Saturday I made my way to the Downtown Denver Arts Festival, an event with 11 years of history in this town. But I took the long way there.
My husband dropped me off west of the Platte River, at 15th and Platte, an area that used to be off the beaten track. For as long as I can remember, Paris on the Platte has been serving coffee there, but now it keeps company with Vitamin Cottage and new housing and my first stop on the tour that would lead to downtown Denver: Wen Chocolates.
I don’t visit Wen often enough to get to know the staff, especially now that I’m on a diet. But Saturday was my splurge day, so I went to the tiny store (maybe 100 square feet) and started ordering truffles. As always, I got some freebies, one of which pleasantly surprised me: the rosemary truffle, my favorite of the day. It looks plain but has a distinct, delicate flavor of rosemary. Prazen Sladkor is simply the best caramel I’ve ever had, and the pear hazelnut (pictured) is awfully pretty. I couldn’t taste the pear at all; next time I order it, I’ll eat it first.
Sometimes my tours of Denver give me the feeling I’m passing through people’s lives ghost-wise. Today I sat at the confluence of the Platte River and Cherry Creek, content, trying to make the chocolates last longer than 5 minutes and watching people wade in the cold shallows across the river.
As I crossed Millennium Bridge
on my way to the mall shuttle, I passed a wedding party swank enough to afford two photographers. Everyone but the bride wore black; I liked the bridesmaids’ sleek black satin dresses better than her elaborately appliquéd froth of a dress.
The thing I like about the shuttle is its ability to bring Denver to me. It carries everyone: tourists, the homeless, downtown Denver workers. I also like to study the storefronts on one side of the 16th Street Mall or the other, to memorize downtown Denver.
I could see no sign anywhere of the Downtown Denver Arts Festival, so I turned back to the passengers. The man next to me studied the RTD schedule changes intently. He was a regular at RTD board meetings, he said, flashing a grin with more gum than teeth.
By Welton, the festival materialized: white booths everywhere, squeezed in among the renovation of the Denver Pavilions.
The art started this way for me: large landscapes, which you’d expect from an art fair in Colorado; metal wall hangings like sheaves of wheat; and photographs of horses, taken all over the United States but mostly in Colorado and back East, where Susan Williams used to live.
I was curious how much the artists were selling in this economy, so I stopped at a booth displaying ceramic objects painted with birds and asked the artist, Peggy Crago, if she birded. She said she doesn’t, but she likes to paint them. Saturday had been slow for her, but she said a festival can pick up anytime. She should know: she’s been exhibiting at the Downtown Denver Arts Festival for 11 years, since it was called the Celebrate Colorado Artists Festival.
Sean Brown didn’t want me to take pictures of his delightful ceramic birds perched on paintbrushes. Given that his work was hanging in public, I thought his attitude was ridiculous. At the next booth, I just went ahead and took a picture of this stunning $14,000 sculpture by James LaCasse.
Some other beauties: Marvin Blackmore‘s intricately painted Southwestern pots; Kristin De Santis‘s metal relief paintings (oils on aluminum); and Karen Smith‘s painting of a woman on a couch in neutral tones, titled Waiting for Her Date. If I’d had $1,100 burning a hole in my pocket, I’d have bought it on the spot.
Just as it began to sprinkle, I found myself at Diane Harty Millinery (hurray for a user-friendly website!). I watched her work a hat and tried on a few of her creations. I vowed I’d get one of her hats before the summer was up.
And that was half the festival at most. Even so, the Downtown Denver Arts Festival is more manageable than the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, which happens over the Fourth of July weekend in the Cherry Creek section of Denver.
As I was writing this entry, I came to two conclusions: Artists really don’t know how to make websites; “Click to Enter” is so yesterday and annoying. And I like the Denver Pavilions better with the streets blocked off: 
it seems like more of an organic whole.
Am not into huge crowds for art festivals; it makes the ability to browse around a stressful thing! Great write-up as always.
Amber’s last blog post..How Moms Are Not Only the Queens of Comedy but Also Improv
I think downtown suffers from an identity crisis that it’s only now starting to recover from. The mishmash of office buildings, swanky hotels, shops, restaurants – no clear center. If I were visiting by car from another place I wouldn’t know where to go. It’s not like other major downtowns where as soon as you get off the highway you’re pulled to the center of gravity. Is it Larimar Square? Ballpark? Pavilions? Cap Hill?
Regardless, I do like downtown. Especially in the summer.
Catherine’s last blog post..Wrong in More Ways Than Six
Nice job covering the event and the art work. It is cool that you took the time to link back to the artists websites. That helps bring the festival to life for those who didn’t make it.
(And I have GOT to check out that chocolate shop! I never knew it was there.)
Re Sean Brown: and given that it was not only hanging in public but that it’s online on his own site, and given that it would have been positive free publicity instead of negative free publicity, I’m with you—ridiculous attitude. In fact, he just lost a potential customer. (OK, imaginary customer, I’m not in the art market. But still!)
Denveater’s last blog post..The Denver dining equivalent of Mr. Right Now: Washington Park Grille
I think there’s a class of web designers who learned how to make Flash animation in 2001 when it was still cool, and now try to sell their services specifically to artists. I imagine the sales pitch going something like this: “You’re an artist yourself, so why would you want your web presence to be some static text-oriented web page that looks like everyone else? Your website should be dynamic and artistic, and I can make that for only $xxxx.”
These artists look around at other artists they like, and those other artists’ sites look the same. So they buy into the concept. One more art website, one more Flash animation. What they don’t realize is that nobody goes to the web to have an artistic experience. If they wanted art, they’d go to your gallery.
Today’s web visitors want quick access to content. Who is the artist? Where are his works? How can I contact him? What are other people saying about his art?
Fortunately, businesses in other sectors don’t fall for the “your website must directly reflect your product” argument. Otherwise, NYTimes.com would just be a big image of one page at a time, and you’d click to look at page 2, then click again to look at page 3, with no ability to do a text search. And the website for the auto mechanic would smell like oil and stale coffee. And the website for Trojan Condoms would have some feature that subconsciously makes teenagers nervous.
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Todd, that gave me a good laugh.
Catherine, I’m with you about downtown. I have a hard time knowing where to go too. That’s why I wrote about getting off the mall that one day. I would argue for Larimer Square being a pretty big center of downtown, and the area around the hotels at the other end also being a kind of center, though probably more for businesspeople.
Amber, thanks for the compliment. Actually, this festival wasn’t all that crowded. I didn’t feel I was fighting the crowd most of the time.
Beth Partin’s last blog post..Downtown Denver Off the 16th Street Mall
[…] The full review of the Downtown Denver Arts Festival, from which this update is excerpted, can be found here. […]