In the same parking lot as Casa Bonita, on the edge of the 190,000-square-foot Lamar Station Plaza strip mall, sits an island of art in a sea of asphalt.
The sand-colored building, whose only neighbors are a Burger King and dozens of empty parking spaces, appears to have been cobbled together from other structures, reflecting its mix of tenants, including a Denver Drumstick restaurant in the 1970s.
Today, the building, at 6501 W. Colfax Ave., is home to seven art galleries and creative businesses, and as of last summer, is the new hub for Lakewood’s 40 West Arts District, a four-mile-king public art viewing trail that is celebrating a decade as a state-certified creative district, and a favored destination for artmakers that have been priced out of Denver spaces.
The galleries inside the building include NEXT Gallery, Core New Art Space and EDGE Gallery, though the district itself includes nearby members like Pirate Contemporary Art and Glazed Ceramics Studio.
“It has truly allowed this community asset to thrive,” said Liz Black, executive director of the district. “(Forty) West Arts has always been about collaboration from the very beginning, and having multiple galleries, studios, and creative businesses in an arts district is what gives it its life.”
The hub, divvied up into gallery spaces, had been vacant for 20 years until the district opened it to the public in June 2022 . It beckons travelers with a pair of art cars and signage along the street. But 40 West’s members are acutely aware that the biggest draw to their parking lot is the big pink tower of Casa Bonita — which reopened last May to packed houses and plenty of media attention — and that’s perfectly okay.
NEXT Gallery, which hosts an annual Casa Bonita-themed art exhibit (it runs Feb. 16-March 3), in particular, is harnessing that power of that proximity.
“You cannot use their logo or anything like that, which it says in the call for entries,” said NEXT co-op member Lisa Lee Adams. “But I’m glad that the show is still going (because) it’s a big attention-getter. Casa Bonita belongs to Colorado.”
An art teacher from Cherry Creek’s Eaglecrest High School, Adams is one of 24 members of NEXT Gallery, each of whom pays $75 per month to cover rent and other expenses at the 1,450-square-foot space. Like the galleries around it, NEXT is bursting with sharp, colorful work from 2D and 3D artists — painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and glass — and ever-rotating solo shows.
“I was looking for an art community and I found it here,” said Tatyana Hope, a NEXT member whose show “Exposé!” fronts the gallery with large-scale paintings inspired in part by her native Russia. She will also contribute a painting to the Casa Bonita exhibit — its 7th annual showing, this year retitled “How Do You Like Me Now?”
“I like that they’re building community with fun events, (as with) their Colfax Chicken Fest, since this used to be a chicken restaurant,” Hope said.
Novel ideas are necessary to keep driving traffic at creative districts that don’t enjoy the profile of, say, the Art District on Santa Fe or the River North Art District. That’s especially true since the dawn of the COVID pandemic, which decimated drop-in traffic, gallery owners have said.
But Adams has seen an encouraging uptick in visitors since 40 West’s hub relocated last year, which she attributes to renewed excitement and younger audiences looking for a cultural pre-game before a night out.
“We’re all trying to do something for the greater good,” she said. “Any time you come together with a group of people this large there can be some clashes, but the planets can also align. There’s power in these co-ops trying to make the world a beautiful place, in their own way.”
Reaching out also brings people in. Hope, who emigrated from Russia to the U.S. in 1999, won a scholarship from NEXT last year that led to her first solo show there. Adams, also a relative newcomer to NEXT, has her own mixed-media solo show at the gallery about to debut (“Trust. Release. Repeat.” running Jan. 25-Feb. 11).
NEXT members have watched other trends unfold in Denver’s art and design world, including copyright fights over public art icons, such as the affectionally nicknamed Big Blue Bear and Blucifer. They’re not backing away from their Casa Bonita show, but they are treading more carefully than, say, Etsy artists who have used Casa Bonita’s font and logo for T-shirts and merch. (Some of them received cease-and-desist letters from the company last year.)
“You’ve got to separate reality from the emotion of it,” Adams said of the show’s calls for entry, which are designed to avoid legal infringement. “It’s just a business decision.”
With its pink neighbor in constant site, the collaborations and chats among gallery heads are ramping up, Adams said, including new ideas for a summer block party and other quirky, outdoor events in the vein of the Colfax Chicken Fest. It’s practically a requirement if the district wants to continue its evolution into a metro-area icon. Especially with such close, stiff competition.
“It still feels like we’re all just getting unpacked here,” Adams said. “But now that we’ve come together (in this building) and are getting our houses in order, how do we use that? The intention is there, we just have to make it happen.”
