Here are six promising options to consider.

Alma Thomas, “Composing Color,” Denver Art Museum, Sept. 8 through Jan. 12.

Alma Thomas was a great painter with an even better story. Wide recognition only came to her later in her life, after she retired from decades as a schoolteacher in Washington, D.C., and major museums and galleries caught on. Thomas, who died in 1978 at the age of 86, went from being an inspiration to generations of kids to an international art star whose paintings now sell for millions of dollars at auction. This traveling exhibition of her abstract canvases is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which has considerable holdings of her work. The paintings show the artist’s skill at using hyphenated, acrylic marks to capture deep emotion and boundless energy.

Location: 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway. More info: 720-865-5000 or denverartmuseum.org.

Verdi Requiem, Colorado Symphony, Oct. 18-20

This production of Verdi’s choral masterpiece is special for two reasons. First, it is meant to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Colorado Symphony Chorus, which debuted back in 1984 with the same piece of music. Second, it marks the final concert of Duain Wolfe, the chorus’ founder and a beloved institution on the local classical scene. Wolfe outlasted seven separate chief conductors of the symphony during his tenure. It will be a bittersweet weekend, no doubt. Guest conductor Alexander Shelley will be on the podium.

Location: Boettcher Concert Hall, Denver Performing Arts Complex. More info: 303-623-7876 or coloradosymphony.org.

Ethel + Robert Mirabal, “The Red Willow,” Oct. 14

The Lakewood Cultural Center does not get the regional recognition it deserves. Its annual LCC Presents series has consistently produced gems across the disciplines of music, dance and family entertainment for two decades now, making the suburbs a much more interesting place than they were back in the day. This concert is a good example of LCC Presents at its most interesting. Ethel is one of the top contemporary classical music quartets on the touring circuit, and Mirabal, who hails from the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, is among the most respected flute players and music makers in the country. Expect a night of sincere, and ethereal, sounds. The concert is meant to coincide with Indigenous Peoples Day.

Location: 470 S. Allison Parkway, Lakewood. More info: 30-398-77845 or lakewood.org.

“Movements Toward Freedom,” Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Sept. 20-Feb. 2

The MCA is taking a real risk with this show, filling its galleries for more than four months with a high-concept exhibit that looks at the way body movement acts as a form of creative expression across artistic disciplines. This group show, curated by Leilani Lynch, has varied participants, including well-known names like Senga Nengudi and Ronny Quevedo, but also local artists, such as Laura Shill and Ben Coleman. The draw here is that much of the art will be activated through performances during the run of the show. One highlight: an installation by Brendan Fernandes that will resemble a dance studio where performers can interact with his three-dimensional works. This is the kind of adventurous move that deserves support from local art lovers.

Location: 1485 Delgany St. More info: 303-298-7554 or mcadenver.org.

“Sleeping Beauty,” Colorado Ballet, Oct. 4-13

The Colorado Ballet is expecting a sell-out for its eight performances of “Sleeping Beauty” — remarkable, really, for a title that has been around since 1890. This production goes back to the basics of the work, with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and movement by Marius Petipa, and the type of big, magical sets that keep customers coming for ballet’s biggest numbers. Everybody knows the story, and the Colorado Ballet knows to keep this work traditional in every way. This is a family-friendly event.

Location: Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts Complex. More info: 303-837-8888, ext. 2 or coloradoballet.org.

Ivalas Quartet, Sept. 24 and 25

Friends of Chamber Music is offering a lot of options for formal events this season, including promising concerts by the Takács Quartet and soprano Karen Slack. But these two concerts, featuring the emerging musicians of the Ivala Quartet, are a small and welcome special attraction. On Sept. 24, the quartet, which fuses sounds from various genres, will take the stage at downtown’s Dazzle Denver, a venue more traditionally known for straightforward jazz.  The next night, they move a few streets over for a second show at the landmark Clocktower theater, which will center around Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2. The ensemble is just off a residency at the Juilliard School in New York City, and this is a chance to — two chances, really — to catch them before they become famous.

More info on both events: 303-388-9839 or friendsofchambermusic.com.

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In all, the facility has three indoor galleries, with a considerable 4,000 square feet of exhibition space between them, and the rooms are loaded with rotating displays by a global lineup of artists that add layers of both entertainment and understanding to a garden trip.

The artwork incorporates a human touch into a place dedicated mainly to the superpowers of nature, and invites visitors to see the surrounding flora on a more emotional and spiritual level. The art builds bridges between people and plants.

It would be easy to see similar efforts at the city’s other major institutions accomplishing the same feat — shaking up the routines for repeat customers and offering them richer ways to think about science or animals or history. Surely, they have the resources, if not the wisdom.

The three shows at DBG right now show what this setup can accomplish when programmed thoughtfully. They are all impressive and each makes that special connection between nature and the human experience. They just do it differently.

The latest exhibition is just a single piece of art, Patrick Marold’s show-stopping installation titled “Shadow and Light.” It takes up the entire space in the garden’s smallest gallery, an oval-shaped room in the Freyer Newman Center.

The site-specific piece conforms to the gallery — it’s kind of an oval too, though a fat one, more in the shape of a whale’s body, minus the head and fins. Marold has fashioned it out of dozens of steel rings, maybe an inch wide, lined up in a row. Each dangles from a rod that is itself suspended from the ceiling.  Viewers can walk around the work, getting a 3-D view.

The outer sides of the rings have a matte finish and the interiors — lined with copper foil — are polished and shiny. Because of that, the two sides absorb and reflect light differently, and the piece gives off different “light and shadows” as viewers circle it.

The piece is also very sensitive to the amount of light in the room. As sunshine comes and goes through the surrounding windows, the work appears to change shape, and it casts off different — and exquisite — shadow patterns that fall below it on the gallery floor.

“Shadow and Light” appears complicated but it is actually quite simple, just like Marold’s better-known public art project, “Shadow Array,” the massive work made from 236, full-size, beetle kill timbers that is installed along either side of the tracks at the Denver international Airport station of RTD’s A-line train.  Both projects aim to help viewers think about how physical perspective changes the way we see things.

There is no direct correlation between the artwork and the plants at the garden, but it indirectly helps us appreciate the way trees, leaves and flower petals take on different personalities depending on the time of day. The piece will be on display through Jan. 5.

The second exhibit has a more straightforward relationship. “Geography of Hope” is a collection of images taken by photographer Elliot Ross in Utah’s Glen Canyon. Large areas of this canyon were long submerged in water but have recently been exposed due to the endless drought impacting the American West.

The photos show two interesting things. First, they give us a view of what was under all that water. Second, we see how nature has adjusted and now uses the area as a place for new plant life to grow. Climate change has taken away one thing — an aquatic ecosystem that thrived for ages — but it has given us another. The exposed terrain is teeming with fresh life that shoots up from the dirt and rocks and breathes the same air that humans do.

Ross’s shots are spectacular in the way they capture the natural shapes and colors of this land. He takes humble viewpoints — in some ways, the images look like snapshots an adventurous tourist might take while walking about the canyon.

But they are most impressive in the way they offer a new perspective on the fact that our planet is in a state of flux, and that is not always a bad thing.  Climate change is devastating … and yet, our world finds a way to survive and adapt. Environmental scientists call it rewilding, and these photos document it in action. The show runs through Feb. 2.

The third exhibit, “River’s Voice: Textiles by Alexandra Kehayoglou,” has actually been on the walls at DBG since April and many garden visitors have already seen it. If not, it is worth a special trip before it closes on Dec. 8.

Kehayoglou makes rugs of various shapes and sizes, some for wall hanging, others for walking upon. She clips and sews and tufts her materials so that they resemble topographic maps of various parts of the world. They are abstract, but there is a clear representation of forests, rivers and hills.

The works are as much functional furniture as they are fine art. They feel like technical renderings of actual places but they also have a warm, hand-made aura.

The exhibit’s centerpiece is the largest work, which occupies the back half of the garden’s main gallery, running up one wall and spilling down onto the floor in front of it. It is sprawling and meant to capture a portion of a river valley in the artist’s native Argentina. One side shows virgin land and the other depicts how farming and industrialization have reduced large parts of the region to battered, over-developed terrain. It’s a soft piece with a hard edge.

The most interesting aspect is that visitors are allowed to walk right on top of it — shoes off, of course. It’s an effective gimmick that transforms an artwork that might feel distant and intimidating into a place to lounge, and reflect on both the good and bad things happening on our planet.

For more info on the exhibitions at DBG, go to botanicgardens.org.

Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in fine arts.

Telluride’s Aug. 30-Sept. 2 event, however, is long sold out. Here are more ideas for Colorado film festivals through the rest of the 2024 awards season, with a focus on independent features and documentaries — plus the occasional “Wild Robot.”

San Souci Festival of Dance Cinema

The 21st version of this unique festival mixes in-person and virtual screenings, including titles streaming through the end of the year and in person at the Dairy Arts Center’s Boedecker Theater. The Aug. 30-Sept. 1 opening events on the Museum of Boulder’s rooftop patio include films, live performances and art installations, along with food and drink. Futures events, such as the Sept. 10 short-film screenings at the West Age Well Center, include discussion and a low-mobility-friendly dance class — free to the public age 60 “and better.” sanssoucifestival.org

Aspen Filmfest

Celebrating 45 years, Aspen Film’s feature-length event (they also run the excellent, Oscar-qualifying Shortsfest) retains its modest footprint from last year, hewing close to the Aspen Isis Theatre, Sept. 17-22. It retains the well-balanced programming of last year too, with more than a dozen buzzy indies and Hollywood features. The titles range from the opening film “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” an audience favorite from Sundance, but also the big-budget Dreamworks animated film “The Wild Robot,” and the Jesse Eisenberg family comedy “A Real Pain.” aspenfilm.org/festival/2024-filmfest

Crested Butte Film Festival

This 14-year-old gem has a lightness to it that’s reinforced with the stunning mountain views. A nonprofit event running Sept. 18-22, the Crested Butte Film Festival has documentaries, narrative features, shorts, local entries, and in-person filmmakers. We like the high placement of “Kneecap,” the feature dramedy about an Irish hip-hop group that features real musicians. Also keep an eye out for the all-ages highlights, including a children’s film workshop on Sept. 21. cbfilmfest.org

Breck Film Festival

Breckenridge waves goodbye to summer with its mix of independent and festival-track films screened at The Eclipse Theater, The Riverwalk Center, and the Breck Backstage Theater, Sept. 19-22. Like most high country film confabs, this is a walkable and casual event that last year presented about 100 titles, typically with a genre-agnostic approach. This year’s schedule and film guide are expected to be released Sunday, Sept. 1, at breckfilm.org.

Denver Silent Film Festival

Don’t sleep on the chance to see film’s bedrock works illuminated in new and stunning ways. In addition to nine, lovingly restored silent films programmed from around the world, the Sept. 27-29 screenings at the Sie FilmCenter are presented with live musical accompaniment by local artists like the world-renowned Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Seriously, this is one of the coolest little fests anywhere. denverfilm.org/denver-silent-film-festival

Telluride Horror Show

The new golden age of horror movies we’re living in draws its lifeblood from fests such as these. This one’s marking 15 years with another round of murderously fun high-country screenings, guests, panels and parties — although the lineup has not yet been announced. Expect that shortly before the fest, which takes place Oct. 11-13. telluridehorrorshow.com

Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival

The 37th festival returns to Colorado College in Colorado Springs with an international celebration of women filmmakers. This year, the event will have in-person screenings at Colorado College Oct. 18-20, followed by a “virtual encore” Oct. 24-27. The full schedule will be available Oct. 1 at rmwfilm.org.

Denver Film Festival

The program and guest list is still firming up, but passes are already on sale to the 47th Denver Film Festival, the city’s largest and most prestigious movie party. Expect to see the lineup the first week of October when single tickets go on sale to subscribers (Oct. 3) and the general public (Oct. 4). The event runs Nov. 1-10 and includes the typically impressive schedule of screenings, parties, panels, themed packages, and awards spread across the Sie FilmCenter, as well as the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Botanic Gardens, MCA at the Holiday Theater and others. denverfilm.org/denverfilmfestival

Ridgway Film Festival

The lineup’s not out yet for this 10th event in the San Juan Mountains, running Nov. 14-17, but last year’s program featured fun options such as skygazing trips (it’s really, really dark there at night), an art show and lots of in-person meet-ups alongside the many screenings. Lost of events are free, too. filmfreeway.com/ridgwayindependentfilmfest

Vail Film Festival

This late-season, competitive event is still taking submissions on its website, so a public lineup hasn’t even begun to take shape. There’s a screenplay competition open now for features, shorts and TV pilots. The schedule for the 21st event, which will again feature dozens of films in the high country ski town, will be announced in the coming weeks. Dec. 7-10. vailfilmfestival.com

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There were always exceptions on the annual Newman Center Presents season — it was never boring — but the community came to think of it as a place to see artistic standard bearers, acts that needed no introduction, like the Martha Graham Dance Company, or the London Symphony Chorus, or Dizzie Gillespie’s All-Star Big Band.

This year’s season, which is particularly tantalizing, shows how far the venue has come — and perhaps how far the tastes of Denver audiences have evolved and opened up. There are only a few acts on the schedule that most people here probably have heard of; instead, it’s a global fest of performers across art forms, geography and purpose.

It’s a challenging lineup, but also irresistible, starting Sept. 22 with season opener, Cécile McLorin Salvant, whose jazz vocalist repertoire includes songs in French, English and Haitian Kreyòl.

There are also acts, such as Vieux Farka Touré, a musician from Mali, who is known as “the Hendrix of the Sahara,” (on April 11); Music From The Sole, an ensemble that combines music and dance influenced by Afro-Brazilian, jazz, soul, house and Afro-Cuban styles (Jan. 25); and Zakir Hussain’s Masters of Percussion (March 18), whose bandleader expands traditions from his native India.

“I think the programming has evolved very naturally over the  20-plus years to reflect the society that we live in, and the very real conversations that are happening on- and off-stage,” said executive director Aisha Ahmad-Post, who curated the season.

For example, when Newman Center Presents began its work as part of the University of Denver, there were few female classical composers in the spotlight and few living composers that classical fans would show up for. This year, a season highlight is the appearance of Caroline Shaw, who is both alive and female and a top name in the classical composing business. She performs Nov. 9 with songwriter and storyteller Gabriel Kahane.

The cultural conversation has also become more inclusive, as the idea of “fine art” has grown to include classical practices from places beyond the U.S. and Europe.

That transition will be on display at Newman, too. There is one bedrock New York-based dance troupe on the schedule, the Limón Dance Company (Feb. 18), which has been at the vanguard of modern movement since it was founded by Jose Limón and Doris Humphrey in 1946.

But there is also Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, which has been developing its own style in Asia for the past 50 years (Nov. 23-24). Cloud Gate integrates elements of Chinese opera and tai chi into its modern dance using performers who learned their craft globally, including in the U.S.

“Cloud Gate is, interestingly, an extension of American contemporary dance,” said Ahmad-Post. “A lot of the dancers actually trained at Graham.”

Ahmad-Post builds the season by doing a lot of research, traveling to conferences, concerts and events internationally and identifying attractions she thinks people will like, and then doing the hard part of coordinating the schedules of popular performers, who tour relentlessly, with the open slots on the Newman Center stages.

She also has in mind, always, the center’s education mission. While its fare is a benefit for local audiences, the venue, at its core, is meant to serve   students in DU’s art programs.

Exposure to world-class performers is a must these days for colleges who want to attract and train the next generation of artists, and Newman’s offerings allow that to happen right on campus. The theaters also serve as venues for recitals by students and faculty — DU presents a robust schedule of these performances every year (and they are often free to the public).

It also allows DU to fulfill an obligation to the local community as being a resource for top-notch culture. Newman boasts of welcoming over 130,000 people a year for nearly 500 presentations in its theaters.

The center has gone beyond those roles to become a crucial part of arts education in Denver Public Schools. Its Musical Explorers program brings musicians into classrooms exposing kids to global sounds. Newman also offers an arts-minded professional development program for teachers working with kids in K-12 schools, and hosts popular matinee performances where admission — and even transportation costs — are subsidized by  local donors, such as the Genesee Foundation and U.S. Bank.

“Every single thing that we offer through our K-12 education program is completely free,” said Ahmad-Post.

Of course, Ahmad-Post also understands that the Newman Center has an important role as a public entertainer — she is, ultimately, in show business — and so she programs with that in mind, as well, adding a few special events into the lineup.

This season, that comes in the form of Le Patin Libre, the Montreal-based dance company that came together around the talents of athletics-inspired ice dancers. That show will actually take place in the DU campus’  Magness Arena hockey rink on the afternoon of Feb. 22.

Then, there is the season’s biggest name, Broadway icon Patti LuPone, who closes the year on May 2 with an autobiographical revue set to feature many of the songs that helped build her legend.

That’s the flashy part of an effort to keep Newman Center successful in both of its missions: fulfilling the needs of students and providing a little fun for the city.

“We have this vision of being a private university for the public good,” Ahmad-Post said. “And I love that idea because there is so much exchange and sharing of ideas that comes through the arts.”

Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in fine arts.

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“For some reason, that triggered something in me,” she recounted during a phone call. “I would never have gone. Nobody was taking me to ‘The Sound of Music,’ you know? And he took us, and that triggered something.”

Around the same time, her grandmother, who also played music, started taking Gilmore to the theater. “When I graduated, she gave me a pair of season tickets for us could go together. Eventually, they were just mine. And that’s how it all started.”

That was in the 1980s. With only a couple of breaks, Gilmore has been a season ticket subscriber at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts ever since.

With its marketing muscle, the Denver Center — both its Broadway and its theater company arms — have made a fine art of building and sustaining its subscription base. That means guaranteed seats, exchange flexibility, and discounts for friends and family, and, for the Broadway division, access to the hot national tour that isn’t part of the season package. Think this fall’s “Hamilton” and next spring’s “Mean Girls.”

The bond between the DCPA and its faithful is among the reasons the premiere arts organization has seemingly rebuffed national trends and continues to rebound from the existential crisis of the pandemic. So touting the joys of the Denver Center season might be a little like preaching to the converted.

But the theater-sustaining power of the season subscription isn’t — and shouldn’t be — the sole purview of one of the region’s biggest arts institutions. The bond a subscription creates between theatergoers and the area’s smaller theaters comes with its own special qualities.

Some tangibles are obvious: time commitment, cost, a comfortable playhouse. Others, to return to the sports vernacular, are shaped by the intangibles: the camaraderie between the audience and the theater-makers.

“Our patrons are just so unique, Boulder’s a very academic place. And so, you have a lot of intellectuals that are just, they just crave this, you know, when we have new readings, new readings, it impacts the house,” said Mark Ragan, managing director of the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company. “I think we are so lucky,” he adds. “… we are so blessed at BETC because our patrons are the most loyal, wonderful, dedicated, trusting people that I’ve seen in my years of working in the theater.”

Ragan’s not alone in his affection for patrons.

“Subscribers are our super fans,” said Len Matheo, producing artistic director of Miners Alley Performing Arts Center. “They’re always there for us, through thick and thin, and we love taking care of them with our subscription packages.”

Because season subscription offers often kick-off as the current season is winding down, the revenue from those packages “brings in a big jolt of income at a time when we usually need it,” Matheo said in an email. Last week, the theater announced its 2025 season, which begins in January.

“It also helps us sell the first two weeks of a production, which can be a challenge, especially if the show is not as well-known. When you give customers a way to participate on a regular basis, you’re building community around your art!”

Looking to deepen your arts and entertainment experiences? Here are five theater companies whose artistic choices, craft and subscriptions may prove habit-forming.

The Curious Theatre Company

One expects the team at the daring company to import the goods from off-off Broadway to its digs in a former church in Denver’s Golden Triangle neighborhood. The 2024-25 season is rife with regional premieres and a bonus world premiere. Among the playwrights whose reputations keep trending upward: Dominique Morriseau, whose “Confederates” opens in November, and
Samuel D. Hunter (author of “The Whale”), whose “A Case for the Existence of God” opens in early 2025. Actor-playwright Regina Taylor’s “Exhibit” will have its world premiere in late spring.

Tangibles: This year’s season offers a four-pack of shows, starting with Selina Fellinger’s all-female political comedy “POTUS: Or, Behind Every Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive,” one of the most produced shows currently in U.S. theaters. Patrons opting for the five-show package have first dibs on Taylor’s one-woman show, which was last year’s recipient of Theatre Aspen’s Solo Flights Project Advancement Fund.

Intangibles: The company’s stated motto? “No Guts, No Story.” Yes, producing deeply engaging theater takes intestinal fortitude. What that looks like onstage comes by way of a heady mix of searing dramas and deft and timely comedies that often pose questions about who we are: to our families, our nation, each other. It also takes ducats. Single ticket sales are a wonderful measure of programming, but not the only. It is subscriptions that enable the work and the risks year-in, year-out. What’s the return on that investment? The center-staging of some of the most incisive and insightful playwrights the nation has to offer.

The Curious Theatre Company, 1080 Acoma St. 303-623-0524 and curioustheatre.org.

Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company

Season 19 will launch in late September in … wait for it … Denver when Henrik Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” — adapted by Ragan — opens at Denver Savoy Ballroom. The show will open at the Dairy Arts Center in November. Not unlike last month’s searing remount of “Grounded” — which plunged into the moral issues stirred by drone warfare — the Ibsen play engages contemporary concerns.

“It holds up a mirror to our society today,” said Ragan. “Even though it was written in 1882, it’s breathtakingly similar to what we’re going through as a country with polarization, misinformation, the rise of demagoguery. All of that’s in the play.”

Tangibles: A great value for the quality, BETC’s five-play package costs $180 and includes discounts for special productions. Recently, the company created a new tier of commitment: The Director’s Circle is an opportunity for a BETC lover to see the works, of course, but also get the perks of being a sustaining patron: special webinars with the creatives, drinks at the Dairy’s bar, a pre-season dinner with Ragan and artistic director Jessica Robblee and more.

Intangibles: The abiding affection between the company and its patrons is palpable once you walk into BETC’s home at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder or, on occasion, attend shows mounted at the Savoy in Denver. And not just because Ragan often stands in the corner of the theater personally greeting patrons as they head for their seats. Having taken the reins of the company in 2023, Ragan and Robblee have carried on a tradition of expertly produced, intellectually stimulating, engagingly performed work that invites and rewards a theatergoer’s fealty.

Betc.org.

The Catamounts

For years now, this Boulder-based company has been calling its most financially devoted fans Fat Cats. That moniker should give you an inkling that this company doesn’t mind winking. The Catamounts are playfully smart. Or smartly playful? Case in point, their current immersive show “After the End” about the search for a lost book runs, or rather ambles through, the Anythink Library in Thornton until Sept. 14.

Tangibles: The company is a week out from officially announcing its new season but expect a continuation of their civic collaborations with another Colorado history-infused work, this one unfolding in Westminster. They’ll produce a show at the Dairy Arts Center in the fall and in the new year, guests are invited to a FEED, their signature mix of a communal gathering of food, libations and performance.

Intangibles: No matter how one characterizes them, the plays, musicals and immersive experiences of this troupe based in Boulder but showing up in far-flung burgs like Westminster, Thornton or Greenwood Village will likely tickle, warm or charm you. And like the good experimenters they are, the Cats will also make you wonder about the elasticity and possibilities of the very term “theater.”

thecatamounts.org.

Local Theater Company

The Boulder-based outfit dedicated to developing new work has had a string of impressive, home-nurtured productions: GerRee Hinshaw’s solo show “Raised on Ronstadt”, the aching, Phish-inspired joyride “You Enjoy Myself,” and the blisteringly amusing and uncomfortably resonant housing parable “237 Virginia Avenue” come to mind. Earlier this month, the new season launched with a grand experiment: “We the People: The Democracy Cycle,” invited the denizens of three different cities, along with three playwrights, to craft a short play about the pressing concerns of their community.

Tangibles: Although the three, one-night engagements of “The Democracy Cycle” ended earlier this month, the rest of the season is vintage Local, starting with a production of “Stockade” in late September. Written by Andrew Rosendorf with Carlyn Aquiline, the post-WWII, early Cold-War drama focuses on the repercussions of the so-called Lavender Scare, a period of suspicion that presaged the dismissal of LBGTQ soldiers and persecution of those who went on to work in the government. Commissioned by the company, the play received a stage reading during spring’s Local Lab. So did Michelle Tyrene Johnson’s often hilarious comedy “Chasing Breadcrumbs,” set to open in February. The tiered packages are clearly defined on the Local website and, no matter which tier you opt for, they are a bargain.

Intangibles: Subscriptions help budget one’s entertainment dollars and nail down one’s calendar, but purchasing them can also reflect a deeper commitment to art, to artists, and to the culture more broadly. Co-artistic director Nick Chase described the company’s community of subscribers as “theatergoers who are interested not only in the content of a specific play, but the artistry and value system of a theater company as a whole.”

Localtheaterco.org.

Miners Alley

Goodbye Playhouse. Hello, gorgeous performing arts center. For years, Golden’s tenacious theater company peddled its enjoyable wares off the town’s main drag. With the winds of true municipal commitment at its back, it took over the town’s go-to hardware store space, rebuilt it as a theater-education complex and opened a new home with terrific sightlines, a welcoming lobby and Matheo’s local community-savvy programming.

Tangibles: The season doesn’t launch until January. So now is the perfect time to check out the subscriptions that come in a variety of packages.

Intangibles: Sitting in the raked auditorium, enjoying the story unfolding before you (the final mainstage show of the 2024 season, “School of Rock” plays through Sept. 24), it’s easy to forget how much goes into making all that happen, emotionally and fiscally. One of the great things about Miners Alley is that it’s an Actors Equity Union Theatre. This means it’s not only dedicated to putting on a show but is also committed to helping its theater-makers put food on their tables.

100 Miner’s Alley, Golden. 303-935-3044. Minersalley.com

Lisa Kennedy is a Denver-area freelancer specializing in film and theater. 

In some ways, the work in his current solo exhibit, “Everywhere You Go Love,” will be familiar to the many fans who remember the artist when he was a fixture at Rule Gallery back in the day. Morrison still thinks in straight lines and right angles. His signature move of creating multi-colored grids on flat surfaces remains at the center of his pictures.

Morrison has always been heavily influenced by the geometric abstraction movement of the 20th century — he’s a disciple of Agnes Martin —  though he has long managed to carve his own distinguishable path through that overly-appropriated terrain. He brings it up to date using high-tech paint applied to aluminum, rather than the usual oil or acrylic on canvas.

Still, in other ways, the work feels very fresh. Part of that is because he is well-matched with his new art dealer, Robischon Gallery in the LoDo neighborhood, which has just the sort of tall and expansive exhibition space Morrison’s work needs to shine. This show only has nine objects but it feels sprawling.

There is plenty of room for both the two-dimensional wall pieces on display and a new series of paintings done on 10-foot-tall columns that Morrison custom fabricates. The columns, which look like a field of totems decorated on all sides with blocks of color, play out as something in between painting, sculpture and, because of their large scale, architecture.

Morrison also has an evolved attitude in his work, and that is the thing that really makes it new. I’ve always thought of his objects as formal and rigid, a bit cold at times. That was his calling card in the eyes of many admirers.

Now he is more mature, not just in years, though that is true, but also apparently somewhere in his soul, too. The recent work is softer, more human. It is less intimidating, and warmer.

A viewer has to look hard to see all that niceness. From far away, these works look like they rolled off an assembly line. They appear exacting, too perfect to be made with real hands. The decorative pattern looks to be calculated with a level of precision that only a quantum computer could devise.

The materials are intimidating, as well. Morrison’s media of choice is Fluoronar, a protective coating commonly used on boats and the cranes that lift cargo at marine ports. Indeed, Morrison’s works hold up indoors or outdoors; weather cannot destroy them.

Up close, everything changes. Morrison, in his new, not-so-fussy period, lets his lines loosen up, the blocks of color are not always aligned, and the application of color is uneven, a bit splotchy. Turns out, these objects are not so perfect after all.

That move allows these grids to take on a whole new personality. They look to be made with care and, yes, even love, as the show’s title suggests. I would not go so far as to say they are impressionistic, but there is definitely a free hand at work in their creation. These talismans, at first so static, are revealed to be dynamic.

That imbues them with a kind of personal agency that machine-made objects lack, and it puts the emphasis on the choices that the artist made during production. Why these patterns? Why these colors, which sometimes complement one another and other times seem to insult one another?

And where do the patterns start and stop? Is what we see on the canvas — or the aluminum  — the whole picture, or has Morrison captured just a section of a grid that goes on for eternity and this is all he could fit into the space at hand?

Moreover, what are we looking at? Not a clear image, for sure. But something richer. Perhaps Morrison is painting that ephemeral place in our advanced world where hand-made and machine-made intersect. That space where realness collides with possibility.

He invites us to dive into this matrix in multi-dimensional ways, and to imagine, as a society, where we go from here. And he suggests we move in a positive direction. Consider the titles of his works: “Bright Morning Star,” “Beauty from the Ashes,” and the column-shaped centerpiece of the exhibit, “Everywhere You Go Love.” We get the message.

I cannot close out this review without giving a nod to the other work currently on view at Robischon, a five-person show called “Parallels.”

Each of the artists in this exhibit — painters Don Voisine, Marcelyn McNeil, Deborah Zlotsky and Kate Petley, and sculptor Linda Fleming — all do their own personal magic combining geometric shapes and pools of rich color to spark viewer’s imaginations.

Each artist has his or her own style — soft, hard, fluid, flat or folded — but they mostly rely on distinct lines or grids to make their points.

That makes the show a suitable companion to Morrison’s solo, and makes yet another time when Robischon, the most thoughtful commercial gallery in Denver, has found a way to connect the artists on its roster together and create a well-curated moment of art viewing.

Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in fine arts. 

IF YOU GO

“Everywhere You Go Love” and “Parallels” continue through Oct. 5 at Robischon Gallery, 1740 Wazee St. Free. Info: 303-298-7788 or robischongallery.com.

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But there is a bright spot this summer in downtown Denver, where I have spent many afternoons in the company of a single piece of art, Rachel Hayes’ “Horizon Drift,” which is installed on the Plaza of the Americas at 15th and Wewatta streets. The piece is co-presented by the Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum and the Biennial of the Americas, two of the city’s powerhouse cultural entities whose frequent collaborations always result in small wonders.

I rarely point people to temporary, single public-art works. The experience of seeing them can come and go so quickly and even the largest projects fade into the background and become nearly invisible in a short time. But “Horizon Drift” keeps calling me back, mostly because it looks different every time I see it.

For the work, artist Rachel Hayes suspended yards and yards of airy, translucent fabric over the public space, using the plaza’s existing infrastructure — building beams, light poles — as supports. The piece consists of four oversized panels, shaped into triangles that overlap one another, creating a kaleidoscope effect.

There is a fifth element to the piece: natural sunshine, which pours down from above, sending light through the material. On clear days, the panels — rendered in richly-hued color blocks of blues, pinks, reds and browns — glow brilliantly, as if they were powered up with electricity.

For people passing through the plaza, there are two ways to enjoy the opportunity: look up to see the colors interact together, or look down to see the multi-shaped shades and shadows that it cast on the concrete ground below. Both options change minute-by-minute as the day progresses. That invites visitors to stay awhile.

There are plenty of art historical references here, as Black Cube points out in its supporting literature. One points to pop artist Frank Stella’s abstract expressionist paintings that were trendy in the 1960s and ’70s. Another references glass artist Dale Chihuly’s glass ceilings, which are installed inside buildings near and far. (There is a particularly famous one in Las Vegas’ Bellagio casino that draws big crowds).

But it is most powerful as a tribute to American quilt makers, who have tended to be female and are rarely known beyond their own friends and families. “Horizon Drift” presents the patterns and handiwork of those obscure artists on steroids, underscoring both the effort it takes to produce and its organic beauty. It’s a wildly feminist work wrapped in rainbow packaging.

Hayes is an internationally recognized fabric artist who lives and works in Tulsa, Okla. She is known for her colorful interventions in public spaces. The artist has installed her panels in such places as White Sands National Park in New Mexico, the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, and among ancient ruins in Istanbul, Turkey.

Because the pieces are made of fabric and suspended off the ground, offering both shade and shelter, Haye’s objects fall somewhere between visual art and architecture. For that reason, she has been written about in art publications, but also in design magazines such as Vogue, Architectural Digest and Elle Decor. Each installation has its own personality, and intent.

The piece in Denver also has significant civic value. This area of downtown Denver was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. In the not-so-distant past, these streets and plazas were populated with office workers passing through on their way to and from work, or settling in for an outdoor lunch.

But the home office trend hallowed it out. Some days, the plaza is a ghost town. Other days, and I am compelled to be frank here, it is a place for drug dealers to do their own sort of business, and that can happen in the open. The plaza is not a dangerous or threatening place — at least, I have never felt those things there — but it needs activation.

Does a single piece of art have the power to bring people to the site — and to bring along with them a bit of hope for urban landscape? Maybe. That’s another reason I keep returning.

The Biennial of the Americas is doing side programming that provides people additional reasons to visit, and those involve more collaborations between local groups. On Aug. 14, there is a “natural light” photo-taking workshop by the Colorado Photographic Arts Center; on Sept. 26, a chance to make translucent paper collages with the Art Students League of Denver. There is a concert by the Latin jazz ensemble Mistura Fina on Oct. 24 as well. Everything is free and family-friendly.

And if you want a bigger art experience than this solo work, there are excellent side shows within short walks. I can recommend two exhibits in particular, both of which I plan to write about more in-depth next week: “Critical Landscapes: Selected Works from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection” at the Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Robischon Galley’s solo exhibition of abstract painter Pard Morrison.

But plan on spending a little while at “Horizon Drift.” The work does offer a blast of optimism and color, but it is best observed over some time, a good 30 minutes or more. The piece, and maybe a cool drink, offer a swell way to get through the dry season.

Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer who specializes in fine arts. 

IF YOU GO

“Horizon Drift” continues through Oct. 27 at the Plaza of the Americas, 1550 Wewatta St. It’s free. Info at blackcube.art.

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The last time you saw a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, there’s a good chance that live-music artist Keith “Scramble” Campbell was there, painting a 3-by-4-foot abstract acrylic artwork of the very band you came to see.

A fixture at the venue, Campbell has created more than 630 live paintings since his debut there in 2000, when he painted the band Widespread Panic. Immersed in the rhythm of the music, the artist moves with the beat, using his paintbrush like an instrument to capture the vibrant spirit and energy of the performance onto his canvas.

Inspired from a young age by New York graffiti artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí, he found his calling in emulating American speed painter Denny Dent, known for creating large-scale, 8-foot canvases of musicians in just 10 minutes, often at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. Discovering live music painting, he says, transformed his life and solidified his path as an artist.

“It seems easier to tell you which artists I haven’t painted versus the ones that I have,” he said recently. “I’ve painted over 1,000 live shows and 4,000 canvases in my career. It is a lifetime of going to shows all over the world. It isn’t just Red Rocks. If it’s live music, I will paint it.”

Q: Where does your name come from?

A: I was a speed roller skater in the 1970s and ’80s. I had a friend who called me Scramble because of the way I scrambled around the rink. Early on, I was heavily influenced by artists Andy Warhol, Bob Ross, LeRoy Neiman and Dalí. When I decided to make art my career, I felt like all of the influences from these artists were like an alphabet soup of names, a scramble of influences on me. I decided that Scramble would be a fitting name for me. (I also felt that it sounded a lot more creative than Keith and it rhymed with Campbell.)

Q: Could you give us a brief history of how you became an artist?

A: When I was in the seventh grade, I wanted to quit school because I knew I wanted to be an artist. My mother luckily convinced me it was wise to stay in school.

In the late ’80s, New York City was deep in the rave culture and the graffiti scene with rising artists like Haring, Warhol and Basquiat.  They showed their work through nightclubs and public art. They were doing paintings on walls, in the subways and on the streets directly bringing art to the people. I was entranced by their work.

In 1991, I answered an ad looking for a visual artist to paint live during a music festival. The man who placed the ad was Perry Farrell, of Jane’s Addiction. The music festival was Lollapalooza.

When I got the job, it felt like the beginning of my career. I had had so many rejections over the years of trying to get into galleries and art shows. It was when I made the crossover from the art world into the music world that I really discovered my path as an artist.

Throughout the ’90s, I did music festivals such as the New Orleans Jazz Festival, Lollapalooza, the HOARD festival, Bonnaroo, Woodstock ’94, the Lilith Fair and even the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. I have painted Widespread Panic 170 times.

Q: What kind of artist are you?

A: At heart, I am really a musician with a paintbrush. My instruments are my canvases, paintbrushes and paints.

I like to think of myself as a conduit of music, transcribing their energy and their music into a dance on canvas.

As a live artist, my paintings reflect the concert. I let the music and the environment dictate how I paint. If it’s windy and the music is hardcore, my paintings will reflect that. I’ll paint fast and furiously, the work looking abstract and impressionistic. I dance and move with the music as I paint. If there is a slower song in between, that is the time I take to fill in the details. The musicians, the weather, the people all play a role in the painting I create. I am trying to tell a story of that night. If it rains or is windy, I add that in my paintings. If there is a rainbow I will put that in there.  I am capturing the entire night into one canvas.

Q: What kind of music do you like to paint to, and do you specifically stay within a specific genre?

A: I don’t stick to any one genre. I have painted over 1,000 different bands and 4,000 canvases that include jam bands like Widespread Panic and Leftover Salmon to up-and-coming Christian rock bands. Next month, I’ll be painting King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, an Australian rock band. I’ve had the opportunity to paint jazz legends Fats Domino, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. I’ve painted Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Prince and other legends like Diana Ross, Melissa Etheridge, Carlos Santana, Blues Traveler, Lady Gaga with Tony Bennett, Johnny Winter and Tom Petty.

It seems easier to tell you which artists I haven’t painted versus the ones that I have.

Q: How did you end up becoming what seems like the artist-in-residence at Red Rocks?

A: After a show in Florida, Todd Nance, the drummer for Widespread Panic, traded a summer tour pass for a painting I had done of the band. I ended up at my first Red Rocks show where the band played in June 2000. It was love at first sight when I did that show.

Since then, I have done over 630 paintings at Red Rocks. I buy my own tickets and pay for every single concert that I go to. Red Rocks does not pay me to be there but they do allow me the space in which to paint.

Q: Do you remember the first piece of art you ever got paid for?

A: It was 1987 at one of my first group shows at a shopping mall where I sold a drawing of Joey Ramone. It was a studio piece before I was a live-music artist. I guess I have always been a music artist. even from the start.

Q: Where can we see your art?

A: On my website (scramblecampbell.com), but I invite people to come see me live at Row 23 at Red Rocks. I also have small paintings, postcards, magnets and other items for sale at the Red Rocks Trading Post.

Q: Do you have a favorite art piece?

A: I did a painting of Lou Reed in 1998 in Bethel, N.Y., on the original Woodstock grounds for the 29th anniversary of the original Woodstock. I got to talk to him and meet him afterwards and he signed the back of my painting. There are also paintings I’ve done of legendary musicians, like B.B. King and Fats Domino, who have since died. All of these paintings I love and will never sell.

Q: What memorable responses have you had to your work?

A: I showed David Crosby a painting I had just done of him and he said, “Not bad for speed painting.” Another time when I showed my painting to James Brown, he said, “Son, I’d like to thank you for coming out and painting my portrait.” He signed the entire back of the painting and said “I feel good. James Brown.”

Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

A: In my mid-20s, I wrote a letter to well-known graffiti artist Keith Haring asking for advice. He was a big influence for me back then. He actually wrote me back and said: “I’m not good at giving advice. All I can say is do what you want to do and find a way to do it as much as you want to. There is no ’answer’ that is the same for everyone. You have to find your own direction.” I’ve followed that advice ever since.

Q: What advice would you offer to beginning artists?

A: Try to make your own way and make your own art. Don’t do art for somebody else, do it for yourself.

Q: Describe your dream project.

A: Next season is my 25th at Red Rocks. I’d really like to do a book that talks more about my experiences at the hundreds of concerts and of the thousands of artists I have painted. I feel like I already have the book illustrated with my paintings. It just hasn’t been written down yet. There are so many stories that go along with the artists that I have painted. I want to be able to tell those stories. It’s 25 years of jazz fest, 25 years of Red Rocks, 35 years of live painting. I’d like to tell those stories.

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From the very first brew kettle from Boulder Beer Company to vintage ski equipment from Eldora Mountain Resort, the Museum of Boulder has in the past displayed objects in exhibitions that have helped bring to life the stories of Boulder’s vibrant history.

But when an exhibit is over, where do these important historical items go?

On Saturday, guests will have a rare opportunity to glimpse these objects, documents, books and images on a private tour of the Museum of Boulder’s Collections Facility, where out-of-commission museum artifacts go to rest when they’re not on display in the spotlight.

The tour will take visitors through the Museum of Boulder’s 7,000-square-foot, off-site collection facility, which contains more than 45,000 historically significant objects.

The collection was first established in the 1920s by an early iteration of the Boulder Historical Society. Over the past century, the museum has been steadily acquiring Boulder-centric objects — including Olympic sports gear, musical instruments, parking meters, underwear, carriages, quilts, chemistry sets, uniforms, weather balloons, a printing press, a horse-drawn sleigh and a kitchen sink — to name only a few.

With so many objects to gander at, Curator of Collections and Exhibits Elizabeth Nosek — flanked by a team of expert volunteers — will be on-site to highlight some of the most important artifacts in Boulder’s history, while also making sure guests don’t get lost amongst the massive collection.

“On this tour, I hope that people see the stories that can come through an object, and how objects can speak,” Nosek said. “That’s why we keep so many of these objects and use them to tell the story of Boulder and what a rich story Boulder has to tell.”

According to Nosek, one highlight of the tour will be a special showing of costumes from the famed Phyllis Plehaty collection. Plehaty was an artist, fashion designer, and expert seamstress who was also an active member of the Boulder Museum of History and served for many years as Curator of Costumes.

“Plehaty was such a treasure to both Boulder and the museum,” Nosek said. “She came to us with her expertise in fashion, and so we developed an expansive collection of dresses, coats and hats under her tenure here. Not only will guests get to see and learn about these clothes, but they’ll learn a bit about how we handle the garments to keep them safe to be viewed by generations to come.”

While the collection contains many artifacts from the past, the museum also preserves contemporary items from the present. One stop on the tour will allow guests to peek into the Boulder Strong collection, which was assembled in the wake of the King Soopers shooting in 2021 from items left for victims at the fence outside of the grocery store.

In addition to viewing the objects themselves, tourgoers will learn about the Museum’s meticulous preservation and storage process.

“With something like the Boulder Strong objects, it’s extremely important to keep them safe so that they may be around to educate future generations about the impact of this tragic event. Preservation is one of the most important things about what we do,” Nosek said.

Nosek also said that while the collection contains tens of thousands of objects, there are still a couple of items that the museum wouldn’t mind getting its hands on.

“As rich as this collection is, there are still some items that we don’t have, that would help broaden and expand our collection so that we can tell the story of Boulder more effectively,” Nosek said. “For instance, despite being home to the Colorado Buffaloes, we still don’t have a football in our collection.”

The tour will begin at Studio 6595 Art Studio in Gunbarrel, where guests can enjoy some live music, light appetizers and bubbly libations while perusing the studio’s large gallery space before heading to the collections facility.

Tickets for the tour are $55.20 and include an open bar, appetizers catered by Blackbelly, live music from local singer Laurie Dameron, access to the Studio 6595 space and the collections tour. Visit bit.ly/4d4VwBz for tickets.

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But when we look at the work later, years into the future, we see more than that instant. We view every painting within the context of the artist’s entire life, the ups and downs of their careers, the social circumstances of the age in which they created, and within the frame of art history.

All of that plays out in the exhibit “The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama,” which opened last week at the Denver Art Museum. The 40 paintings and drawings on display are solid examples of the soft-edged representational style common in the first half of the 20th century.

Ueyama used oil on canvas, and charcoal on paper, the preferred tools of his era, to capture scenes of farms, hillsides and architecture, to make portraits of people he knew and postcards of places he visited.

They were moments in his time and, perhaps, unremarkable in the scheme of whatever criteria we use to judge the merits of art.

Though in our time they take on an almost overpowering poignancy. Because we see them — thanks to this rich exhibition — as the products of something larger. Ueyama created many of them while incarcerated in the concentration camps where Japanese-Americans were forced to reside during World War II, when the U.S. and the country of Japan were in a dark conflict.

And so the paintings are revealed to be much more than they appear on the surface, as the product of just one of many dedicated painters. They are symbols of perseverance and hope, a peek into the human mind and how it copes with oppression, a testament to the power of art to teach history in a way that books, lectures and even personal testimony cannot. That is a lot to say about a handful of paintings, but it feels true.

“The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama” — organized by DAM’s Western American Art curator JR Henneman — uses a small amount of raw material to tell a big story, and this particular narrative has local connections.

Ueyama was born in 1889 in Japan and emigrated to the U.S. in 1908 at the age of 18. He attended the University of Southern California, earning a degree in fine arts in 1914.

He lived, worked, exhibited and traveled widely. He married another Japanese immigrant, Suyeko “Suye” Tsukada, along the way.

Then, in 1941, Tokio and Suye were among the 120,000 Japanese people in the U.S. who were deemed, without cause, as dangers to the country and forced into makeshift prisons. They were, as the exhibition text bluntly puts it, “forcibly removed from their home in southern California and sent to the Granada Relocation Center, now known as the Amache National Historic Site, in southeast Colorado.”

Despite the upheaval and, no doubt, the trauma, Tokio Ueyama continued to paint. He captured scenes of the camp and its surroundings and inhabitants. He taught art classes to his fellow prisoners.

The exhibition includes work by Ueyama before and after this chapter, but it is impossible not to look at the paintings he made between 1942 and 1945 through a different lens, one that pulls back and considers what he was seeing, and contemplating, during this dark chapter of American history.

An otherwise ordinary 1943 still life, depicting a large green squash, some dried ears of corn, and a camping lantern transforms into evidence of how Amache residents grew their own food to better their diet.

A pastoral scene from 1944, of buildings and a forlorn playground with a basketball hoop, becomes a document of how these captives lived in identical barracks and passed idle time.

Without the backstory, a 1941 portrait of a woman sitting in a chair, knitting in the afternoon sun, would appear gentle and serene. But we see those barracks in the background, and the dry and inhospitable earth that surrounds her environment and we know now, in the present, that it was not her choice to be there.

The drama that accompanies viewing these scenes is undeniable, though it derives from what the viewer brings to the experience rather than what Ueyama, who died in 1954, painted onto canvas.

They are notably straightforward, remarkable in their ordinariness, considering what was going on in the world. This is not a painter in the act of protest; rather, it is a human in the act of practicing his art. If  Ueyama had a message with this work, some extreme intent, it was concerned with exploring light, shadow and color, about freezing mood, venturing into the soul of people and nature.

It would be easy to extrapolate that calm, honest sensibility these works imbue into something grander, to see it as an effort by an artist to noble-ize camp life, to depict people keeping their chins up and their houses clean during the worst of times. There is a long history of that in Western art — and this work indeed, falls into the canon of Western American art.

Maybe that was Ueyama’s intent, or at least part of it when he was creating. We don’t know.

But we do know that art, rendered with such care and honesty, is a powerful tool in understanding our species at its best and worst. Ueyama’s moments in time, his singular frames, come together into a moving picture about humanity.

Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver freelance writer who specializes in fine arts.

IF YOU GO

“The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama” continues through June 1, 2025, at the Denver Art Museum. Info: 720-865-5000 or denverartmuseum.org.

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