A&E Agenda
Aspen Indigenous Society presents POW WOW 2023, Saturday, 1-8 p.m. and Sunday 1-5 p.m., Aspen High School
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A pow wow is a social gathering held in indigenous communities. A modern pow wow is a specific type of event for Native American people to meet, dance, sing, socialize, and honor their cultures. The event includes a prize competition in various dance and drum categories.
General Admission: $10; Students: $5; Veterans and children under 12: free.
- Contest dancing and drumming in full regalia
- Raffle drawings
- Native vendor booths (jewelry, arts & crafts)
- Fry bread and Indian taco stand
- Presentation booths
W Aspen Presents genre-bending musical artist Aluna, Saturday, 8:30 p.m.
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The Living Room, the W hotel’s après spot, will transform into an electric music venue for one night only. Guests and locals are invited to celebrate the start to summer with musical artist Aluna, featuring Frasure. Known for her explorative dance music, inspired by pop-house, dance hall, funk, and Caribbean and African dance genres, she will be the inaugural performance for W Aspen’s W Presents series.
“We are excited to host our first W Presents with the incredibly talented Aluna, featuring Frasure, to kick off summer at W Aspen,” said Chris Jaycock, the W’s general manager “Music is core to our hotel ethos, and this concert marks the beginning of what will be a historic summer season for us. We invite the Aspen community and our guests to experience Aluna’s eclectic and revolutionary sound for one special night.”
Launched this past spring, W Presents is a live, electronic showcase series featuring headlining artists handpicked by W Hotels’ global director of music.
Tickets to W Aspen Presents Aluna featuring Frasure are complimentary. All attendees are required to RSVP or entrance to the event.
Shelly Safir Marolt: “Underneath” Opening Reception, Friday, 4-7 p.m., The Art Base, Basalt
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The Art Base presents Shelly Safir Marolt’s solo exhibition, “Underneath,” featuring large-scale, Victorian-inspired portraits of women with a contemporary gaze and neon underlay, alongside smaller paintings with ink, mud, acrylic, glitter, and pastels celebrating the female form.
“I’m not an artist with a mission statement. I’ve never had one idea that followed through all of my work over the past 30 years. I paint what inspires me,” said Safir Marolt. “I see something or read something, and I get a spark, an idea, and I paint. My process for each series is unique and individual to the pieces. The Victorian women paintings, for example, start with a neon underpainting. I then paint with acrylics and glitter using brushes. The vulva paintings were made differently, with ink, mud, acrylic, glitter, and pastels and painted with tree branches and brushes. They are more organic and immediate.”
Artist talk moderated by Suzan Obermeyer.
More information: theartbase.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions
Tab Benoit, The Arts Campus at Willits (TACAW), Thursday, June 1, 8 p.m.
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Tab Benoit is a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and guitarist who has built a 30+ year career on the foundation of his gritty and soulful Delta swamp blues, acquiring a devoted legion of fans along the way, as well as 5 Blues Music Awards, including BB King Entertainer of the Year (twice) and an induction into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
His accomplishments as a musician are matched only by his devotion to the environmental health of his native Louisiana wetlands. He’s the founder and driving force behind Voice of the Wetlands, an organization working to preserve the coastal waters of his home state. In 2010, he received the Governor’s Award for Conservationist of the Year from the Louisiana Wildlife Federation. Benoit also starred in the iMax motion picture “Hurricane on the Bayou,” a documentary of Hurricane Katrina’s effects and a call to protect and restore the wetlands.
More information: tacaw.org/calendar/tab-benoit
Artist reception, Red Brick Center of the Arts, Thursday June 1, 5 p.m.
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The Red Brick is holding an artist reception with food and drinks for two exhibitions. Artists will be in attendance.
“Messages,” Daniel Carr: An item diminishing in its importance, yet still charged with symbolism and representation, the postage stamp becomes the medium for the works by him. Stamps dating back 150 years and including all their cancellation marks and defects are rendered into images from the iconic to the everyday.
redbrickaspen.com/calendar/daniel-carr-messages
“Sense of Time,” Jennifer Hohlfelder, Hunter Hogan, Monica Goldsmith, Christie Helm: Many often think of time as linear, fixed, and for some, something there’s not enough of in a day. However, physicists have a different take and debate whether it is real, an illusion, or even a dimension. In this exhibition, time is considered in various ways. Nostalgia in Jennifer’s paintings is explored as an ideal that can offer joy and perhaps a reminder to appreciate the fleeting moments of life. In the quiet, sparse rooms of Monica’s interiors, time holds the potential for what is about to happen or just did happen in the scene. In Hunter’s paintings, images from magazines, home-finishing samples, and personal memories are cut from their original narrative and rearranged, collaging different events into a new story. Lastly, Christie takes us out of the immediate and draws us towards a spiritual realm where time is expansive, and eternal. These artists offer us different perceptions of time, which might be what is needed to make us accept its passing.
redbrickaspen.com/calendar/senseoftime
