Things to Do Denver: Gallery Opens and Art Shows March 12 to 17, 2021

This is a weekend to remember when it comes to the convergence of big ideas, Month of Photography 2021 and exhibitions you’ll be talking about for a while.

Here’s where the action is; it really doesn’t get any better than this.

Denver Collage Club and the Unperson Project, Thought Objects: Being, Essence and Notion
Alto Gallery, 4345 West 41st Street
Through March 27
Members of the local Denver Collage Club and the Unperson Project of Mexico City continue on the themes of their partner shows at RedLine examining modern disconnect and cancel culture at Alto with a second feast for the eyes.

Rian Kerrane and Melissa Furness, histordomest-icity
Center for the Arts Evergreen, 31880 Rocky Village Drive, Evergreen
Through April 9
Painter Melissa Furness and sculptor Rian Kerrane both reach back in time to make contemporary statements, stoking an ongoing seven-year series of collaborative installation works that juxtapose their distinctive parallel practices. If Evergreen is too far off the beaten path for you, CAE has published the show catalogue on the ISSUU platform for perusal.

Heads of Hydra: Untitled
St. Mark’s Coffeehouse, 2019 East 17th Avenue
Through March

Heads of Hydra: Unknown
Bardo Coffeehouse, 238 South Broadway
Through April 14
Heads of Hydra operates like a secret society for photographers, glued together by the Dada-esque concept of anti-curation, as dictated by group founder Richard Alden Peterson. Peterson and cohort Dave Seiler “anti-curated” this pair of unofficial Month of Photography shows inspired by social distancing and split up between two old-school Denver coffeehouses. Both spots are open for viewing (and coffee!) daily between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Alicia Hatfield, Tattooed Goods
Balefire Goods, 7513 Grandview Avenue, Arvada
Through March 31
Tattooers are artists, too, and Alicia Hatfield, who describes herself as “an artist and lover of nature, folklore and occult imagery,” developed a way to transform her unique tattoo designs into a cottage industry that didn’t require a canvas of skin in a time when tattooists were in and out of work because of the pandemic. Working with local engraver Lauren Tuggle, Hatfield can now share her original designs on jewelry and glassware. Examples are on view at Balefire through the end of March if you’d like to place an order.

Dona Laurita, Transitional Evidence
Valkarie Gallery, 445 South Saulsbury Street, Belmar, Lakewood
Through April 11
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 13, 5 to 8:30 p.m.
Colorado photographer Dona Laurita does her duty for MOP 2021 with a pensive, beautiful show about the many-layered veil of grief and loss, somehow capturing the image of incomplete feelings in a dreamy, fog-drenched landscape.

The Space(s) Between
Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery of Contemporary Art, Ent Center, 5225 North Nevada Avenue, Colorado Springs
March 11 through July 24

Vicki Myhren Gallery, School of Art & Art History, University of Denver, 2121 East Asbury Avenue
March 11 through May 2

Virtual Gallery Program: Wednesday, April 7, 5:30 p.m., link TBD
The Space(s) Between Exhibition, a large-scale collaboration between the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Galleries of Contemporary Art and the University of Denver’s Vicki Myhren Gallery is a blockbuster in sections, roving from galleries on both campuses beginning in March to multiple outdoor locations in Colorado in April. It’s a fitting solution for a show inspired by the timeless landscapes of the American West: The works improvise with the horizon line — for instance, in a painting of billowing clouds plastered on a billboard or a photograph blown up and wheat-pasted to the side of a desert hut in the Navajo Nation. In its full glory, the eventually roadtrip-encircling The Space(s) Between is going to be spectacular (and safe to view from your car).

Situation Report
Firehouse Art Center, 667 Fourth Avenue, Longmont
March 11 through April 5
Opening Reception: Friday, March 12, 6:30 to 9 p.m.
Firehouse joins Month of Photography with a show documenting current issues in our own backyard: our fragile environment, the proliferation of wildfires this year, Black Lives Matter protests in the streets, and the rise of COVID-19. This is an exhibition that demands participation. It can’t be viewed casually as pictures on a wall, and its intention is to send you home an activist who cares about the future.

Blue: Madeleine Dodge, Susan M. Gibbons, Wendy Kowynia and Gabrielle Shannon
Space Gallery, 400 Santa Fe Drive
March 12 through April 17
Opening Reception: Friday, March 12, 6 to 9 p.m.
RSVP online in advance for a timed-entry slot at the reception
A female foursome takes cues from the color blue from different points of view at Space Gallery: Madeleine Dodge uses printmaking techniques and other unusual colored media on steel surfaces to create grid-like abstracts, Susan M. Gibbons works with encaustic, Wendy Kowynia manipulates fiber into sculptural shapes, and Gabrielle Shannon layers pigments and liquid washes across the canvas for results resembling a restless, oily sea. All of these techniques work well in blue shades, as you will see.

Holly Andres, The Fallen Fawn
Patty Carroll, Anonymous Women: Demise
Anouk Masson Krantz, West: The American Cowboy
Visions West Contemporary, 2605 Walnut Street
March 12 through April 17
Three photographers are included this month at Visions West in collaboration with MOP 2021: Holly Andres unfolds a continuing female narrative in her Fallen Fawn series of images recalling what happens when her sisters discover a lost suitcase; Patty Carroll plays out a Clue-like mystery game with staged photographs; and Anouk Masson Krantz explores the lives of contemporary cowboys in black and white.

Barbara Gal, A Photographic Life
Chris Bullock, as far as i know
In the Community Gallery: Message in a Bottle
Next Gallery, Art Hub, 6851 West Colfax Avenue
March 12 through April 4; Message in a Bottle, March 12 through April 18
Next members Barbara Gal and Chris Bullock show photography — Gal with a personal retrospective of her decades behind the lens, and Bullock with stark black-and-white studies of tree branches and a mysterious portrait of a woman called “Little Statue” whom Bullock met while living in China. A group of Next members takes over the Community Gallery for Message in a Bottle, an extended show addressing the feelings of isolation and loneliness we’ve all experienced in the last year.

RumTum and Remote, Intergalactic Planetary
ILA Gallery, 209 South Kalamath Street
March 12 through April 4
Opening Reception: Friday, March 12, 6 to 10 p.m.
Colorado’s John Hastings (better known in the street-mural community as RumTum) and Miami artist Jay Bellicchi, aka Remote, join forces for a duo at ILA Gallery that looks into the heavens, exploring the uncounted mysteries of space. RumTum creates alien characters while REMOTE imagines their galactic landscapes for a show that will tickle your imagination.

Viktor Frešo, Birth of Self and the Complexity of Ego
K Contemporary, 1412 Wazee Street
March 13 through April 24
RSVP online in advance at for timed-entry slot; for private appointments, email [email protected] or call 303-590-9800
K Contemporary furthers its mission to bring an international flavor to its galleries with an exhibition of work by intellectual Czech artist Viktor Frešo, known best for his formidably unpleasant-looking sculptural character Picus, a self-referential presence who figures in this combined display of sculpture, mixed-media works, inflatables and wall installations.

Reception postponed to Saturday, March 20
Scott McCormick, Orpheus
Leon Gallery, 1112 East 17th Avenue
March 13 to April 24
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 13, 6 to 11 p.m.
RSVP online in advance for timed-entry slot
Be prepared to be gobsmacked by Scott McCormick’s Orpheus, the culmination of more than a year’s research, set-building process and astonishing depiction of the mythical Greek superstar’s story through photography. With inspiration from nineteenth-century French painters and Greek, Slavic and Mayan folklore, McCormick has turned Leon Gallery into a sensually exact micro-world. Check this one as a MOP must-see.

Radiant Season: Paintings by Kevin Sloan
Freyer-Newman Center galleries, Denver Botanic Gardens, 1007 York Street
March 13 through July 11
Virtual Studio Visit and Artist Talk: Thursday, March 25, 6 p.m.
DBG admission: Free to $15, by timed-entry reservation in advance at botanicgardens.org.
Kevin Sloan’s detailed pop-surreal visions go botanical in this themed show at the Denver Botanic Gardens, a dreamy paean to plants and creatures that go wild in urban spaces, from thistles and sunflowers to hustling bees and sparrows. Sit a while and insert yourself into Sloan’s living portrait of nature at work.

Babe Walls/Matriarch Mercantile Gallery Opening
Matriarch Mercantile, 2700 Walnut Street
Saturday, March 13, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The RiNo Mural Program, Babe Walls and Matriarch Mercantile will kick off a series of Womxn’s History Month events with an open house and gallery opening at the woman-centric Matriarch Mercantile, giving way to a month of new mural installations (some still in the works) and workshops for women artists with entrepreneurial goals. Ladies first!

Alisha B. Wormsley, The Space I Am In
Philip J. Steele Gallery, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, 1600 Pierce Street, Lakewood
March 1 through March 30
Virtual Artist Talk: Tuesday, March 16, 4:30 to 6 p.m.
Notable Pittsburgh-based artist Alisha B. Wormsley’s show The Space I Am In opened March 1 at RMCAD during uncertain times, when the doors to the Philip J. Steele Gallery were still closed to the public. Viewers can now visit the important MOP show by appointment through the end of March (email [email protected] for details), but you might want to preface a visit with Wormsley’s virtual talk presented by RMCAD’s Visiting Artist Scholar & Designer Program — a fascinating and free online event where you’ll learn about her multimedia action-based practice focused on Black women in America.

Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [email protected].

Susan Froyd started writing for Westword as the “Thrills” editor in 1992 and never quite left the fold. These days she still freelances for the paper in addition to walking her dogs, enjoying cheap ethnic food and reading voraciously. Sometimes she writes poetry.