(More) Denver DIY vs Beast Mode Capitalism
Lead Image: Kat Salvaggio of Product Lust at Club Scum. Photo: Vincent Comparetto.
Last week, Art in America published “DIY vs Beast Mode Capitalism”, my feature-length report on the pummeling that Denver’s DIY community has weathered since late 2016. Below, I extrapolate a bit on the article’s back story, and highlight a new publication by artist Vincent Comparetto—whose photographs appear throughout this post—chronicling 20 years of Denver DIY.
Photo: Dateline, an artist-run project space at 3004 Larimer Street in Denver, CO. Photo courtesy of Dateline.
Over the last decade, I’ve grown quite fond of Denver, Colorado. Both of my siblings live there, which has provided a number of opportunities to spend time exploring the city and the surrounding areas. It’s become a home away from home, to be sure.
And back in January 2017, Adam Gildar, owner and directory of Gildar Gallery, which operated out of a physical space at 82 S Broadway from 2012 to 2019, and Cortney Lane Stell, director and curator of Black Cube, a nomadic museum project, invited me and Seth Cameron of BHQFU, Carla Herrera-Prats (RIP) of SOMA Mexico City, and Andrew Bernardini of the Mountain School in Los Angeles out to Denver to talk about artist-led alternatives to cost-prohibitive MFA programs. Our arrival coincided with what amounted to a local DIY emergency. One month prior to our visit—and, notably, less than a week after the Ghost Ship tragedy in Oakland—city officials in Denver had made surprise fire inspections at legendary DIY venues Rhinoceropolis and Glob, immediately evicting residents.
Predictably, the overwhelming stress of the crackdowns permeated every public talk, studio visit, and happy hour we staged with Denver artists (in a Medium post from that time, Denver writer Michael Bibo articulated the happenstance overlaps between our program and the considerably more pressing local context). Doubly frustrating for Denver’s DIY community was that city fire officials were apparently well aware that people had been living at the neighboring Brighton Boulevard venues for years. Such spontaneous safety inspections—which the city insisted weren’t in reaction to Ghost Ship, but the result of recent complaints—fueled speculation and produced an appropriate atmosphere of paranoia. Evidence simultaneously surfaced that alt-right internet communities were instrumentalizing the municipal freakouts in the wake of Ghost Ship, calling in scores of anonymous safety complaints about DIY spaces around the country. Pardon the potential hyperbole, but it felt legitimately apocalyptic.
Colin Ward (RIP) at Rhinoceropolis. Photo: Vincent Comparetto.
Then, during a happy hour at a bar called Sputnik, an artist made a crack about how they didn’t know whether to be more afraid of losing their studio to the Denver fire marshal or to commercial weed growers. Mirthless laughter followed. This was the first time I’d heard anybody talk about the unsustainable impact that the grow industry was having on urban warehouse rental markets. Recreational marijuana wasn’t legal in New York, where I was living at the time, and I guess I had naively assumed they’d grow the weed on massive farms or something. Yes, I realize how ridiculous that sounds.
Warlock at Leisure. Photo: Vincent Comparetto.
Four years later, I’ve had a lot of conversations, done a ton of studio visits, and read countless articles by brilliant, dialed-in Denver writers like Bree Davies, Kyle Harris, and others. I’ve learned that the punishing challenges faced by Denver’s artists mirror those of artists fighting for survival in Baltimore, Austin, Oakland, and Portland. Across the United States, cities are getting cozier with developers and increasingly callous towards creative communities. But capitalism remains elastic, at once borderless and hyper-local. Denver artists must contend with Denver-specific problems—the arrival of Meow Wolf, in particular, changed this story a great deal.
What I hope I’ve produced with this Art in America article is an honest and accessible case study for artists in other cities. Because this is going to happen—is already happening—in Tucson, Minneapolis, Spokane, Richmond, and Grand Rapids.
Shortly after the article came out, I heard from New York-based artist Vincent Comparetto, who cut his teeth in a 90s-era Denver DIY space called Acoma House. Comparetto just published Follow Focus #2, a book of his photography that includes anecdotes about twenty years of Denver DIY.
As an object, the book looks great: full-color prints, silkscreened cover, and perfect-bound. I’m eagerly awaiting the copy I just ordered, and you can get yours for just $20. Comparetto describes it as capturing the part of Denver DIY “comprised of primarily women and non-binary artists performing on the periphery of the city in warehouses and live/work artist cooperatives.” Sadly, the majority of the DIY venues he’s documented have shut down in the last five years.
Luke Thinnes of French Kettle Station at Backspace. Photo: Vincent Comparetto.
“The speed at which gentrification swept through the city, due partly to the legalization of Marijuana, was pretty devastating,” Comparetto said over email. “Things changed very quickly. The city was ill-prepared, and still is.” He added, “There are probably many cities like Denver.”
Madeline Johnston of Midwife at Mercury Cafe. Photo: Vincent Comparetto.
I asked Comparetto how Denver DIY continues to survive, despite so many simultaneous attacks.
“It operates like an island. Denver is a vibrant but small creative landscape of talented misfit transplants hell-bent on creating a sustainable scene, despite being surrounded by sharks—developers, tech bros, craft beer enthusiasts, all of whom lack any cultural inclination—eating a way at the perimeter of the island. The scene survives only by sheer tenacity. It is truly a communal, local effort. Since Denver doesn't get a lot of traffic from the bigger acts, the shows—and the influences—often come from the local scene itself.”
Portraits from one of Rhinoceroplis’s many queer, all ages dance parties organized to create inclusive space for non binary persons. Photos: Vincent Comparetto.
Comparetto also offered some perspective on how to imagine a more sustainable future.
“We will have to develop competencies in presenting the defense for these creative spaces,” he said. “We have to prove that what appears to be a dangerous place for wayward souls is, in fact, a creative incubation center for displaced artists who need to express themselves. What's happening with ABC No Rio in New York is an interesting case study—we will see how that goes… Check out Denver-based program Youth on Record, which effectively addresses these very needs for creative spaces… We really should not have to depend on funding coming from wealthy benefactors; it should come from the people and the city, just like a basketball court.”
Sin Cave at Leisure. Photo: Vincent Comparetto.
Thanks for checking out the article, and for reading this follow-up blog post. Buy Vincent’s book. Now, back to work on the next articles in this series. If you’ve got thoughts or leads, drop me a line:
sean@humorandtheabject.com
This ongoing research project is supported by the Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program.