The Denver Arts Festival

This past weekend I attended the Denver Arts Festival, the first art festival of the year around these parts. It took place at the Conservancy Green in Denver's Central Park neighborhood, which, I might add, is located way the hell out in the far northeast corner of the city. Central Park is built on what was once part of Stapleton International Airport, Denver's main airport until 1995. But being only 20 minutes from downtown, the city decided to replace it with Denver International Airport, conveniently located close to the Colorado-Kansas state line, to the joy of taxi drivers throughout the area. And speaking of convenience, this art show originally took place at the Denver Pavilions on the 16th Street Mall, right downtown. When it outgrew that space, it was held on the grounds of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. But after the Central Park neighborhood was built, it was moved there for reasons I still don't understand.

But enough complaining. This festival features Colorado artists and, according to the Denver Arts Festival's website, a "select group of national artists," and I must say that much of the art was indeed very good. Of course, as usual, anything I was interested in was in the $3,000 to $5,000 price range, and since I have a number of expenses coming up, I decided to be conservative and not make any rash purchases. Interestingly enough, the web site also states that "Central Park is in the top 1% of median income and education levels in the nation," which I think was added to lure all those artists to the event. But I do have to wonder if people in this neighborhood really are in the top 1% income bracket. The houses are all very nice and relatively new, but don't appear to me to be domiciles of the superrich. And could some of the artists been tempted to raise the prices of their artwork because of that demographic? Just too many difficult questions to think about on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Happily, there were 16 booths featuring photography at the festival, and many of those photographs were quite good. I was especially impressed with the animal photographs of Shaun Downey (https://shaundowneyphotography.com/), especially the ones from Africa, some of which can be seen in the photograph on the left. I was also impressed with the work of Chris Robleski (https://www.theflashnites.com/), who specializes in night photography. I especially liked his photographs of rural, deserted buildings lit from within. It reminded me of the work of a photographer from Chicago named Xavier Nuez, who ventures into abandoned urban structures and lights the interiors in spectacular fashion. Nuez actually displayed his work at this same festival a few years ago. I checked on the internet and he is still around, and his work is as good as ever. Be sure to check out his website at Xavier Nuez | Light Painting Fine Art Photography | Chicago.