Here's where to bump into art this weekend without even trying:
The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama
Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Through June 1, 2025
Included in museum admission, free to $22 here, or at the door
There’s a sad chapter of Colorado history wrapped up in the newly opened Denver Art Museum exhibition, The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama, about an accomplished Japanese painter who was among more than 10,000 Japanese-Americans — a majority of them American citizens — incarcerated near the Kansas border at the Granada Relocation Center internment camp, better known now as the Amache National Historic Site. In more than forty paintings on loan from the Japanese American National Museum and the Ueyama family, The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama is a visual diary of the artist’s life, including his time teaching art classes while living in the camp barracks. His story might just inspire you to visit Amache, which was designated a historic site in 2022, and also stop by the museum in the town of Granada.
Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser, “Ancestors of the Blue Moon.” Buckminster Fuller Dome at the Aspen Institute
Aspen ArtWeek
Aspen Art Museum, 637 East Hyman Avenue, Aspen
Through Saturday, August 3
Aspen Art Fair
Historic Jerome Hotel, 330 East Main Street, Aspen
Thursday, August 1, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Friday, August 2, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Day passes, $30 here
Intersect Aspen Art & Design Fair
Aspen Ice Garden, 233 West Hyman Avenue, Aspen
Thursday, August 1, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday, August 2, and Saturday, August 3, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Day passes, $25 here
The Aspen Aspen Art Museum’s annual ArtWeek — a series of artist conversations and events that continue through Sunday — is already underway, but it’s not to late to come to the arty party: Most ArtWeek events are free (reserve here), while the new Aspen Art Fair and the annual Intersect Aspen Art & Design Fair, where one can see the latest from artists from across the nation, run concurrently.
August First Friday Art Walk
Art District on Santa Fe, Santa Fe Drive between Sixth and Eleventh avenues
Friday, August 2, 5:30 to 10 p.m.
Dedicated art-walkers wait all year for the First Friday in August, when Santa Fe Drive is closed to traffic from Sixth to Eleventh avenues, making for less crowded sidewalks in spite of big crowds in an open-air art paradise. As one would expect, the art district galleries go all out, with opening receptions and special events, as well as food trucks, live music and street vendors galore. Following are just a few ideas about where to go and what to see there.
Sherry Wiggins, with Luís Filipe Branco: “Between the Earth and Sky III."
Courtesy © Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco
Michael Warren Contemporary, 760 Santa Fe Drive
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 1, 5 to 8 p.m.
The fifth and last Tenth Anniversary exhibition series for Michael Warren Contemporary finishes big this week with a fine display of work by artists Jeff Baldus, K Rhinus Cesark, John Garrett, Etsuko Ichikawa, Margaret Kasahara, Gwen Laine, Brad Reed Nelson, Sara Ransford, Allison Stewart, Floyd Tunson and Sherry Wiggins. Feast your eyes.
Corey Pemberton, “Sage Wisdom (crusty feet),” 2023, mixed media.
© Corey Pemberton, courtesy CVA MSUD
Crafting the Future
Cultivating Threads of Memory, in 965 Project Gallery
Center for Visual Art (CVA), 965 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, August 1 through October 19
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 1, 6 to 8 p.m.
Glassblowing Demo and Party: Saturday, August 3: 7 to 9 p.m., Flux Glass Studio, 2541 Bruce Randolph Avenue: $75 to $85 at Eventbrite
Metro State University’s Center for Visual Art heads into another school year with a pair of shows that celebrate the intersection of art and craft through the vision of one interdisciplinary artist. Corey Pemberton, a glass-blower, painter, mixed-media artist and co-founder and director of Crafting the Future, a nonprofit promoting diversity in the art world, will show his own work in Piece by Piece, a beautiful primer on the use of craft practices in the production of fine art. Pemberton commonly depicts portrait figures posing in elaborately designed rooms that open up greater perceptions of the people they contain, with themes touching at the same time on otherness and the everyday.
The companion exhibition, Crafting the Future, expands on the theme through work by six diverse artists from Crafting the Future’s Los Angeles residency program. Meanwhile, the student-run 965 gallery fits right in with a show of quilts by Valerie C. White, and curated by Bridget Ebert and Alyssa Williams.
D'art Gallery's OG crew helps ceramic artist Vicki Smith display a clay sculpture.
Courtesy D'art Gallery Founders
Dmitri Valone and Amanda Stavast, Entanglement
Artist Reception: Friday, August 9, 6 to 9 p.m.
D’art 360 Gallery Pop-Up Exhibition (August 1 through August 11)
Artist Appreciation Night: Friday, August 16, 6 to 9 p.m.
Founders Exhibition, in Gallery West
Artist Appreciation Night: Friday, August 16, 5 to 9 p.m.
I Belong in a Museum: Part 2, in Gallery East
Artist Reception: Saturday, August 3, 6 to 9 p.m.
D’art Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, August 1, through August 25
D’art Gallery will celebrate its new super-sized look on Santa Fe Drive with the debut of the D’art 360 Gallery in the front space formerly occupied by Spark Gallery, where 32 360 member artists will rotate shows, as well as Gallery West, where sixteen D’art founding members are hosting a show of their own. In other spaces, members Dmitri Valone and Amanda Stavast share the theme of Entanglement by finding common ground while working in completely different styles, and members of the budding Colorado Women Artists Museum prevail in Gallery East. See the D’art website for more events and additional corresponding events for each gallery show.
Anthony Quinn: ¿Qué Soy? / What Am I?
Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, August 2, through September 22
Opening Reception: Friday, August 2, 6:30 to 9 p.m.; RSVP in advance here
When thinking of Anthony Quinn, your thoughts usually turn to the actor’s memorable performances in such twentieth-century films as Viva Zapata!, Zorba the Greek and Lust for Life (where he played Paul Gauguin to Kirk Douglas’s Vincent van Gogh). But like Gauguin, Quinn was also a painter and sculptor, who got his start as a boy, sketching actors on the sly while visiting a studio where his father worked in Los Angeles. Get the old Hollywood vibe and a touch of modernist Mexico when the Museo hosts a pop-up exhibition, ¿Qué Soy? / What Am I?, curated by Yolanda Fauvet in collaboration with the Anthony Quinn Estate and President of the Anthony Quinn Foundation, Katherine Quinn.
Quelle Chris, "Mischief."
Quelle Chris
Bitfactory Gallery, 851 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, August 2 through September 14
Opening Reception: Friday, August 2, 6 to 9 p.m.
Visible Planets Concert: Saturday, August 3, 7 p.m. to midnight; $35 to $55 or $500 to $1,000 VIP at Eventbrite; El Jebel, 1770 Sherman Street
Outdoor Jam Session with Georgia Anne Muldrow: Sunday, August 4, 10 a.m., free; Benedict Fountain Park, 401 East 20th Avenue
Closing Reception: Friday, September 13, 6 to 9 p.m.
Last year’s Visible Planets art exhibit at Bitfactory and concert at Herman’s with hip-hop artists Aesop Rock, Deca, Isaac Sawyer, Kid Acne and Quelle Chris was such a success that Denver artist Dan Drossman is hosting it again. The street exhibition includes Georgia Anne Muldrow, Homeboy Sandman, Fresh Daily Lily Fangz and more, and a new venue for the concert. And on Sunday, the American soul and hip hop singer, producer and songwriter Muldrow will add a community-service jam event, with a free trade outpost where one can give or take donations.
Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].
