The five youth-arts organizations that occupy Station Space — RES, Totem Star, The Rhapsody Project, Jackson Street Music Program and Whipsmart — are all part of the Office of Arts and Culture’s Creative Advantage program to increase student access to the arts. 

“We know that art saves lives,” said Olisa Enrico, executive director of CSA, in an interview with Crosscut. “And that starts in the most crucial point of youth.”

“Plus,” Erin Jorgensen, digital media specialist for ARTS, wrote in an email, “it’s just fun to walk in the building and hear theater vocal warm-ups or hear drum solos coming through the floorboards.”

Around 300 people attended the grand opening and ribbon-cutting event, including homegrown rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot as the keynote speaker. (Among his other remarks, he noted, “Sixty-year lease! Impressive.”) When Enrico introduced RES director Brooks, the audience cheered loudly. 

“RES as an organization has embodied the survival resiliency that our Native communities are legendary for,” Brooks said during the opening. “RES has never had a theater space of our own to call home,” he said. “To say that having this new black box-style theater workshop space in the heart of Seattle is one of the most significant events in our history would be an understatement.” 

Also at the opening day ceremony, RES youth performed the finale track from their original musical Dracula Spectacular. “Like an eagle soaring above, we move forward with love, always knowing the light will lead us home,” they sang. 

A creative outlet for Indigenous youth

Over its three decades, RES has worked with Indigenous youth from various tribes and backgrounds, presented almost 200 productions and performed on stages at ACT Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre and The 5th Avenue Theatre. They’ve also worked closely with other local Indigenous organizations such as the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center.

Every year RES holds an intensive two-week summer camp that culminates in a performance. In the fall and winter, it hosts workshops — acting, filmmaking, playwriting — often led by local theater artists of Native heritage. The youth also put on a big spring production that’s free to the public (as are all of RES’s performances). The students’ age range is typically 10 to 19, with about 120 kids annually. 

The original stories that RES performs are rooted in the cultures of Indigenous peoples with an eye toward contemporary social relevance. Many originate from traditional stories passed down from tribal elders and others in the Native community. 

Created in-house, the plays are written by people in an RES alumni program called Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: Urban Native Performing Artists. Youth also collaborate with the playwrights and directors to create the productions. 

Several of RES’s past shows have direct connections with the Pacific Northwest. In 2011, A Right to Justice (by local Native teaching artists Drew Hobson and Hannah Victoria Franklin) was a response to the police killing of John T. Williams (Nuu-chah-nulth) in Seattle the year before. The musical As Long as the Rivers Run (2013), by local writer and UW lecturer Roger Fernandes (Lower Elwha S’Klallam Tribe), focused on fishing rights and the importance of salmon to local tribes.

More recently, RES youth brought attention to the incidence of missing and murdered Indigenous women with the 2019 production MISSING, directed by local actor, director and producer Josephine Keefe (Nez Perce).

“Native people are the original artists and storytellers of this land and of this continent,” Brooks said. “Mainstream arts and theater are starting to notice that they need to catch up with what our Native communities have been doing.” 

This past year, RES performed the more lighthearted play-turned-musical Dracula Spectacular by alum and staff member Dylan Elwood (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) and jazz vocalist Julia Keefe (Nez Perce). Two RES students — 14-year-old twin sisters Sophia and Olivia Vann (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), who performed at the opening — described it affectionately as “campy.” 

“RES deserves this [space],” said Olivia Vann at the November 11 event. She and her sister are excited about the new location, and described the move as “reclaiming” and “decolonizing” Indigenous land.

“Aging Bodies, Myths and Heroines,” East Window Gallery, through Feb. 28.

Boulder’s East Window Gallery has ensconced itself as a major player in the Front Range arts scene, not an easy task in a region full of established, and ambitious, gallerists and curators. But exhibitions like this are hard to ignore.

As its title boldly suggests, this group photography show looks at perceptions of human aging though a series of “playful, critical and tender images” created by 11 national artists, each with their own perspective on what it means to get older.

The checklist, put together by curator Todd Edward Herman, has names from near and far and includes Danielle SeeWalker, André Ramos-Woodard, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, and others. There is also a list of promising coordinated events — talks, screenings, panel discussions — that deserve consideration.

Info: eastwindow.org. Free.

“Culture Cloth,” McNichols Building, through Jan. 14

This exhibit is one of the best surprises of the fall season, a collection of textiles from Asia, Africa and the Americas that show how cloth is central to the customs of different and diverse cultures around the globe. The work on display comes from the collection of Paul Ramsey, co-founder of Denver’s Shaver-Ramsey rugs, who has been traveling and acquiring textiles for decades.

Ramsey has an eye for both the beautiful and the functional, and the rugs, coats, dresses and other items on display come together to explain both the craft aspects of weaving and sewing and how they play their part in daily life. There are prayer cloths from Afghanistan, huipil shawls from Guatemala, Kente cloths from Ghana and kilim rugs from Turkey.

McNichols can be a challenging place to see art. There are lots of distractions from the other things that go on in the busy public building. But shows like this bring the community together in worthy ways. Shanna Shelby and Ramsey co-curated.

Info: mcnicholsbuilding.com. Free.

Julie Buffalohead and George Rodriguez, Visions West, through Dec. 22

Visions West closes out the year with combined solo shows from two of its most interesting artists. The better-known is Julie Buffalohead, whose show “Decolonize Indigenize” features a series of monotypes she made during a recent artist residency at Anderson Ranch. The visuals depict simple animal forms, referencing Native American stories and children’s books, which are used as a way of talking about social and political issues.

Rodriguez makes a unique brand of ceramic figures that are more complex than they appear on the surface. The forms in his show, “Embellished Creatures,” are familiar — bears, owls and snakes — but his techniques reference both social history and the diverse use of textiles and other artist media he has encountered within his own Texas/Mexican culture. The pieces, as the gallery’s statement promises, “pull the viewer into the world of magical realism, a place where animals talk and humans dream.”

Info: visionswestcontemporary.com. Free.

Through Flesh to Infinity, Union Hall, through Jan 6.

Union Hall has been coming on strong as a nonprofit art gallery lately, with a series of well-curated exhibitions featuring regional artists who deserve wide attention.

The current show pairs painter Vinni Alfonso with 3-D object maker A Grix for a two-person exploration about the duality of the human experience and how opposing ideas of free spirit and confined physical existence work out their contradictions within all of us. It’s a complicated topic, murky and mysterious, and the objects in the lineup reflect that. Neither artist is known for making things that are easy to read but both indulge in creating works marked by both rich color and free-wheeling form that get the conversation going. Esther Hz curated.

Info: unionhalldenver.org. Free.

Five from the roster, Robischon Gallery, through Dec. 30.

This sort of high-level group outing is exactly the reason Robischon continues to be Colorado’s most dependable commercial gallery for art fans. It’s full of treasures pulled from Robischon’s deep roster of talent.

Kim Dickey, a veteran ceramics maker, takes the lead with a new series of large-scale ceramic and cast metal sculptures that combine both landscape and figurative portraiture to show how wildlife, birds in particular, have long been used to evaluate the health of the environment. (More to come on this exhibition later).

Kiki Smith is back with her large-scale Jacquard tapestries that blend images and materials for a look at the natural world. Stephen Batura, known for his wide-angle historical paintings, gets up close and personal on the topic of chandeliers. There is a lot to see here.

Info: robischongallery.com. Free.

“Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks,” Denver Art Museum, through Feb. 19

Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo is just 39 and already emerging as a significant figure in international art. This show offers a deep look at his perspective on Black identity, displaying 30 works he has created over the last seven years.

Boafo is a portraitist mainly with a liberal idea of how color and texture can come together in an attempt, as this exhibition’s title suggests, to revel in the “soul” of humans living in a complicated, contemporary world. His subjects come in different shapes, shades and dispositions, but they share a way of gazing at the viewer that invites long looks and genuine curiosity. Larry Ossei-Mensah curated.

There is a bonus at this show, a music playlist created by Boafo featuring some of the pop tunes that inspire his work. You can download it via DAM’s website using Spotify and listen while you wander the exhibition.

Info: denverartmuseum.org.

Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver freelance writer specializing in fine arts. 

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