Category Archives: Denver

Denver

Best of Denver

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I returned from a week on the western slope suprised to find out that this very blog has won an award from Westword for “Best Blog — Cultural“. I was shocked, shocked I tell you. Really. Then I looked at the web page and found out that the readers’ choice went to ‘Slacker and Steve’. Turns out Slacker and Steve are the afternoon DJ’s on Alice 105.9, and they don’t even have a blog. Tough competition. But awfully nice of Westword to give this little side project a mention. I’ll take it as a raising of the bar and a challenge to do more with it in the future.

When I think about it, I’m not sure there is a lot of Denver-based art and culture blogging going on. Westword has a good one called “The Latest Word” (though they couldn’t really give the award to themselves) and 5280 Magazine is better in blog than in print. I enjoy my RSS feeds from The Urban Brain and Denver Infill, but they are primarily about living and building in the city, respectively. Tracy and Jill set one up for the River North Art District, but that’s neighborhood specific.

So, that raises the question. Who is writing about art and culture in Denver? Let me know if you have any ideas…

Art and Culture, Denver

Recurrent Nightmare

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The current show at Ironton is really cool. Chelsea Hunt has created ‘an installation of miniature proportions’; it’s intelligent, humorous, and disturbing at the same time. She created engaging scenes of tiny characters with frightening figures looming over them. The same sort of figures that used to loom over me when I was a little character. And now, as I look down at the little characters, I am one of the looming figures.

The artist reception for the show is this Friday, March 30th, from 6-9pm, and the show continues through April 21st. More information is available on the ironton website, irontonstudios.com.

Denver, storytelling

North Denver Italian Culture

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I just spent the weekend working with a group of Italians creating digital stories (through the Center for Digital Storytelling, storycenter.org) about their lives in Denver and Colorado. It was amazing how many of the stories had Highland connections.

For instance, Duke’s story was all about Mount Carmel Church. He was baptised there, his sons were baptised there, his grandkids were baptised there, and he hopes his great-grandkids will be baptised there soon.

Louis Polidori, whose family still makes sausage near 33rd and Tejon, told the story of growing up during the depression behind the market at 34th and Shoshone (the market is now the home to our friends Jim and Michael). According to my buddy Michael Thornton, who grew up in the hood, Polidori sausage is the best in town (as a vegetarian I’ll just have to take his word for it). They are now being made by the fourth generation of the same family. check it out at: polidorimeats.com.

There were stories of holiday meals on Shoshone street, with homemade wine for the adults and sprite for the kids, and memories of the grandparents house on Osage. And I got to help Jess Gerardi create his story. Jess plays the trombone, was the director of the Englewood Marching Band, and is the sixth director of the Denver Feast Band. The Denver Feast band has been around since 1895 and plays at the feast of St. Rocco and other events. It made me wish summer was here so I could go play bingo and gamble to win olive oil at the Mount Carmel fair.

It’s great to be in a place where there is so much history. What’s frightening is that so much of it is at risk of being lost.The Italian stories will be shown at the Colorado History Museum downtown starting in April. I know that many of the Highland stories have been recorded in oral histories and lots of photos have been scanned. But many more, even most, are bound to be lost.

Hopefully this group can serve as an opportunity to make sure we don’t forget.

Denver, Design

Libeskind finds apologists

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In an article in today’s Denver Post entitled Pro-Libeskind forces fire back, Kyle MacMillan cites two influential critics coming to the defense of the new Hamilton wing of the Denver Art Museum. Most interesting is the assessment of Suzanne Stephens of Architectural Record:

Regardless of the controversy about the display of art within the canted gallery walls, the jagged building is a surprisingly successful tour de force on urbanistic grounds alone. It revitalizes an area of downtown Denver between Civic Center Park, the location of the Colorado State Capitol, and a dilapidated district to the south dubbed the Golden Triangle, now in the process of being gentrified with housing, art galleries, shops, and restaurants.

I’ve read a number of the previous reviews critical of the space and, although I’m somewhat critical of parts of the design, I felt the initial reaction was a bit harsh. The Hamilton building is very much a proof of the intellectual ideas expressed by Libeskind since his days at Cranbrooke, and, as Stephens points out in the Architectural Record, is a maturing of the ideas first tested on a large scale at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

From the outside, the fractured geometries of the space are visually arresting, and provide a worthy counterpoint to the crenellated fortress of the North tower designed by Gio Ponti. The configuration of the building and its muscular gestures create a magnificent public plaza that serves as a gateway to the Golden Triangle neighborhood.

The very strength of the design program ultimately prove to be one of the limitations; in particular, the galleries on the top floor of the building are not effective spaces and suffer from their position at the edge of the design metaphor. Much like Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao, some exhibition spaces lack flexibility. Fortunately, these are not temporary exhibition spaces, so there is the opportunity for the curators to address the limitations of the space over time (as Bilbao did by installing a Richard Serra into the leading prow of the titanium ship).

Other parts of the interior are more effective in creating a dialog with the art presented there. And while some may find the vertigo inducing central foyer of the building problematic, I enjoy the disorienting flavor of the complex geometries.

Architecture, like other human endeavors, goes through ebbs and flows; if the Libeskind building may be an example of how architecture, as art, limits the presentation of the very art it is charged to support, it also provides the grounding from which artistic creation can step forward. The Libeskind addition to the Denver Art Museum extends the conversation about the importance of art and culture in our lives and in our cities.

Art and Culture, Denver

RiNo/Ironton News

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Last weekend’s Iron Pour at Ironton and the Studio Tours in RiNo went off pretty much without a hitch. Of course, the weather sucked, but what are you going to do this year? At least it stopped snowing in time to allow the pour to happen. I put some photos up on flickr. If you’ve never seen one, well, you’re missing something in your curriculum vitae.

The current show at Ironton got reviewed this week by Michael Paglia in Westword. It’s a pretty positive review of the show, and a great review for Mike Mancarella, Junoworks (whose website I did about five years ago), and the somewhat towering Donald Lipski sculpture in the yard.

On another note, RiNo now has a blog. It’s a good spot to catch up on news from the district, as well as some other cool stuff and ideas from around the internets.

Denver, The Generalist

The Best Thing to do in Denver, Ever

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Every year during the stock show the grand champion steer is exhibited in the lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel for one day. As befits such a fancy place, he drinks out of a silver bowl. While the steer is there, you can go get your picture taken with him. It’s free, it’s fun, and it’s a Denver tradition.

This year, my buddy Allen Hill and I went down to get our picture taken (his suggestion). I’m not sure who the guy on the right is, but I think he’s trying to make sure nobody gets killed. As you can see, this year brought in two champion steers (Spud and the reserve champion Titan). They’re good looking fellers, raised by kids in the Future Farmers of America. Spud was raised by Lance Unger of Carlisle, Indiana. Unfortunately for Spud, he’s well on his way to becoming someone’s dinner. Here’s what 9news has to say:

Weighing over 1,300 pounds, Spud sold for $80,000 during the auction. He was bought by the Emil-Lene’s Sirloin House.

Denver

Six Weekends in a Row…

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Damn you El Niño! It’s snowing again, and today is the RiNo Studio Tour, Iron Pour, and Party at Ironton. The show will go on…

Here’s a funny post from Adam Clayton-Holland in the Westword blog about getting a warning for not shoveling the walk in front of his house.

And here is a flickr search for Denver 1913, the last time we had this much snow this early in the season Most of our big storms usually come in March or April. Now that’s something to look forward too.

Denver, storytelling

Mile High Stories Rides Again

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Thanks to the efforts of the indefagitable Daniel Weinshenker, the Mile High Stories project is going to be starting up again this next month. Daniel, who works with the Center for Digital Storytelling, has hooked us up with the Colorado Historical Society. The CHS is doing an exhibition later in 2007 on the history of Italians in Denver and Colorado; a group of us (including our partner in this venture, Tim Roessler) will be working with some of the elder Italians in the Denver community to tell their stories.

The Center for Digital Storytelling has a great program, and has really defined the digital storytelling space. This is an opportunity for us to use these techniques to get some great personal histories about the Denver of yesteryear. As this moves forward I’ll be updated the Mile High Stories site (which is currently woefully out of date).

Denver, Environment

Cohousing hits RiNo

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I met a guy at a RiNo meeting the other night named Ted Pearlman who is heading up a new ‘cohousing’ project in RiNo. The project, which is scheduled to kickoff this year and finish early in 2009, is called DUCCI, which stands for Denver Urban Core Cohousing Initiative. It’s going to be at the Taxi development on the west side of the Platte River. According to the website:

Cohousing is the name of a type of collaborative housing that attempts to overcome the alienation of modern subdivisions in which no-one knows their neighbors, and there is no sense of community. It is characterized by private dwellings with their own kitchen, living-dining room etc, but also extensive common facilities. The common house may include a large dining room, kitchen, lounges, meeting rooms, recreation facilities, library, workshops, and childrens’s space.

Usually, cohousing communities are designed and managed by the residents, and are intentional neighborhoods: the people are consciously committed to living as a community; the physical design itself encourages that and facilitates social contact. The typical cohousing community has 20 to 30 single family homes along a pedestrian street or clustered around a courtyard. Residents of cohousing communities often have several optional group meals in the common building each week.

They haven’t started working on the design of the buildings in great detail, but they have signed on an architect, David Baker, who is also working on the other Taxi projects. According to the site, they aren’t sure how ‘green’ the building will end up being. I guess that’s up to the residents to decide.

Turns out there is an article on worldchanging.com today on this very subject: Multi-Family, Affordable, Urban and Green, written by Sarah Rich.

Art and Culture, Denver

RiNo Turns One Year Old!

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On January 26th and 27th, the River North Art District turns one year old with two days of studio tours. On Friday (evening) and Saturday (day) over forty locations will be open. If you are interested in where art is made in Denver, this event is perfect for you.

Following the tour on Saturday (which will include 3 free shuttles and art celebrity tourguides Bill Amundson and Phil Bender) there is a birthday party, raffle, and iron pour at Ironton Studios. The raffle will include a “Wall of Wine” and an iPod Shuffle, so it’s worth your time to participate. And if you have never been to an iron pour, well, what could be better than hot steel on a cold night?

More information is available at rivernorthart.com.