KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS CULTURE Brave New Biennial WELCOME TO THE BIOME! BY EMILY FERGUSON The unassuming cinder block building at 100 Santa Fe Drive occupies a colorful niche in Denver history. “It used to be a bar that had a secret brothel,” explains Ricardo Baca, CEO of Grasslands, the cannabis- and psychedelics-focused marketing and PR company that’s now housed there. The building is currently seeing its leg- acy raised from covert brothels to Biome, Denver’s new fi ne arts biennial that Baca founded with friend Jason Diminich. Mar- keting companies aren’t necessarily known for mounting art events, but Baca has been wanting to bring this passion project to life since before he founded Grasslands in 2016. “This has always been the goal: fi ne art,” Baca says. “Up until we got there, this has been a place to expand our personal art collection.” That collection has Grasslands brimming with art: A serape-patterned mural by artist Carlos Frésquez decorates a bar area, and there’s a poster by Shepard Fairey along with photography and mixed media by Denver- based artist Josh Palmeri. A custom-made mezcal cart with cowhide details is a func- tional work of art in its own right, as is Baca’s grandmother’s pink refrigerator, which was refurbished into a wine cooler and tem- perature-controlled cannabis stash. Born and raised in 12 Denver, Baca hit the silver screen as the subject of the 2015 documentary Roll- ing Papers, which follows his career as a cannabis editor at the Denver Post after he moved over from music editor. He says his “obsession” with biennials began in the ’90s, when he had just graduated from col- lege and stumbled upon the Venice Bi- ennale while traveling in Europe. Baca knows how to build an event: He helped found the Underground Music Showcase, after all. But to create a fi ne arts biennial, he needed a like-minded partner to help him on the artistic side. He found that partner in 2019 in Diminich, a former manager for wish fulfi llment at Wish of a Lifetime, through his Grasslands chief of staff. Diminich, who had moved to Denver from New York City in 2016 and was working as the director of education and community engagement at Think 360 Arts for Learning, already knew of Baca from Rolling Papers. “It’s been one of the most important friendships of my adult life,” Baca says of Diminich. “He has signifi cantly more back- ground in art. And one day I was like, ‘Hey, man, I have this thing I’ve always wanted to do. I can’t do it by myself; I could never succeed. You somehow have the perfect skill set to come with what I have in mind. What do you think?’” Diminich remembers the moment well: Elle Hong is part of the fi rst cohort of Biome artists. They were on a COVID camping trip with their wives in 2020, and he recalls that they could not stop rattling off ideas and ideal artists. “One of the things about Ricardo is I think we’re both dreamers,” he says. “And we’re both fortunate to have very tight partners to keep us grounded.” They worked throughout 2021 to make their vision a reality. Biome’s mission is “to celebrate fi ne art through inclusivity and community,” similar to how its namesake promotes growth in a contained ecosystem through elements that support each other — and as they planned the fi rst event, the pair turned to the community for advice. Diminich spoke with various artists before creating the entry application: “I was asking what their best ex- hibiting experiences were to the worst.” They mounted Biome 001 in March and Biome 002 in July, and while Baca says their goal has never been “money or bodies in the build- ing,” the initial events were defi nitely a suc- cess. “We were both kind of blown away,” he adds, “because we’re working our networks and we’re inviting our friends and our communities, and then some of the people who came out [included] some interesting power players in art as well as some very interest- ing old-school community art players and community members.” Biome celebrates its grand opening on Friday, September 16. Biome 003 has a theme suited to its Grasslands sponsor: “Set and Setting,” a concept coined by psycholo- Ricardo Baca is the CEO and founder of Grasslands. gist and psychedelic advocate Timothy Leary to illustrate that your mindset and surroundings are important to consider before you indulge in hallucinogens. “There were some artists who understood the concept when it comes to the psychedelic world. Other folks took it in more [as] looking at the natural world, and we have a lot of folks who have their own internal Set and Setting mindset. So we have a wide array of multi-disciplinary fi ne art across the gamut,” Diminich says. The current cohort comprises all local artists — though people from as far away as South Korea applied — and includes Frésquez, Sarah Darlene Palmeri, Marissa “Revery” Napoletano, Mario Zoots, Madelyn Hadel, Elle Hong and Jasmine Holmes. They were selected by Denver-based jurors Lares Feliciano, a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist with RedLine; Kalyn Heffernan, the disability-rights activist and founding mem- ber of hip-hop group Wheelchair Sports Camp; and artist Tony Ortega, a recipient of the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and a professor at Regis University. “We thought it was so important to have jurors from diverse communities, because we have an aesthetic, but we’re also two able-bodied, cis-gender, male-identifying folks. ... The ultimate fi nal call should be people from the community,” Diminich explains. “One of the things I heard from a lot of the folks I was interviewing and talking to is that, like in any scene, there are the darlings, and you tend to see a lot of saturation of folks. And so a lot of folks are saying, ‘I’d love to get in a space with diversity, gender expression and civility, culture and creativity.’” Baca credits Diminich with helping to facilitate Biome’s open and accessible ethos as the biennial’s director. Diminich, who taught theater at a public school in Queens for a decade and was nominated for a Tony Award in 2015 for continued on page 14 SEPTEMBER 15-21, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com COURTESY OF BIOME COURTESY OF BIOME
