Denver, Drawn and Quarto

Denver, Drawn & Quarto, On the plane at 6 am, Mary and I are off to Denver for the show at Alicia's gallery, Abecedarian Gallery, located on Santa Fe Street in the new art district. We're excited to have an opportunity to share our work in the area and to see the art scene, visit with other artists, and also to get to know Alicia more as well.

Arriving at the gallery, it was great to see Alicia, the last time we met was at the Codex Art fair in Berkeley a year ago when we, Mary and I, had our collaborative work taken on by Vamp and Tramp artist book sellers. Alicia had the space next to Bill and Vicki and she was able to see our work when we had our visit. After a few hours at her space, finalizing details Alicia needed for the opening, we took off to visit Denver's Museum of Modern Art. Crazily, while looking at a small sand sculpture display in the gift shop, a young kid that looked like my old studio mates son was standing next to me. I thought yow that looks like Olen. Then while I turned around it was! Suddenly I heard someone call Mary! And it was Jeff! What a coincidence. After a quick visit with his family we were off again back to Santa Fe Street for Denver's first friday art openings. During the openings, we got to meet some engaged Art viewers who's demographic was very familiar to the Oakland Art-murmur. Also it was quite impressive the number of spaces that were open with fine art. The sidewalks were packed with artists and art lovers, and all the galleries, over 30 that we visited, majority being artist run, were all full of people. Not all of the art was great, not unlike Oakland's scene, however it was very exciting to be part of, and people viewing art as well as the artist seemed quite engaged and serious about the scene. What was also interesting was, mind you this friday evening the weather consisted of a mixture of light rain and snow flurries and the temperature was about 35 degrees outside. Out of all the spaces we visited excluding our show at Abecedarian Gallery, I thought the best artwork to be seen was at Space Gallery with their show White Black Grey. During our 3 day business visit to Colorado we also visited the town of Boulder since we heard that it had a few good galleries including spaces at the University. However we were a tad disappointed except for the FYIPA beer we had at the Mountain Sun Brewery for a late lunch. On sunday we walked around the LoDo area of Denver and visited the Museum of Contemporary Art that Alicia and Rupert Jenkins who we got to see Saturday evening, recommended. To say the least we were both very impressed with not only the two shows that were on view, but also the architecture of the museum itself. Built on a contemporary modernist model thats popular now, it had very well designed details, Epe wood, steel and glass that didn't interfere with viewing the Art, but still rhythmically complimented the structure throughout the space. All in all, it was a great business adventure, we said "más tarde cocodrilo" to Alicia and her doggy Tyler, and headed for the airport to catch or flight back to Oaktown.