Even in Denver’s crowded comedy scene, Sammy Anzer stands out. The 35-year-old, originally from Queens, New York, is lanky and charming, with a light swagger, pastel-spiked fashion sense, and a giant smile that tees up his punchlines.
He’s one of the most active, familiar names in Denver comedy, having headlined clubs, colleges and fundraisers, as well as producing his own showcases and events that use his “ethnically ambiguous” background, as he calls it, as a launchpad into jokes about race, sexuality and more.
But this year, Anzer is diving into a project that’s less about him, and more about the people he tells jokes to. He hopes it will break down barriers between the fine-art world and nontraditional art audiences, as he called them. When he sees the lack of young, diverse faces in these places, he can’t help but wonder: who is art for?
“I grew up thinking it wasn’t for me, or people like me,” he said. “But you don’t have to have a fancy degree or a certain amount of money. Art is for everyone.”
Anzer moved to Denver about six years ago, having gotten a degree in education in Memphis, Tenn., after leaving Queens. As he taught at Abraham Lincoln, North and Sheridan high schools in Denver, he noticed that his students harbored his same childhood intimidation toward the art world that he had.
His solution is a video series called “Comedians Talk Art,” in which he produces funny, professionally made shorts with a rotating list of Colorado comics — fully endorsed by the museums and galleries at which they’re filmed. It builds on his series of self-made YouTube videos from last year, also about the same subject, and embraces the idea that short videos are the best way to crack open Denver’s visual art sphere.
A museum hound himself, Anzer has gotten buy-in and filming permission from the Denver Art Museum, Clyfford Still Museum, Ryan Joseph Gallery, and other top institutions. He is paying for production with a modest, $4,500 grant from River North Art District’s new Creative Grant Program.
“Young people use TikTok the way we use Google, and they watch videos the way we read articles,” he wrote in his grant application. “If we want to reach them, we have to meet them where they are and how they want to be reached.”
The “Shark Tank-esque” program, as RiNo officials dubbed it, will hand out $150,000 this year, with Anzer among the first class of recipients (others include Audacious Theater, PlatteForum and individual producers such as Chloé Duplessis).
The first full episode, which features Usama Sidiquee at the Denver Art Museum, is ready now, with several more already filmed and teased via one-minute shorts. They feature a mix of Comedy Works headliners, locals and touring favorites such as Sam Tallent, David Gborie, Hannah Jones, Alec Flynn, and Geoff Tice.
“High art concepts are made accessible and entertaining by the comedians’ lack of understanding,” RiNo’s grant funders wrote in a statement. “The museum or gallery ends up with authentic marketing content that shows what average people having fun with their friends … and proves to the viewer art is for everyone regardless of their knowledge, upbringing, income, or skin color.”
Comics are artists, Anzer said, and as such share similar concerns: Where do ideas come from? How does one know when something’s ready to debut? And how should one balance creativity and business?
The RiNo grant is helping create marketing materials for the museums, but it also helps Anzer’s bottom line. If he’s going to make it as a full-time comedian, he said, he needs something besides irregular shows of wildly varying size and location to keep him going.
“I have to find other streams of income until I can sell out arenas, right? And a space I noticed no one was in was the art space,” he said. “When I tour, I go to art museums during the day, and I bring friends. And I figured, if I’m going to do this, I should film it. It’ll be like my podcast.”
Professional stand-ups know how to break down walls and flatten out audience demographics, not only at shows and festival appearances — Anzer’s currently in Dublin, having just played London — but as self-contained acts who book and manage their own careers. Anzer and his collaborative, “Old Dogs, New Jokes” showcase, which runs monthly at Denver’s Dude IDK Studios, is just one of those that feed the new-material pipeline of his career.
On July 21, he and other comics will reunite at Basketball Social House in Centennial for “a hilariously bad game of basketball,” including commentary and comedic roasts, to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. The “Comedian Cross-Up Children’s Cancer” show encourages donations on top of its $20 admission price (see thebasketballsocialhouse.com for more).
Last year’s event raised $1,000 in a few hours, Anzer said. Recently, he started the monthly “East Colfax Wednesday Comedy Show” in Aurora, having decided the city needs a focal point for its scene; the next show is scheduled for July 24 at the People’s Building. Like many professional comics, he seemingly has no shortage of energy and hustle.
But even with his commitment to joking alongside the art, and not at its expense, Anzer is not precious about his video ideas. He embraces the fact that TikTok is a straight sales tool — for comics, for museums and for the RiNo Art District at large. That’s the goal, he said: to spread messages and influence people. Ideally amid lots of laughs.
The model is not entirely new, as Denver Art Museum has hosted comedian-led gallery tours in the past (Anzer filmed May’s version for his YouTube channel) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver has held comedian-led, “Sh!t Talk” tours. They’re mutually legitimizing, Anzer said, for both comics and museums.
But as a former teacher, Anzer will always cringe when people think art isn’t for them. They’re cutting themselves off from an important part of the larger human experience, he said, and one that’s entirely open to them right now.
“You’re not going to get the same level of conversation that you are watching the Jets game that you are looking at a piece by Picasso,” he said, adding that many of his now-adult friends in Queens still don’t think art is for them. “By its nature it requires you to reflect on your humanity.
“My foundational belief is that if we get a society that has art in their feed, especially young people, we’ll have a more thoughtful society — instead of people just getting knocked out in street fights, which is mostly what’s in my feed,” he said. “That, and art.”
