Majority of the world’s biennials take place in cities and institutions in Europe, but they have become more common in the United States in recent decades. Denver’s biennial, known as the Biennial of the Americas, is unique because it concentrates strictly within the Western hemisphere and delves into topics outside of contemporary art. The 2010 and 2013 editions of Biennial of the Americas succeeded to introduce the concept of a biennial event to the city, but there was often a lack of unity among the various significant activities taking place. This year’s execution seeks to diminish this issue and will set the standards for future biennials thanks in part to the ambitious yet focused vision of the Biennial’s new Artistic Director and Curator, Lauren A. Wright.

Originally from Colorado, Lauren has spent the past nine years in the United Kingdom earning her Ph.D in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium and serving as Curator at Turner Contemporary in Margate. She returns to her hometown of Denver with the desire to stay with the Biennial long term and help strengthen the bonds with its partners and collaborators.

The theme of this year’s Biennial is NOW!, and while the aim of most biennials is to address current issues, Lauren believes that they still have a tendency to come off as historical or as looking too far into the future. The idea of “now” requires responsibility and response, and she sees Mexico’s art community as one that is taking action and confronting pressing issues. She describes the Mexican art scene as huge and complicated, one where the government and other public institutions do not always support artists. Despite their obstacles, young artists in Mexico remain ambitious and create their own opportunities, spurring new growth and solidarity within the community. They embody NOW! and will have prominence in Lauren’s curatorial vision for 2015.

Artists in Denver have a lot of support from the community, but they still share that sense of ambition and independence with the artists of Mexico. Lauren sees the Biennial as a way for artists from these two regions to build meaningful relationships. After a successful 2014 Mexico City Summit, an event organized in part by Biennial of the Americas, an artist residency exchange program was established between the Denver-based organization, ArtPlant, and SOMA, a contemporary art museum in Mexico City. Two artist ambassadors from each country have been selected for the exchange, and will have their work featured in one of the Biennial’s art exhibitions.

The residency exchange program is just one of the ways this year’s Biennial team is bolstering its artistic platform and solidifying relationships with creative institutions in the Americas. Lauren says that the physical design of the Biennial would also serve these means by uniting its diverse programs under one roof. For the first time there will be a Biennial Pavilion, which will have spaces for exhibitions, symposia, workshops, and collaborative projects, as well as a visitor center and café. The Pavilion will be a place where leaders in business, government, and education can mingle with those in philanthropy and the arts, creating opportunities for Denverites to connect with the rest of the hemisphere.

The Pavilion will be the heart of the Biennial’s activities, but there will still be satellite attractions to encourage visitors and participants to explore the city. Mural projects and other public art will be installed around town, and the main Biennial art exhibition will be held at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a venue whose mission is in line with the theme of NOW! and will likely draw plenty of visitors. The MCA has always supported Biennial of the Americas, but Lauren acknowledges that it took great confidence on part of the museum to lend itself to her curatorial perspective and further invest in the Biennial’s legacy.

The 2015 Biennial of the Americas opening festival (which will include exhibit openings, symposia, workshops, etc.) will take place in Denver on July 14-18, with programming continuing through September 7. Lauren is committed, though, to help the Biennial become more far-reaching during the time until the next one in 2017, so that people recognize it as a constant working enterprise rather than something that only comes around every other year. It is this type of consistency and investment the Biennial of the Americas needs to maximize its potential as a landmark event for Denver.

-Hayley Richardson 

In order to experience all that the city of Miami has to offer during the week of Art Basel, you must expect to visit at least one fair, one museum, one collection, and attend one party every day. Anything less would nullify the whole purpose of the weeklong spectacle. Of course time should also be set aside for some beachcombing, meals, shopping, traffic (oh, the traffic!), and sleep if you can manage it.

But after keeping this pace for three or four days, all the new, exciting, eye-catching artwork begins to collapse into a kaleidoscope of fragmented color, light, and sound. The mission switches from looking at art to acquiring another espresso or cerveza. You search for a place to sit (good luck with that), when something recognizable catches your eye among the hodgepodge of booths and your vision comes back into focus.

Whether at one of the fairs, museums, private collections, or publicly on view, artists affiliated with Dikeou Collection and zingmagazine maintained a strong presence during the biggest event in the art world. Seeing their work brought a welcomed sense of familiarity to a scene wrought with a woozy mixture of celebrity and obscurity.

Devon Dikeou’s Between the Acts, featuring curtains replicated from Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, sets the stage at NADA art fair. More images and information about this project can be found here .

Rainer Ganahl’s booth at NADA featured work from his El Mundo project, in which he invited opera singers and musicians to perform at a closing discount store in New York. Also on display were selections from his Hermès-Marx scarf series.

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Yes, that’s a projector on a toilet, along with a recording of the El Mundo performance on vinyl. As fate would have it, the booth next to his also had commode-inspired art.

Wade Guyton’s Untitled, inkjet on linen from 2007, at the Rubell Collection for the ‘To Have and to Hold’ exhibition, through May 2015. 

Guyton was also on view at the de la Cruz Collection, both independently (top) and in his collaborative work (bottom) with artist Kelley Walker (Guyton/Walker) for the exhibition ‘Beneath the Surface’, through October 2015.

Eight of Vik Muniz’ extraordinary photographs of reappropriated artworks dominated an entire wall at the Bass Museum. These are from the collection of artist Peter Marino, as are majority of the works currently on display at the museum for the ‘One Way: Peter Marino’ exhibition, on view through May 3, 2015. An edition of Milan, The Last Supper (from Pictures of Chocolate) , located just below Waterlillies, after Monet (from Pictures of Magazines) , is on permanent exhibition at Dikeou Collection.

Meanwhile, Dikeou artists Lizzi Bougatsos, Paul Ramirez Jonas, and Misaki Kawai popped up all over Untitled art fair.

Lizzi signed posters and copies of her new book Her Perfume Tears

She signed the floor, too, exhibiting exquisite can control.

Paul Ramirez-Jonas also held the floor with his volcanic Publicar rocks with corkboards, which were peppered throughout the fair for attendees to pin their business cards and party fliers.

Eric Firestone Gallery presented Misaki’s paintings in all their quirky, colorful grandeur. Just a stone’s throw away from Untitled, the Mondrian Hotel showcased a teepee she painted with hieroglyphic style designs and the planet Saturn with “Home” inscribed across its center.

She likely flew this teepee back to outer space when the party ended. 

-Hayley Richardson

Judy Chicago celebrated 75 years of age on July 20, but the party didn’t stop until just a couple weeks ago. She’s been touring the nation, celebrating her life’s work as an artist, educator, and feminist by giving lectures and opening exhibitions at eight different museums across America. This scattering of her work at various institutions over the course of 2014 creates what she calls a “dispersed retrospective,” and Denver was fortunate to host the artist and her provocative artwork at the very end of the landmark journey.

Chicago gave a talk at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design on October 16. The auditorium filled with artists, students, professors, gallerists, and collectors eager to hear what this long-standing figure in the art world had to say about looking back at her decades of groundbreaking achievements. Simon Zalkind from Denver’s Mizel Museum curated an exhibition of her work at RedLine and introduced Judy to the crowd. Her husband, photographer Donald Woodman , helmed the projector and was instructed by his wife to change the slides every five minutes to keep the pace lively.

She breezed through her minimalist work of the 1960s and her struggle to find her voice in the male-dominated world of art school. There was no reference to Womanhouse or Miriam Schapiro, and she mentioned in passing how much of a nightmare Rainbow Pickett, her most famous work from that time, had caused her. (In a 2012 Flash Art interview with Glen Phillips and Eleanor Antin she revealed that she destroyed it because curator Walter Hopps “refused to look at it.” It was recreated in 2004).

The Dinner Party was the focus of the 1970s, as was Powerplay and The Birth Project in the 1980s. When the slide switched to the 1990s, Donald joined her on stage and talked about his collaborative work with Judy on their Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light. Since he was on stage talking instead of changing the slides, a lot more ground was covered for this topic, which is great because it is one that does not get the same attention as Chicago’s earlier projects. In her years of art historical research, Chicago realized that there was little to no artistic representations of the Holocaust, and as with her previous ventures in elevating the feminine in art, she and Donald sought to do the same for those who endured this dark time in world history.

Once her talk was complete, Judy took questions from the audience.

“What advice do you have for young artists?”
“Get a job. There are too many artists coming out of MFA programs right now and the art world will chew you up and spit you out before you’re 30.”

“Is there anything from your body of work that you don’t feel the same connection to, or don’t like anymore?”
“No.”

“If someone had never heard of you before, what is one artwork that you would tell them to see first?”
“I’d tell them to go to Judy Chicago dot com.”

The exhibition at RedLine, Surveying Judy Chicago: 1970-2014, contains significant works throughout her career, including early sketch designs and test plates from The Dinner Party, beautiful glass work, and a major piece from The Holocaust Project. Curator Simon Zalkind did an excellent job of putting together a thorough representation of the artist’s work over 40 years.

Surveying Judy Chicago: 1970-2014 is on view at RedLine through December 28.

-Hayley Richardson 

The Soft Museum is an artist co-lab and design studio located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, founded by Autumn Dawn Gomez and Nicholas Salazar, with the support of fellow artisan Max Sanders. They have been friends for nearly 15 years thanks to their shared love of nature, music, video games, comics, fantasy, and their equally matched creative energies. Autumn, who is Comanche/Taos Pueblo/Navajo, and Nic, who moved throughout the western coastal regions and Hawaiian Islands before his family settled in Santa Fe, both earned their BFAs from the Institute of American Indian Arts. While proficient in almost any artistic media, it was a basic set of Hama Beads that crystallized the trio’s “vision of being children in adult worlds” into a unique and highly marketable DIY brand.

Photo by Jane Phillips, The Santa Fe New Mexican

The tiny Hama beads are arranged on a grid and then fused together with applied heat. The result is a lightweight yet sturdy plastic pendant with the signature 8-bit graphic appearance, which is central to The Soft Museum aesthetic. These pendants are then attached to necklaces, earrings, hair clips, etc. and become SoftWear.

Nic’s sister, Sara, models “Wordplay” chest piece and “Alma” mask

Autumn and Nic gave these items to friends and family, sold them at arts & crafts fairs, mailed them to artists and musicians they admire, and did tons of promotion online. It wasn’t long until people like Dirty Bird Records honcho Claude Von Stroke, DJ group The Glitch Mob, and underground rappers Jean Grae and The Big Dipper are sporting SoftWear at shows and giving #shoutouts to The Soft Museum on social media. Having people you admire as fans of your work is an amazing feeling, but the greatest honor came when The Soft Museum was selected to represent Native arts and culture through a major company.

In 2012 the brand known as Paul Frank came under fire for hosting a party with an “Indian” theme, complete with neon warpaint, feather headdresses, and tomahawk props. There was a major uproar in the media and the folks at PF removed online photos of the event and issued a formal apology. They also consulted with members of the Native community to review their entire inventory and removed any item deemed culturally inappropriate. The company then decided to release a line of accessories designed exclusively by Native artists, which is when they reached out to Autumn Gomez.

Autumn created a line that included bracelets, pendants, and crowns. She states:

“This partnership allowed for this group of artists to share Native American historical legacies of creativity and tradition, while also blending the fun and colorful aesthetic that is Paul Frank. For this project, I created Hama Bead jewelry using a bold and neon palette combined with strong elements of geometry to create 5 different nature scenes - each captured in the silhouette of Paul Frank’s mascot, Julius. Each design is based on a landscape that I feel close to. I know that basing my concept on nature may sound cliché, but when done in classic Soft Museum style, it becomes very vivid and almost ultra modern. The result suggests neon video game backgrounds from the early ‘90s paired with the bold geometry of Southern Plains beadwork.“

This sums up what The Soft Museum style and mission is all about: combining traditional artist methods with contemporary crafts, achieving balance with nature and technology, and uniting indigenous and mainstream cultures through creative ingenuity.

Since the release of the Paul Frank line, Autumn, Nic, and Max have continued to work on building the SM brand and explore new creative pursuits.

Recently Autumn has been re-purposing scraps of fabric and thrift store finds into handmade fashions that express her love of meaningful design and content. The act of recycling clothes for the sake of avoiding poor corporate business ethics and creating designs that are both wearable and posses a social message has strong connections to her Native heritage. “By using recycled materials I want to encourage others to think about where and how clothing is made as well as the fact that true individuality simply can’t be mass manufactured. … As an indigenous woman I see content and craftwork as a way for my one of a kind designs to speak realistically about my time here on earth.”

Nic graduated with his BFA in illustration in May and has exhibited his own work at numerous venues in Santa Fe like the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and the annual Armory Show at the Center for Contemporary Arts. The work of comic artists and illustrators like Junko Mizuno, Jack Kirby, and Jaime Hernandez are big influences on Nic’s artistic style, but his subject matter remains personal: “The content in my work often serves as metaphors for my experiences with asthma, food addiction, spirituality, and emotions. My work is more of a personal commentary rather than political or media inspired.” He has also been creating his own fashion wear and manifesting opportunities to show his work in galleries and boutiques on an international level.

Max has developed into a toy design extraordinaire, and has had his custom creations shown twice at Toy Art Gallery in Los Angeles, once in conjunction with the Paul Frank line and another time for BLAMO Toys. The toys allow him to explore his infatuation with “other worldly beauty and extraterrestrial cuteness.” He’s also quite the crochet master, and makes sweet little creatures that are cuddlier than their rhinestone encrusted counterparts.

While each of these artists have their own talents, their imaginations and output grows exponentially when they combine forces as The Soft Museum. The focus on youth culture and the child’s gaze helps spread their message of cultural awareness and unity to a young generation grappling with complex social issues. “It’s been a blessing to showcase our work to a broader audience,” Nic says. “Since then many people have told us that we have inspired them in some way or another. It is amazing to hear such words ~ I believe that by example and hard work you can inspire others to follow their dreams whatever they may be, even if you start from nothing.”

The Soft Museum has plans to move more toward the world of fashion/apparel. Models Cameron Russell and Chloe Nørgaard are already fans, which shouldn’t hurt when it comes to spreading the word about this up-and-coming style house from the future. Projects in graphic design, animation, music, video production and set design, toy creations, and custom commission work are also on the radar. The Soft Museum sees no limit to their creativity, and with all their originality, hard work, and growing fan base, there is no limit to their success either.

Visit www.thesoftmuseum.com to see more from this up-and-coming collaborative and purchase your own SoftWear. Purchases can also be made from

Beyond Buckskin.

-Hayley Richardson

Robin Rule at Dikeou Collection, photo by Mary Barone

The benefit of a mid-sized city like Denver is that it is easy for members of the art community to bind together and become a small yet mighty army of people who support one another’s endeavors. The downside, though, is that the loss of just one crucial player can have a distressing effect on the rest of the team. With the passing of Robin Rule last December, founder and owner of RULE Gallery, the local art community proves that it can pull together and continue an important legacy in spite of death and mourning.

Robin Rule entered the Denver art scene in 1987, and quickly established herself as a woman with great enthusiasm, taste, and straightforward honesty. She opened RULE Gallery in 1992, which became recognized for its psychologically inquisitive stable of artists and cohesively curated exhibitions, which were often inspired by dreams Robin had. Her keen eye and candid point of view helped artists harness and refine their work. Perhaps one of the reasons artists valued her opinion so much is because she lived much like them – a frugal life fueled by a passion for sharing meaningful art and connections. It is for these reasons, and certainly many others, that her absence has been sorely felt in the city.

The decision to continue the gallery or not was not an easy one for Robin’s family or staff to make. There wasn’t even a physical space for the gallery at the time, but it was the artists who made the push to keep things moving forward. Valerie Santerli took on the role of Director, and is supported by her colleagues Rachel Beitz and Hilary Morris. RULE Gallery is now settled into a permanent location in Denver’s River North (RiNo) Art District, which has grown into a thriving area in recent years. I had the opportunity to exchange a few emails with Valerie and meet her in the new space to learn what it’s been like to carry on without the gallery’s namesake.

Valerie and Robin met in 2006 through a collaborative curatorial project. Robin offered her a job on the day they met, but it wasn’t until a few months later, at a reception at Dikeou Collection, that she accepted. Robin became an invaluable mentor and friend to Valerie, and she believes in carrying Robin’s values in the gallery today.

Valerie Santerli pulls two works by Nathan Abels from the flat files.

Prior to moving into the current location, RULE opened a pop-up exhibition featuring the work of Nathan Abels at the Hinterland gallery space, and during that time a permanent space in the same building became available.

Convenience aside, the space is ideal because it shares certain qualities with previous RULE Gallery locations (there were 3 last time I counted). It is a single room with high ceilings and immaculate floors and walls. The spartan environment allows for that trademark cohesiveness in curation to shine, and as Valerie describes, distills the visitor experience into one purely based on looking and absorbing

The current exhibition, (in parentheses), features minimalist paintings and sculpture by Joseph Coniff, an artist who gained representation from RULE Gallery when he was barely out of college. He first exhibited with Robin in 2010 in a show called 4.0, which included recent art school graduates, as well as current students. It was the first commercial exhibition for these artists, and they have since become dedicated to their studio practices and exhibit their work regularly.

Joseph says that first exhibition served as a springboard for his transition out of art school, and that Robin continued to offer her knowledge and honesty for the benefit of his artistic development. Joseph recalled a day when he dropped by the gallery to show her some new prints for an upcoming exhibition. Her reaction: “I don’t like them…Art can be good, but not good for the gallery.” As much as it may sting, this is probably the greatest and hardest lesson an artist has to learn.

His current work of tri-color canvases and delicate grid work demonstrate a high level of restraint and personal understanding that takes most artists decades to develop. The sculpture “Post Lantern” shares these traits, but adds some humor to the mix.

Coniff doesn’t have complete reign over the gallery’s walls, though. Hung up high near the ceiling is a portrait of Robin from when she was a child, painted by Rosie Fisher, a friend of her mother. This memento reminds all who enter the gallery of the individual who started it all. Not everyone will recognize the portrait or understand why it’s there, but it will certainly bring lots of smiles and questions about the story of who this cheerful looking girl is and why she watches from above.

Valerie expressed that it still doesn’t feel like she is working without Robin, and that her wisdom still pervades. Robin believed in the power of collaboration, and that it is better to combine forces rather than divide. The initial pop-up exhibition at Hinterland is a testament to this idea, which they intend to build upon further. RULE’s next exhibition is a collaborative Pop-Up Project with the Carmen Wiedenhoeft Gallery, which will have two solo exhibitions. RULE Gallery will present Overlook, a series of paintings and drawings by artist Nina Elder in the back gallery while Carmen will present Imposition, new photographs by Evan Anderman in the front space. Both shows/artists address the contemporary Western Landscape using different mediums but with a unified perspective depicting man’s influence on the land.

“Goddess,” by Dale Chisman (1943-2008), given to Robin on her birthday in 1990

Although I never had the opportunity to meet Robin, I feel her enthusiasm for life and art come through when the people who knew her talk about her. She touched many lives and helped shaped Denver’s art scene into what it is today, and with the continuation of the gallery her vision and sensibilities are sure to carry on.

(in parentheses) is on view through October 5, 2014 at RULE Gallery, 3254 Walnut St, Denver, CO 80205. Normal hours are Tuesday - Saturday 12 - 6p but the gallery will be closed August 29 - September 2 for the Holiday. The gallery will be open extra hours for First Friday, September 5 from 6-9pm.

The joint pop-up exhibition will open Friday September 12, from 6-9pm at the Carmen Wiedenhoeft Gallery located at 3542 Walnut St in RiNo and will remain on view through October 18, 2014. A free artist talk with Nina Elder and Evan Anderman will take place on Saturday, September 27 at 2pm.

-Hayley Richardson