72 MARCH 26-APRIL 1, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | FOOD & DRINK | MUSIC & VENUES | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | SHOPPING & SERVICES | SPORTS & RECREATION | CONTENTS | monthly events for the queer BIPOC commu- nity like drag shows, burlesque performances, live music, open mics twice a month at The Pearl, and dinners. “This is the opportunity for us to build a bridge that was never built, which it should have been, but now we are building that bridge,” McMoore says. Best Place to Sweat Buckets While Looking at Amazing Art Cherry Creek Arts Festival cherryarts.org Held in the heat of midsummer, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival is one of the most com- petitive arts festivals in the United States, last year receiving more than 2,000 applicants for its 200 spots. Around 150,000 visitors attend the free festival every year to look at and buy the art from local and national artists, who work in a variety of mediums — from oil paintings to robot statues made from found objects. And at the end of last year, the festival was again named one of the best festivals in the world by the International Festivals and Events Association. Hopefully, a Westword Best Of is just as high an honor. Best Use of a Digital Art Gallery Athena Project athenaprojectarts.org Last year, Denver-based nonprofi t Athena Project put on a virtual exhibition, Body // Power. The show featured the work of more than thirty women and nonbinary art- ists from across the U.S., commenting on the disappearing rights of women’s and margin- alized people’s bodies and asserting their agency and power through art. Athena Proj- ect utilized technology to make the show more accessible and held the show virtually. Viewers could move through a digital gallery — three rooms connected by a hallway — and view works hanging on the walls one by one. Clicking on the art piece gave viewers more information about the art and artist. Best New Visual Art Group Colorado South Asian Artists Group instagram.com/co_southasianartists Founded in 2025 by artist Bala Thiagarajan, the Colorado South Asian Artists Group (C- SAAG) brings together creatives whose roots span India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and beyond. What started as a small gathering of six artists quickly grew into a statewide network connected through regu- lar meetups and an active WhatsApp group. The collective’s fi rst public exhibition, Roots & Routes: Where Cultural Roots Meet Creative Journeys, debuted in Englewood with work from 22 artists across painting, photography, ceramics and sculpture. By embracing the full diversity of the South Asian diaspora, C- SAAG is carving out long-overdue visibility for these voices in Colorado’s art scene. Best Mountaintop Art Installation Ciügaboc, Joe Scolari 189 Boreas Pass Road, Breckenridge breckcreate.org The Breckenridge International Festival of Arts has celebrated nature through music, dance, theater and visual art since the sum- mer of 2015. Its most recent ten-day event attracted talent from around the world, in- cluding Swiss-Italian artist Joe Scolari. He fa- mously crafts whimsical outdoor marble runs using the landscape’s natural contours and organic materials, such as rocks and hollowed- out branches. Pack a golf ball-sized globe when visiting the two interactive courses, titled Ciügaboc, that are now permanently installed near downtown Breckenridge. One is set a quarter-mile west of the Illinois Creek trailhead (which also leads to Isak Heartstone, the iconic wooden troll sculpture), while an- other lies at the Littleton Mountain summit. Best Large-Scale Fiber Art Adaptation of a Children’s Book Goodnight Moon — A Fiber Tale dundeeandlee.com Southern Colorado artists Emilie Odeile and Ken Chapin spent six months re-creat- ing the Great Green Room from Goodnight Moon entirely in yarn. The room-sized in- stallation uses roughly 152 miles of yarn and nearly six million stitches to replicate Clement Hurd’s iconic illustrations down to the smallest details, from the furniture to the mischievous little mouse hidden throughout the scene. The work, which was first unveiled in 2023 at Trinidad’s Space to Create and received over 10,000 visitors, made its Arts & Entertainment continued from page 70 continued on page 74 ILLUSTRATIONS BY GETT Y IMAGES
