Through Oct. 5: The Bright Nights lantern festival is back at Four Mile Historic Park with weekly dates through Oct. 5. This year’s themes showcase “whimsical Farmhouse Flora and Fauna,” where you can “step into a surreal Chinese Dreamland, and dive into an expanded interactive zone full of surprises,” organizers said.

In other words: a walkable, kid-friendly experience with plenty of photo ops, all taking place under 40 or so larger-than-life sculptures. On-site food and treats will be available, and kids can play on swings, try their hands at a panda whack-a-mole and make “a video call with the Cleveland Asian Lantern Festival.” (There are also 21-and-up nights on Aug. 27 and Sept. 17.)

Tickets: $21-$48, with food upgrades available; kids 3 and under free. General park admission is 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and costs $6-$8 (kids 6 and under free). 715 S. Forest St. in Denver. Call 720-865-0800 or visit fourmilepark.org/brightnights for details.

Kirkland Museum goes kid-friendly

Friday: The littlest kids likely don’t appreciate the design brilliance at the Golden Triangle’s Kirkland Museum, but then again, they’ve never really had the chance. The 13-and-up policy was removed in June, however, and on Friday, Aug. 1, Kirkland will host Art Crawl: A Tour for Infants and Their Caregivers to The Kirkland.

Now a part of the Denver Art Museum, the Kirkland joined with DAM and the nearby Clyfford Still Museum to give little kids and their parents a guided tour of the salon-style exhibitions and colorful pieces, which celebrate late artist Vance Kirkland and his Technicolor milieu. The free tour runs 10:30-11:15 a.m. Friday and meets in front of the  Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway in Denver. Sign up at denverartmuseum.org/en/calendar/art-crawl-kirkland.

Free ‘Goonies’ at Sunset

Tuesday: The ongoing Sunset Cinema Series at the Denver Performing Arts Complex this week turns toward the 1985 coming-of-age comedy/adventure “The Goonies.” Whether you’ve seen it 50 times or not at all, the free event in downtown’s iconic Sculpture Park offers more than just the outdoor screening, with local food trucks, pre-show entertainment from DJ Cyn, movie snacks and drinks (including craft cocktails), and selfie and photo ops.

Doors open at 6 p.m., with the pre-show at 6:30. The film begins at 7:30 p.m., and you should plan to bring your own chairs and blankets. All ages. Register at eventbrite.com and visit artscomplex.com/summer for more details.

‘Moulin Rouge’ at the Buell

Wednesday-Aug. 17: The jukebox musical “Moulin Rouge,” based on the 2001 fantasy-romance by Baz Luhrmann, conjures high-minded ideals while serving up plenty of steamy dialogue and choreography. The touring Broadway version, which triumphed in Denver during its initial visit in April 2025, is a must-see for Broadway fans looking for a visual and auditory feast, as well as some lovely escapism.

The show runs Wednesday, Aug. 6, through Aug. 17 at the Buell Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Tickets are available from Denver Center for the Performing Arts for $53.10-$159.30 via denvercenter.org/tickets-events. It takes place at 1350 Curtis St. in downtown Denver.

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Albo will lead the 7-country metro area organization after 27 years of public service, according to SCFD, having worked as Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Vice President of Culture and Strategy at Denver International Airport, Chief of Staff for the Denver Sheriff Department, and in a variety of other roles over 11 years at Denver Department of Human Services.

The University of Colorado at Denver and Harvard Kennedy School of State and Local Government graduate was picked after a national search, SCFD said. Jordy, who stepped down this summer, will become the senior advisor on voter reauthorization of the taxing district. The next voter reauthorization will take place in 2028 as part of the November general election.

“It’s thanks to SCFD free days that I was exposed to arts and culture from a young age, and I am thrilled by the opportunity to help provide that same opportunity to others in the Denver metro area,” Albo said in a statement. “I am looking forward to working with the cultural community I call home to advance the accessibility of arts, culture, and science for all district residents.”

Replacing Jordy is a tall order. She steered the arts-funding tax district through the pandemic and other rough waters in recent years to come out on top with consistent, vital funding for nonprofit, metro area arts and culture organizations. That includes $80 million in grants for each of the last two years to more than 300 individual nonprofits.

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WOODSIDE, Calif. — Nestled in forests around the world, a gentle army of giant wooden trolls wants to show humans how to live better without destroying the planet.

The Danish recycle artist Thomas Dambo and his team have created 170 troll sculptures — including two in Colorado — from discarded materials such as wooden pallets, old furniture and wine barrels.

Twelve years after he started the “Trail of a Thousand Trolls” project, his sculptures can be found in more than 20 countries and 21 U.S. states. In Colorado, a troll named Isak Heartstone is located in Breckenridge and another, Rita the Rock Planter, is near Victor, south of Cripple Creek.

Each year, Dambo and his team make about 25 new trolls, which stand up to 40 feet tall.

“I believe that we can make anything out of anything,” said Dambo, speaking from his farm outside Copenhagen. “We are drowning in trash. But we also know that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

An installation of six sculptures called “Trolls Save the Humans” is on display at Filoli, a historic estate with 650 acres of forests and gardens in Woodside, California, about 30 miles south of San Francisco.

“They bring us back to be connected to the earth and to nature,” said Jeannette Weederman, who was visiting Filoli with her son in July.

Dambo’s trolls each have their own personality and story. At Filoli, the troll Ibbi Pip builds birdhouses, Rosa Sunfinger plants flowers and Kamma Can makes jewelry from people’s garbage.

“Each of them has a story to tell,” said Filoli CEO Kara Newport. “It inspires people to think of their own stories, what kind of creatures might live in their woods and make that connection to living beings in nature.”

Dambo’s trolls don’t like humans because they waste nature’s resources and pollute the planet. The mythical creatures have a long-term perspective because they live for thousands of years and have witnessed the destructive force of human civilizations.

But the six young trolls at Filoli have a more optimistic view of human nature. They believe they can teach people how to protect the environment.

“They want to save the humans. So they do this by teaching them how to be better humans — be humans that don’t destroy nature,” said Dambo, 45, a poet and former hip-hop artist. “They hope to save them from being eaten by the older trolls.”

Dambo’s trolls are hidden in forests, mountains, jungles and grasslands throughout Europe and North America, as well as countries such as Australia, Chile and South Korea. Most were built with local materials and assembled on-site by his team of craftsmen and artists with help from local volunteers.

“My exhibition now has four and a half million visitors a year globally, and it’s all made out of trash together with volunteers,” said Dambo. “That is such a huge proof of concept of why we should not throw things out, but why we should recycle it.”

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Those flashy shows were legendary, local moments, and they are sorely missed by local art fans, who had gotten spoiled by their high production values.

But the garden was not trying to deprive culture vultures of their prey; it was simply sticking to its core mission. It is, after all, not an art museum meant to glorify the wondrous works of humankind, but a showplace for nature. Really, the flowers, bushes and trees it grooms to perfection should be enough of an extravaganza to please anyone who wanders among its pathways and ponds.

Personally, I always felt the blockbuster shows tried a bit too hard to win attention over the flora around them, and it was rare that the work of any artist was able to stand up to the stiff competition of Mother Nature. The exhibits could seem more like a rival, rather than a complement, to the garden experience.

That background is good to know for understanding just how right the garden got it with this summer’s offering, “Blue Grass, Green Skies,” which hangs on the walls of the indoor galleries in its Freyer-Newman Center. The show of American Impressionist paintings, many of them portraying gardens and landscapes, is a nice bridge between the garden’s past and present exhibitions.

In some ways, it is a big and unexpected event with the aura of a spectacle. The exhibit, a traveling attraction featuring objects from the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has work by some very well-known names on its roster.

There is “Woman and Child” by Mary Cassatt, probably the best-known American Impressionist. The painting, dated from the late 19th or early 20th century, is a good example of the artist’s penchant for capturing domestic scenes with a loose paintbrush but a sharp focus on true human nature. The little girl in the picture is a bit antsy while the mother holding her is a strong and steady (and perhaps exhausted) presence. Cassatt was skilled at presenting these ideas without turning things too sentimental, something contemporary painters would be loathe to do. The work was ahead of its time.

There is “Strawberry Tea Set,” by Childe Hassam, an artist represented in the collections of most serious, encyclopedic American art museums. It’s a delicate oil painting that shows Hassam’s fascination with female figures, which he posed in sunlit, interior settings, allowing him to freeze light as it filters through an inside room. The painting appears to be about its subject, who is closely examining her dinnerware, but it is really about brightness and shadows.

And more to the point of place, there are numerous landscapes — John Henry Twachtman’s 1900 “Harbor Scene,” George Bellows’ 1916 “The Coming Storm,” and Granville Redmond’s 1926 “California Poppy Field” — that demonstrate how Impressionist painters were deeply inspired by nature. Those are lovely tie-ins between this group of paintings and the wares that the garden shows year long throughout its grounds.

The botanic garden drives home that link by placing several oversized, gilded frames at strategic points before its water features and flower beds. The frames are empty, except for what a viewer sees behind them — the real-life lilies, sunflowers and grasses that sparked the Impressionists’ thinking. It’s a little gimmicky — a selfie moment more than anything — but it is also fun and fully relevant.

The exhibit does a bit of teaching, but not too much. Via wall text and QR codes, it makes the connections between the more famous French Impressionists and the Americans who followed their lead. It breaks down the work into neat categories — landscapes, interiors, urban scenes, portraits — and it tries, with just a little effort, to connect the paintings to the trends that were happening simultaneously in plant cultivation and personal gardening during the same time period.

Best of all, the show accomplishes a lot while knowing its real purpose as a sideshow to the plants and flowers that take center stage at this Denver institution. There are only 18 works on display, but it makes its point, without trying to steal the show from the headliners, which in this particular summer includes thriving hydrangeas and zinnias and dazzling patches of purple globe thistle.

All that said, the Impressionist exhibit does face off strongly against one of the garden’s main elements: its gift shop. “Blue Grass, Green Skies” travels with its own little pop-up store selling exhibit-related goodies, and the Denver Botanic Gardens has installed it inside the Freyer-Newman Center.

It’s a bit of a cliché. You do have to “exit through the gift shop,” a phrase borrowed from the street artist Banksy’s 2010 documentary about how the institutional art world exploits artists for its own gain, and that is now a popular reference to the tackiness of selling greeting cards and umbrellas with famous artworks emblazoned upon them.

But the shop also underscores the kind of “important” art that is on display this summer at the Denver Botanic Gardens. It is a signal, for better or worse, to take the work seriously.

Or, maybe, because the shop feels like a folly as much as a practical endeavor, to take “Blue Grass, Green Skies” just seriously enough, to appreciate that it is special, but a bit player in the overall scheme of a garden visit.

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

IF YOU GO

“Blue Grass, Green Skies” continues through Sept. 14 at the Denver Botanic Gardens, 1007 York St. More info: 720-865-3500 or botanicgardens.org.

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It’s a highly professional process and is executed with fairness and optimism. This year’s judge, for example, is Larry Ossei-Mensah, an internationally recognized curator with a distinguished resume that includes organizing a recent hit show featuring global superstar Amoako Boafo at the Denver Art Museum.

Partly because the juror has prestige and partly because they want to support their own community, local artists show up for the effort. Many of Colorado’s bigger names enter the competition, and they usually win, making this biennial the regional art world’s equivalent to baseball’s All-Star Game. It’s flashy in that way.

For exhibition visitors who venture deep onto the Auraria Campus in downtown Denver, where Emmanuel is housed in a historic church, the experience produces obvious rewards. They get a quick and economical opportunity to take in the artists who are defining the day here. This year, that includes people like Carlos Fresquez, Anna Kaye, Rian Kerrane, Trine Bumiller, Tony Ortega and others. I’ve written about all of them with admiration over the years.

Of course, a show like this has its limits as well, and they are telling about the world we live in today. In some ways, that benefits this show; in others, it distracts.

The three dozen objects in the exhibit are high-quality in many cases — go see it, I say. The work is colorful, the vibe is happy — but they have little in common except the fact that all of the artists are from here. There is no overarching thread other than geography to pull things together.

It’s not curated as much as it is neatly assembled. If you are an admirer of the way baseball is played and how art is made, then this gathering of fan favorites will live up to its promises. But it lacks an intellectual draw.

Maybe that’s more than you can reasonably ask from a celebration, and perhaps it’s impossible for a show like this to get to that point. Certainly, it is not Ossei-Mensah’s fault — a juror only gets to consider what is submitted. It’s an unworkable job.

Plus, the idea of what it means to be Coloradan is disappearing in the same way all regional identities are fading across the country. Driving the interstates, it is increasingly difficult to discern the personality of one city from the next. It’s all Home Depots and Targets and Costcos.

So many of us live on social media or the Internet, which has nothing close to the kind of state borders that might have served as effective parameters for an exhibition like this in the past. We don’t share common news sources (remember when TV news anchors were local celebrities?). We don’t even bump into each other so much at all those Targets and Costcos — we shop on Amazon from home. In a lot of ways, it’s a better world we live in, but it disconnects us.

There are some hints of a regional identity that bring this show together, if you look for them. There remains, among a few artists, a fascination with the West’s great outdoors, and they bring timely works. Anna Kaye’s charcoal drawing of a blue jay coming back to a forest that has been ravaged by wildfires is delicate and hopeful.

Same with Trine Bumiller’s oil painting of a fledgling bombweed shoot, recognized as one of the first plants to return after a burn. There are also insightful nature-related works from painters Robin Whatley and Erika Osborne.

On top of that, there are provocative pieces that seem to bring their own themes to the mix. One highlight: Nikki Pike’s “Hold Me,” which is suspended from the ceiling near the show’s entrance. She has taken a punching bag and covered it in a soft and furry white fabric and renamed it a “hugging bag.” It invites us to practice love, not violence, though it is also kind of funny.

Another one: Andrea Caretto’s “My Favorite Shirt,” an unsentimental exploration of motherhood where layers of bed clothes, handkerchiefs and shirts, collected over years of caregiving, are encased in a tower of concrete. They are evidence of a life lived, waiting to be excavated one day by an archeologist studying parenting at the beginning of the 21st century.

Where this show does get it right in defining who we are as Coloradans today is in its diversity of human contributors. The lineup of first and last names on the signage that accompanies each work indicates a group of artists whose backgrounds defy easy demographic categorization. They are a mix of ethnicities, genders and generations, and they present a world of subjects that cross lines of skin color, economic advantage, age and ability.

The downside to that: this show is a free-for-all. Don’t try to make sense of the arrangement, just enjoy it.

The upside: it is a marker of our great evolution as a community and, in that way, easily accomplishes “Made in Colorado’s” main goal of being first and foremost a celebration. You can just enjoy that, too.

“Made in Colorado” continues through Sept. 12 at Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria Campus. It is free. Info: 303-315-7431 or emmanuelgallery.org.

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The Front Range has a number of promising shows this summer, though these five are stand-outs.

Sarah Sze, “Sleepers,” Denver Art Museum, through July 2026

There is something old and something new in the Denver Art Museum’s latest exhibition, a presentation of Sarah Sze’s “Sleepers.” The museum just acquired the piece and wasted little time putting the multi-media showstopper — lights, projections, sound — before the public. “Sleepers” is a six-channel video installation that projects moving images on 300 hand-torn pieces of paper suspended along the walls in a darkened gallery. Sze captured many of the images on her cellphone and, replayed together, they question the human experience, memory and our appreciation of the environment that surrounds us.

The show also brings back DAM’s (badly missed) Fuse Box series, which started in 2008 and disappeared as the museum realigned spaces and resources over the last few years. Fuse Box focuses on pioneering new media works, often driven by developing technologies that are making their way into the art world. That makes the work very much of-the-moment and certainly different than a lot of the static art that galleries and museums present here. The installation stays up for a year, making repeat visits part of the allure.

More info: 720-865-500 or denverartmuseum.org

The Artistry of Roland Bernier, Lone Tree Arts Center, through Sept. 19

This moderately sized retrospective of work by Roland Bernier is one of the surprise shows of summer 2025. Bernier, who died in 2015, was for decades one of Colorado’s most significant artistic voices, as well as an enthusiastic advocate for the cultural scene in Denver. He is best known for works that combined abstract painting and text, bringing together two trends that dominated American art in the 20th century.

This show, part of the center’s “Commissioner’s Choice” exhibition series — which makes the most of the theater’s outer lobby spaces — taps work from three series Bernier created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, titled “Abstract,” “Graffiti” and “Arty Fax.” That makes it a swell look-back for both fans and newcomers to the artist because it displays his most popular styles, combining hyper-bright colors, geometric color blocks and mysterious threads of text. The works can be a challenge — and a joy — to decipher.

More info: 720-509-1000 or lonetreeartscenter.org

Vinni Alfonso, “The Great Wait,” Understudy, through July 20

This off-beat show — really more of an environment than a series of individual works — is yet another reason why the incubator lab Understudy is one of the most crucial art attractions in the city. Understudy provides both the space and the resources for regional artists to experiment with highly conceptual ideas.

Alfonso makes good use of this opportunity with “The Great Wait,” an installation that explores the intricacies of waiting, something we all have to do at times with both resignation and anticipation.

The entire piece has only a few elements to it — a painting, a three-dimensional sculpture and a soundtrack — so the experience of seeing it is really about just feeling the time pass … and waiting. But is that for something to start, or something to end? Or have you actually arrived and you are already a part of the action?

Understudy is a glass-windowed storefront, so the show actually begins on the outside, with carefully-arranged exterior views of the contents inside the gallery. Approach from afar and ease your way into the interior. There’s no hurrying with this one.

More info: denvertheatredistrict.com/understudy

A Century of Art in Latin America, Denver Art Museum, ongoing

The Denver Art Museum has worked mightily to improve its collection of art from Latin America, and this recently unveiled arrangement of its “permanent” exhibition space is meant to enjoy the fruits of that labor. It’s a well-deserved moment: The museum has truly emerged as one of the country’s best showcases for interesting new objects from that sprawling region. This show looks back, with works from landmark muralists such as Mexican Diego Rivera and Chilean Roberto Matta. But it also speaks to the present day with pieces by popular contemporary artists who are leading the Latin American art scene now,  such as Venezuelan photographer Alexander Apóstal and Haitian painter Tessa Mars. There is also work from Colombian textile artist Olga de Amaral, who is experiencing a career resurgence at the age of 93.

It’s impossible to present a comprehensive survey of a region so vast or a time period so long, but this exhibition aims to demonstrate how a museum like DAM can put together a solid collection and bring it to local audiences in a way that is both informative and a global thrill to visit.

More info: 720-865-500 or denverartmuseum.org

Made in Colorado, Emmanuel Gallery, through Sept. 12

I will get back to this show with a longer review, but it is a sure bet for summer gallery hopping, and a solid exhibition to have on the radar. That’s largely because it offers a chance to see work from a wide variety of regional artists, all at once.

Emmanuel makes this effort every two years, soliciting submissions from across the state and narrowing them down to a curated exhibition, with help from a guest juror. This year, that is Larry Ossei-Mensah, who recently put together a winning retrospective of painter Amoako Boafo at the Denver Art Museum.

There are dozens of artists in this mile-high extravaganza, and here are just a few: Anna Kaye, Rian Kerrane, Carlos Fresquez, Libby Barbee, Trine Bumiller, Tony Ortega and Laura Merage.

The rest are equally familiar, and it kind of feels like home to see them all gathered into Emmanuel’s main space on the Auraria campus.

More info: 303-315-7431 or emmanuelgallery.org 

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The first-floor gallery is confusing enough with its varying ceiling heights and tomb-like layout. Things get really tough on the two upper-level spaces where art on the walls competes with everything from exit signs to bathroom doors. Medals should go to the curatorial and installation teams, long led by Collin Parson, for not just persevering but for also moving forward unflinchingly on this mission of bringing fine art to the suburbs.

They succeed particularly well this summer, with a trio of shows that stare down the spatial obstacles and come together through related themes. Each exhibit is separate but they all go down a similar path, presenting work by artists, mostly narrative painters, who play with the concept of time, putting deep historical references in their scenes and purposely confusing then and now to challenge concepts of fact, fiction and memory.

The main attraction is a sprawling, mid-career retrospective of artist and teacher Melissa Furness titled “Embedded.” Furness is a master of painting the complexities of time, creating rich, complicated tableaux with multiple references to art history movements. She makes landscapes, still lifes, portraits and contemporary installations, often combining ideas from each of those categories into single objects. It’s deep and serious work at every turn, and the show provides rich escape.

Furness’s best-known paintings focus largely on botanicals — wild, psychedelic arrangements of flowers, leaves and vines rendered in oil and acrylic. Her scenes take on the aura of abandoned or overgrown places full of mystery. It is hard to tell background from foreground, to know if each place is thriving or decaying.

In that sense, they question how things are recorded and ranked over time, and they explore the state of the planet and how we treat it — there is that much in each of her works.

The show includes hundreds of objects, all thoughtfully installed, and widens our understanding of Furness’s subject matter. We do see, through more than a decade of art-making, how the painter brings the same mystique to domestic scenes, to ideas of food consumption and nourishment, to sacred rituals. The paintings can be daunting to decipher, but that is where the magic is. Who dominates the imagery in each scene? Whose story is the painting telling? What is true and false?

The exhibit also gives Furness a platform to show her output beyond the brushwork that many people here know. There are deep dives into project-based pieces, produced in such diverse places as China and Mexico, that capture her ideas on history, the environment and folklore. Visitors can watch videos or download audio recordings using QR codes.

“Embedded” presents an artist, hard-at-work, tireless, with significant accomplishments behind her and plenty yet to come. That is what a mid-career retrospective is supposed to accomplish.

“Embedded” sets the scene for the two other exhibits, all running through Aug. 24. “Origin Stories” is a small-ish solo by Fort Collins artist Haley Hasler, who also blurs the line between past and present with a series of mythology-inspired portraits that have a distinct contemporary edge.

Hasler paints both herself and her friends and family into scenes built around goddess-like figures captured in deep nature. The subjects are largely female, draped in flowing garments and set among trees, wildlife, rainbows and flowers. They are a little on the hippie side, but rooted in ideas of domesticity and parenthood, and within that, power, innocence and vulnerability.

The paintings speak for themselves, though the show is built out into three-dimensional form with what appears to be a sort of re-creation of Hasler’s work studio, complete with an easel and a painting in progress. The show is also enhanced by the inclusion of costumes, made for the models who star in Hasler’s fantasy scenes, set up on headless mannequins. Some people will like this trick — it’s a peek into process — while others will find it ruins the ruse by turning the attention off the final product and onto the artist herself.

Finally, there is “Past is Present is Past is Present,” a group show with a confusing title that sets it up perfectly as a showcase for intriguing work from seven regional painters, all of whom play freely with chronology. Again, there is a heavy influence of mythology, folklore, surrealism and fantasy.

Many of the names are familiar here, too: Robin Hextrum, Tony Ortega, Diego Rodriguez-Warner, Tsogo Mijid and the duo of Sherry Wiggins and Luís Branco. They are, no doubt, a diverse lot, though pulling them together into this display highlights a spiritual, metaphysical side of their output that is not always obvious in solo shows.

The wall text for “Past is Present is Past is Present” tells visitors that these artists’ work evokes “how history informs identity, how cultural memory is preserved and transformed, and how contemporary creativity reimagines inherited traditions.” It’s well-put.

Though, to be honest, those words could apply to all three of the exhibits concurrently on display at this sprawling community building. That’s something of a triumph,  really — linking these meandering gallery spaces together for a trio of attractions that build upon one another. It’s not easy to do at the Arvada Center.

IF YOU GO

All three exhibits continue through Aug. 24 at the Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd. Arvada. It’s free. Info at 720-898-7200 or arvadacenter.org.

Through Sunday. The biggest annual gathering of celebrities in Colorado is back with Fan Expo Denver, running Thursday, July 3, to Sunday, July 6, at the Colorado Convention Center. The pop-culture party draws tens of thousands downtown each year for comics and anime, gaming, merchandise and artist signings, cosplay, competitions galore, authors, performances and more.

This year’s notables include a Superman slate (all the living movie and TV Supermen, minus the newest one); a “Twilight” fan experience; movie stars such as John Cena, Jennifer Beals, William Shatner, John Boyega, Brendan Fraser, Bruce Campbell, Alan Tudyk, Cassandra Peterson (a.k.a. Elvira) and dozens more. Bonus: There will be opportunities to get autographs and photos for a fee. (And don’t miss the “Cobra Kai” trio of Martin Kove, Brandon H. Lee and Patrick Luwis.)

Single-day passes for the event, taking place at 700 14th St. in Denver, are $50-$71, with youth passes (ages 13-17) at $45-$51 and child passes (6-12) at $12. Full-fest passes start at $109, with family discounts available. Visit fanexpohq.com/fanexpodenver for more.

Cherry Creek Arts Fest

Friday-Sunday. The sprawling Cherry Creek Arts Festival — one of the country’s biggest juried art exhibitions — returns to the Cherry Creek North shopping district Friday, July 4, through Sunday, July 6, with 260 exhibiting artists, free hands-on crafts for kids and adults, a family-friendly and walkable layout, and live performances, food and drink vendors, and other activities.

Don’t miss Cleo Parker Robinson Dance’s appearance on the main stage at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday; tickets are free and available online. The overall event runs 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday and Saturday (with an accessibility hour starting at 9 a.m.) and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. Secure bike parking is on Second Avenue near Adams Street. Paid parking is available at Cherry Creek Shopping Center, in the Whole Foods garage, and along the surrounding streets. Admission is free. Visit cherryarts.org for an artist list and detailed festival map.

Civic Center’s Backyard Jamboree

Through Sunday. There are plenty of concert options in town this weekend, including Wu-Tang Clan and Run the Jewels at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre (Friday, July 4) and Blues Traveler’s impressive Fourth of July return to Red Rocks Amphitheatre (playing there nearly every year since 1992 — minus 1999 and 2020, according to venue records).

Still, there’s hardly a bigger fan draw than Toronto’s Zeds Dead, as the bass-focused DJ-producer duo swings through both Morrison and Denver for packed shows. After playing a pair of concerts at Red Rocks as part of its DeadRocks XI run (July 2-3, sold out in advance), the band jumps over to Civic Center park (101 West 14th Ave. in Denver) for the fifth annual Backyard Jamboree on Friday, July 4, with openers Ravenscoon, Cool Customer, Villager and lots more.

The family-friendly event, which includes a hot-dog eating contest, food and drinks vendors, and lawn games, should draw about 10,000 EDM fans to central Denver. Tickets, $89.95-$112.94, are still available via axs.com.

Warm Cookies of the Revolution

Friday. Denver nonprofit Warm Cookies of the Revolution, which turns civic engagement into fun, all-ages creative gatherings, is about drawing connections rather than dividing, and its latest event reminds us that the Fourth of July holiday belongs to all of us.

The Interdependence Day Celebration takes place 10 a.m.-1 p.m. on Friday, July 4, at the southeast corner of Huston Lake Park (850 S. Bryant St. in Denver), with live performances, traditional Mixtec Oaxacan cuisine from La Reyna del Sur, an herbalist walk “with magical medicine man Monticue Connally,” poetry from Molina Speaks, henna tattoos, lawn games and all-ages activities, chalk artwork, awards and more.

It’s free, all-ages and family-friendly. Visit warmcookiesoftherevolution.org to RSVP.

It’s not just about talent. There are plenty of painters with that, though few manage to coax the depth of color and texture out of acrylic paint the way Sloan does. It is more about establishing a style that is provocative enough to keep viewers and collectors interested over the long haul.

Sloan is best known for his portraits of animals — elephants, zebras, dolphins, penguins and polar bears — and in some ways they are very traditional portraits. His current solo show, “Devotion and Disorder,” at K Contemporary gallery in LoDo, has several of them.

His subjects are centered in his scenes, lit perfectly to highlight their best features, and both their physical presence and their personality characteristics are equal parts of the picture. That is not so different than the portraits of kings, saints, aristocrats, presidents and favorite children that painters have produced since the beginning of the art form.

Artists try to capture their subject’s countenance, but also hint at their demeanor, sometimes directly — with a smile or a smirk or eyes that look determined or pious —and sometimes indirectly, surrounding them with objects that symbolize associated character traits or the objects and hobbies that drive them. There might be a dog in the scene, or flowers, jewelry, guns, or slaughtered pheasants.

Sloan’s images have similar embellishments, though in their own way. His 2025 painting “Grande Finale” is a good example. It features a dolphin, posed as if executing a jump out of water, its skin shiny and reflective, its eyes looking back at the viewer. But there are also assorted objects surrounding this creature, flowers, shells, clouds, a prickly pear cactus, flames and other things.

These included elements hint that there is more to this animal’s life than swimming in the ocean all day. Sloan creates a narrative with a past and a future, some of it mysterious, some of it surreal, some of it funny.

In his artist’s statement, Sloan describes these works as “intentionally unfinished sentences” that the people who look at his paintings are invited to complete.

That can be an amusing challenge with works like “The Migrant,” which features a penguin, standing contentedly in a grassy field, far from any body of water, and surrounded by watermelons, strawberries, pineapples and pomegranates. There is a golden sunset in the background, giving the work, like many of his objects, the aura of sacred paintings of saints found in European cathedrals.

Some are less spiritual and more comedic. “Flight of the Meadow” has an elephant, balancing on one leg and standing atop a tortoise that has wandered up into the surf of some great ocean.

All of these paintings put on a show. Sloan emphasizes their theatricality by arranging flora — trees, vines, flowers — around the top edges of his scenes to resemble stage curtains that have been opened for the audience to see.

There are other influences in these works. With all of that fruit so carefully arranged, they are part sill life. With all those animals doing tricks for the public, they are part vaudeville.

And that is how Sloan maintains our interest, by conglomerating huge chunks of art history into every single moment, yet still making it his own.

To all that, he adds a layer of present-day environmental concern. In all of these portraits, there is an underlying tension that these subjects are battling forces of nature that threaten, ominously, to overtake them.

Some of his newer works take on this theme more obviously. “The Surrender of Caution,” for example, subs an orange-and-white traffic cone set in the edge of a saltwater surf for an animal as the central subject. But the cone appears to be off-kilter and it is being overwhelmed, slowly, by seashells, vines and coral.

Sloan is also newly exploring three-dimensional objects along the same lines, and three new works are part of the K Contemporary show. “Illusions of Safety” is an actual truck tire covered with actual seashells. “Rehabilitation of the Old Grove” is a real wheelchair in the process of being smothered by moss.

For sure, these three-dimensional pieces are ideas in progress, experiments in how to turn flat works into sculptures that pack the same punch. They don’t quite get there. They are overly candid, crafty and lack the ambiguity that make his painting so fascinating. That said, as a fan of Sloan’s, I was pleased to see them. To watch an artist who you have known for so long stretch in new directions, and have the courage to do it publicly, is a pleasure, no matter how it turns out.

And they do contain the idea that Sloan has presented broadly and deftly over his career, that nature eventually takes back the places and things that human progress steals and squalors over time — though honestly there are multiple layers to most of his output, and viewers do get choices on how to respond. They get plenty of options, actually, and that is another gift.

That open-endedness is really the key to his success. Sloan is a representational painter who is prospering at a time when abstraction rules. The art shown in top galleries like K Contemporary is more often conceptual, impossible to interpret without an understanding of the process behind it. For better and worse, it can be confounding.

Sloan’s work is just the opposite. Instead of giving us nothing to go on, he gives us plenty to work with. That is a generous gesture that makes looking at the paintings such a pleasure. You can go deep with it and worry about climate change, or you can giggle at the dancing bear or the parrot hanging upside down from a tree.

There is value in that for both collectors and casual viewers. Sloan indulges us, and himself, and who does not want to stick around for that?

IF YOU GO

Kevin Sloan, “Devotion and Disorder” continues through July 5 at K Contemporary, 1412 Wazee St. It’s free. More info: 303-590-9800 or kcontemporaryart.com.

A longtime Coloradan and trailblazing musician widely considered the Jackie Robinson of classical music, Burrell died early Tuesday morning in Denver from natural causes. He was 104 years old.

Family members knew Burrell as not only a musician who was remarkably dedicated to his craft, but as someone who deeply loved and cared for his fellow man.

“My uncle was someone who walked in excellence,” said Dianne Reeves, a Grammy-winning jazz singer and Burrell’s niece. “He was about being the best at what he did and I witnessed that. Staying at his house, four in the morning before the birds started chirping, he would be practicing.”

Burrell was also a true humanitarian, Reeves said, freely giving his time, skills and resources to anyone in need.

Almost every hospital chaplain in Denver knew him by name because he so frequently visited people who were sick, Burrell’s cousin and jazz pianist Purnell Steen said Thursday.

“He had the heart of a lion and the endurance of an elephant,” Steen said. “He was the most benevolent man. He was always giving. However, you didn’t want to cross him. He was small but mighty.”

Steen’s memories of his cousin and father figure are countless, from Burrell coming by for old-fashioned southern fish fries cooked by Steen’s mother to Burrell’s elation when he found out Steen had started playing piano.

In one of their many “life training lessons,” Steen remembers riding a bicycle around City Park in 1952, trailing Burrell as the older man ran in high-top, white canvas Keds with a smoldering pipe clenched between his teeth.

“I had so many cinders in my eyes I would be crying,” Steen said, laughing. “I would fall off at one and a half laps, and two or three laps later he would walk up, slightly winded, and say, ‘Want to go play some tennis?’”

So many people recognized Burrell in part because he walked almost everywhere, Steen said. When a camera crew once came to his home in the Skyland neighborhood for an interview, they found Burrell doing chin-ups in the cherry tree out front.

For all of his accolades, Burrell never really saw himself as the giant he was, Steen said.

“He could not grasp the magnitude of what he did. He said, ‘All I want to do is play music,’” Steen said. “He did not get the credibility he should have gotten, he did not get the notoriety. He lived for three quarters of a century in splendid obscurity and we don’t want his footprint to be erased.”

Burrell was born Oct. 4, 1920, in Toledo, Ohio, to Ruben and Denverado Burrell. Raised in Detroit as one of eight children, he caught the music bug early when he heard the San Francisco Symphony on his family’s crystal radio, according to the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.

Burrell honed his skills throughout high school and college as well as in the U.S. Navy, where he played in the Navy band with trumpeter Clark Terry.

He was honorably discharged and moved to Denver in 1949 after realizing there was no future in the Motor City for a Black man who played classical music, Steen said.

That same year, he signed with the Colorado Symphony, then known as the Denver Symphony Orchestra.

Symphony officials described him as a “towering figure in American music” and a Colorado icon in a statement Tuesday.

“His courage, artistry and trailblazing spirit forever changed the face of classical music. Charlie’s legacy echoes through every note we play and will forever resonate in Denver and beyond,” they said.

In 1959, Burrell realized his dream of playing with the San Francisco Symphony and moved to California, where he stayed for five years before returning to Colorado after the 1964 Alaska earthquake spawned a tsunami that caused extensive damage along the West Coast.

He performed with the Colorado Symphony until his retirement in 1999 and continued to mentor musicians, frequenting shows at Dazzle Jazz and visiting with musicians who performed at the club until shortly before his death.

He is survived by three of his children and numerous other family members, both related by blood and by heart.

Memorial service details have not been announced.

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