Things to Do Denver: Gallery Openings and Art Shows July 7 to 13, 2021

The reopening of the McNichols Building is big news in art this weekend, as is a memorial retrospective for fallen art-star Robert Green at Pirate, while a quartet of top Miami muralists demand attention at ILA Gallery. Co-ops continue with members shows and some wild performance art comes to Understudy. Get ready to rumble.

Shades of Greatness, July 9 through September 7
Black Love Mural Festival Remix, July 9 through October 3
All-Star Alliance: Transcultural Muralists of Denver, July 9 through October 3
McNichols Building, 144 West Colfax Avenue
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 8, 6 to 9 p.m.
Live Painting: July 10, 2-3:30 p.m., and July 11, 12:30-2 p.m.
Panel Discussion, Sunday, July 11, 11 a.m.
And just like that, the McNichols Building re-opens its doors with three beautiful shows mixing up ideas of baseball, social justice and other hot topics in Denver. The national show Shades of Greatness remembers the Negro Leagues, with a special emphasis on the illustrations of Kadir Nelson, the author of WE ARE THE SHIP: The Story of Negro League Baseball, whose work depicting Black heroes and everyday scenes from modern Black life often graces storybooks and New Yorker covers.

Black Love Mural Festival Remix changes course by showcasing the artists of this summer’s ongoing fest in Civic Center Park, who will be collaborating on new work in the second-floor gallery. And finally, a septet of well-known Denver muralists — Casey Kawaguchi, Karma Leigh, Tuke One, Detour, LaDopa, Moe Gram and Zaida Sever — were commissioned by Major League Baseball to fete baseball in mural art to welcome next week’s All-Star Game.

Turning Toward the Light Reception and Artist Talk
Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 South Allison Parkway, Lakewood
Thursday, July 8, 5:30 to 8 p.m., artist talk at 6 p.m.
Turning Toward the Light opened at the end of May, when visits to the Lakewood Cultural Center gallery were still restricted, which forced the center to postpone the reception. That’s all changed, so come on down — Patricia Finley, Lydia Riegle, Janet Rundquist and Cyncie Winter will discuss the show, a reflection on art’s ability to uplift even in the hardest of times, mid-reception. See the exhibition through August 20

Robert Green Retrospective
Megan Bray, Sunsets Over South Dakota
Pirate: Contemporary Art, 7130 West 16th Avenue, Lakewood
July 9 through July 25
Opening Reception: Friday, July 9, 6 to 9 p.m.
Memorial Reception: Sunday, July 11, 4 p.m.
Closing Reception: Friday, July 23, 6 to 9 p.m.
The Denver artist community, especially in co-op culture, mourned the loss of the ingenious sculptor, installationist and good guy Robert Green late last year. Now, Pirate, where Green was once a member, has put together a memorial retrospective of the late artist’s statement works, which cleverly utilized found objects and common materials to make personal points. Green will also be remembered through video, memorabilia and still images, and most likely anecdotes from the peanut gallery at the July 11 memorial event. That’s a hard act to follow, but do check out associate member Megan Bray’s show, Sunsets Over South Dakota, inspired by her agrarian childhood.

Sasha the Kid, Kid at Heart
Dateline Gallery, 3004 Larimer Street
Through July 31
Opening Reception: Friday, July 9, 6 to 11 p.m.
Painter Sasha the Kid, whose loosely drawn oil and acrylic portraits in primary colors fall somewhere between Picasso and Basquiat, will bring a fresh stash of work to Dateline, including mini-paintings for fans looking to buy a piece of two. The artist from Tacoma now lives in Five Points, not too far from Dateline; assume that means we’ll be seeing more of him around town.

Su Kaiden Cho, Numinous
Understudy, 890 C 14th Street
July 8 through July 31
Opening Reception: Friday, July 9, 5 to 9 p.m., with performances at 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m., 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Korean artist Su Kaiden Cho blends sculptural painting, installation and performance to comment on the dangers of masking one’s essence, inviting viewers to return to the light for Numinous, the latest show to breathe life into Understudy. During a string of performances on opening night, Cho will be vacuum-sealing himself in a vinyl bag hanging from the ceiling to make his point.

Jennifer Bain, Mapping Shapes
Shelley Gardner, Nothing But Time
Michael Warren Contemporary, 760 Santa Fe Drive
July 6 through July 31
Opening Reception: Friday July 9, 5 to 8 p.m.
Michael Warren showcases artists Jennifer Bain, who offers brightly colored and textured acrylic abstracts and fun soft sculptures that suggest but don’t quite resemble animal forms, and Shelley Gardner, whose circular wood wall panels are encrusted with buttons and rolled denim dots.

Generations: An Intergenerational Art Show
CHAC at Converge, 3327 Brighton Boulevard
Through September 30
Opening Reception: Friday, July 9, 6 to 8:30 p.m.
CHAC gets around in spite of losing its last brick-and-mortar, weighing in this summer at the Converge co-working space in RiNo with Generations, a show pairing young artists and old masters from the Chicano art traditions in collaborations. In July, Cal Duran, who channels his indigenous roots in clay and papier-mâché sculptures, and metal sculptor Alfredo Cardenas work together to explore the storytelling nature of three-dimensional work. August sees legendary muralist Emmanuel Martinez teaming up with young tattoo and street artist Jher Clark, and in September, painter and CHAC founding member Stevon Lucero takes Alicia Cardenas who, like Clark, works in tattoo and mural art, under his wing in September.

Juicy
ILA Gallery, 209 Kalamath Street, Suite 12
July 9 through August 8
Opening Reception: Friday, July 9, 6 to 10 p.m.
Artists and the pride of Miami’s Wynwood District, Luis Valle, Diana “Didi” Contreras, Claudio Picaso and Amanda Valdes, will share their lauded signature styles here in Denver at ILA Gallery, where director Lorenzo Talcott is pleased to have them. And if that’s your bag, it’s certain that you will be pleased as well to see this snapshot view of the cream of modern mural art.

The Green Show
Core New Art Space, Art Hub, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
July 9 through July 25
Opening Reception: Friday, July 9, 5 to 10 p.m.
Core goes green like Denver after a rainstorm in July with the Green Show, a juried group exhibition that explores green in all its many connotations — expressly, the color of spring and renewal, environmental awareness and a stack of crisp dollar bills. Look for both irony and serendipity, shaped by juror Denise Demby’s art sensibilities.

Deborah Abbott, Found Fields
Jennifer Hope, Sundial: Paintings about Light and Time
Edge Gallery, Art Hub, 6851 West Colfax Avenue, Lakewood
July 9 through July 25
See the light at Edge, where Deborah Abbott uses color theory and the many definitions of the word “field” to comment on sustainable practices, and Jennifer Hope brightens her world with abstract acrylic paintings.

Noah Breuer, Alexandra Knox and Manda Remmen, Means of Production
Firehouse Art Center, 667 4th Avenue, Longmont
July 9 through August 29
Opening Reception: Friday, July 9, 6:30 to 9 p.m.
Artists Noah Breuer, Alexandra Knox and Manda Remmen all look at the issues lurking behind capitalism —labor, ownership and consumerism — from different points of view. Breuer delves into family members lost in the Holocaust — who ran a textile-printing business, Carl Breuer and Sons, until Nazis took it away from them in 1939 — through the reproduction of textile designs from the C, B & S archives; Knox addresses the hardships of child-rearing with “Stockpile,” a sculpture of plaster milk bags, and “PunchCard,” a series mimicking time cards punched for the labor of caring for a newborn; and Remmen uses rearrangeable house-paint color chips named in fancy script to cast shade on the ridiculous commercial names of said colors.

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.