Final Friday Already?

Yes - it is true.  Yesterday was the final Friday of August, which means September starts next week.  Summer is almost over, the kids are going back to school, and the leaves are starting to turn in the high country.  In any case, last night I did indeed attend the Denver Art Museum's (the DAM's) Untitled Final Fridays event, this month titled Center Stage (I know, I know). There were few new exhibits from last month's event, but I did watch a short documentary produced by the DAM on its current exhibit Women of Abstract Impressionism, which was very good.  All of the women featured in this film painted in the early 1950s (when I was born, I might add), and it was fun to see the black and white photographs and film from that era, not to mention seeing the artist's as they are today talk about their work.  I was so inspired I decided to tour the exhibit again, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

There was one new exhibit entitled The Chairman, featuring tall wooden soldiers made entirely out of chairs (seen in the photograph on the right). The artists - Steve Farland and Brian Sartor - gave a talk on how they came to make them.  I walked in late and didn't hear everything, but it seems one of the artists needed chairs, went to a large warehouse where someone was selling them cheaply, and saw rows and rows of chairs stacked to the rafters. He must have thought to himself  "hey, I could build soldiers with these."  In any case, this month the Denver Art Museum had drag queens from the Denver Public Library leading tours of the museum.  I am not sure why the DAM did this, or for that matter why the Denver Public Library has drag queens in the first place, but there are some things I simply do not want to know.  One of the drag queens - kind of heavy and very loud,  I might add - lead his/her group right up to where The Chairman artists were giving their talk, not slowing down her spiel at all..  It could have gotten very ugly very quickly, but a DAM usher whispered something in her ear, and the drag queen and her group quietly retreated.  Just another Friday night drama at the DAM.