The Art Tourist does First Fridays in Denver

Walk -- well, drive -- the galleries every first Friday

by Terry Talty

Denver, CO – In Denver it's the first Friday of the month when every art gallery in the trendy art districts of the city open their doors for a happy hour/thank- god-it's- Friday/wine&cheese reception kind of thing. In Breckenridge, it's second Saturday, in Sante Fe is every Friday.

Back in balmy October, a cadre of Art Tourists headed out in a rainstorm wonderland to see the Sante Fe Street section of town and found the galleries to be generous with their hors d'oevres and people packing the sidewalk and the art spaces. Sante Fe has some traditional galleries selling pretty landscapes, nice "nature" photography and bronze realistic sculpture, but generally the work is very contemporary and by Colorado artists. The quality varies, as did the wine. The Sante Fe section of town is lively -- kind of like Santa Fe (New Mexico), but isn't that too bad for Denver.

The next First Friday the Art Tourists ventured into, was the most recent one and more wintery. On March 3, we decided to check out the Golden Triangle area, which is golden because the eminent opening of a new art museum addition and high rise development and redevelopment are making it so. Havu gallery exuded its white space in a beautiful two-story building with some decent small sculptures and pleasant artwork. It's not was you'd call " unsafe" and challenging to the mind.

Across the street was a better gallery with a show of metal and stone assembled sculptures that were hit or miss, but worth trying to decide. The building was also very nice, and very Denver, and the scene was slow; the art tourists talking to the gallery owner, Mary Walker. Walker was very nice and told us to go to the not-so- golden edge of downtown if we wanted a more edgy gallery. We decided to drive there.

+ Gallery was cool --  in a traditional turn of the last century brick building with funky decorations. The ceramic sculpture featured was reminiscent of bathroom fixtures, true to the American concept of three dimentional works in ceramic. The artist,Tsehai Johnson, an instructor at Metro State College, was present, and could chat about her work in every day language and in a way that inspired people to think about it. She explained that she based the arrangements of the bathlike objects on old wallpaper patterns.

I'm not kidding, I found this show that could have been a expo display for Kohler were interesting, and the food was very good. Some sushi was still left even though we were now on back side of the social peak.

The next first Friday will be April 7. We'll try to let you know where the good food and fine art can be expected.

Terry Talty is the self-described art tourist, who writes contemporary art criticism in a postmodern world where anything could be good.