by Wes Magyar, Collection Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, 1201 Bannock Street
Friday, June 17, to January 8
Museum Admission: $8 to $10
Kirkland Museum Deputy Curator Christopher Herron mined the museum's design collection for Frank Lloyd Wright Inside the Walls, a close-up review of iconic pieces representing the scope of the influential master of modern architecture. Wright’s visionary approach to design was succinct right down to accessorizing the buildings he imagined, resulting in the creation of furniture and functional objects that continued his architectural principles. The Kirkland will turn a spotlight on the lamps, chairs, stained glass windows, dishes and other objects in the exhibit.
Tomás Doncker and the True Groove All-Stars, Endangered
Site-specific performance: Friday, June 17, 6 p.m., tickets $20 online, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, 30 West Dale Street, Colorado Springs
Full concert performance: Saturday, June 18, 6 p.m., tickets $15 online, Kathryn Mohrman Theatre, Armstrong Hall, 14 East Cache la Poudre Street, Colorado Springs
Floyd Tunson’s 1995 masterwork "Hearts and Minds," gifted to CSFAC at Colorado College in 2020, went on display in May for a run through July, and is well worth a trip south to the center. And there’s more: Endangered, a multi-sensory performance by Tomás Doncker & the True Groove All-Stars inspired by Tunson’s work and the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, is scheduled for live shows on June 17 and 18. The first night is free for CC students and faculty; the full concert is ticketed only.
Collective Nouns: MSU Denver Art Department Exhibition
Center for Visual Art MSUD, 965 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, June 17, through August 13
Opening Reception: Friday, June 17, 6 to 8 p.m.
CVA pays tribute to MSU’s own, showcasing a large group of art-department faculty members and employees. It’s a special kind of person who can produce wonderful work and still have enough energy to share techniques, use of materials and art knowledge, and that somehow makes the work of teaching artists more special. They say it takes a village, and you’ll see the adage at work among faculty communities helping to build new communities among the up-and-coming.
Faces: An Invitational Exhibit
Niza Knoll Gallery, 915 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, June 17, through July 23
Opening Reception: Friday, June 17, 5 to 8 p.m.
Niza Knoll chose the theme of "Faces" for this invitational exhibition, but with a twist: Think immigrants, refugees, people seeking safety and fresh starts. Along with Knoll, artists Nancy Enyart, Mark Friday, Gayla Lemke and Ellamaria Foley-Ray bring the variety warranted to Knoll Gallery walls, rendered in clay, found objects and mixed media.
Open Studios
Prism Workspaces, 999 Vallejo Street
Friday, June 17, 5:30 to 9 p.m.
The artists at Prism are letting all the art hang out on Friday evening during a free group open-studio night. The variety is splendid in the 68-studio building, and the artists and entrepreneurs who people Prism —visual artists, painters, sculptors, glass artists, mosaic artists, weavers, book art creators, photographers, ceramicists, jewelers, graphic artists, furniture design-and-build artists, sewers, upholsterers and interior designers, to name just some — are ready to discuss whatever it is they do.
See art for Pride at Bitfactory.
Christopher LaFleur
Bitfactory Gallery, 851 Santa Fe Drive
Saturday, June 17, through July 9
Opening Reception: Friday, June 17, 6 to 9 p.m.
Bitfactory reprises its Pride show for its third year as a prelude to PrideFest, with art in a wide range of media. In 2022, the exhibition is meant to reach out with art both personal and universal; five local artists — Christopher La Fleur, James Mullane, Clint Ramstetter and Louis Trujillo— illustrate the meaning of Pride, inviting others to join in a celebration that’s all about humans being human.
James Turrell"s Green Mountain Falls Skyspace
Red Butte Recreation Area, Green Mountain Falls
Saturday, June 18, through July 4, daily; Thursdays through Sundays thereafter; see website for show information, times and tickets, $5
Colorado’s latest art coup opens its doors Saturday in Green Mountain Falls, a small town in a wooded valley on U.S. 24 between Manitou Springs and Woodland Park. It’s a community for the summer folk with cabins in the area, but it’s also the home of the Green Box Arts Festival, an annual cultural community event mixing art installations, music, dance, comedy, theater, artist residencies and workshops.
It’s already home to a number of long-term public art works by local, national and international artists, including Pard Morrison, Bernar Venet, Richard Serra and others. But the newest addition, light-and-space artist James Turrell’s Green Mountain Falls Skyspace (one of more than eighty placed around the world), might be the biggest draw yet when it opens to the public Saturday.
Skyspaces are rooms of a specified design with a ceiling aperture to let in light that interacts with colored LEDs to alter human perceptions; the one in Green Mountain Falls has a rare retractable roof, allowing for closed-roof shows. Viewers hike up a butte to access the experience, and then the magic begins — at sunrise, sunset or with the roof closed. It’s really meant to be experienced, not described.
Skyspace is accessible from Green Mountain Falls by the scenic Pittman Trail, from Joyland Church parking lot, 5085 List Drive, or by the shorter, steeper Turrell Trail, located behind Gazebo Lake, Ute Pass Avenue. Tickets, now available for dates through July 31, are $5 here; tickets for August will be available beginning July 1.
Natasha Mistry and Liz Quan, Sacred Geometries
Seidel City, 3205 Longhorn Road, Boulder
Saturday, June 18, 6 to 9 p.m.
Boulder artists Liz Quan, who works with porcelain slip to create smooth organic shapes used in multiples, and Natasha Mistry, a painter interested in geometric patterns and mandalas, merge their works for a one-night pop-up “interactive display of curious objects” at Seidel City in Boulder. Travel writer Dan Brooklyn will also contribute a reading of wilder-than-life minimalist short stories about his world voyages.
AURA Curatorial Talk, and Exhibition Tour with Eriko Tsogo
Union Hall Gallery, The Coloradan, 1750 Wewatta Street, Suite 144
Tuesday, June 21, 6 to 7:30 p.m.
AURA, a forward-thinking group show by artists working in new media, at the crossroads of art and technology, covers a lot of ground in a mix of traditional and trendsetting media. Eriko Tsogo, who curated the exhibition, will shed light on what’s going on in the galleries by leading a talk and tour through the show, which explores changes in the art world brought on by the isolation of the pandemic. This is the future.
Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].
