This weekend in Denver a 22,000 square feet warehouse near RiNo will be converted into a festival of art and live music. Local content creation company Lumenati — known for its artsy video productions — organized the weekend with their “resident artist/tattoo artist” James Dean Pruitt. Pruitt hosts art nights every Wednesday at Lumenati’s headquarters (and aforementioned warehouse) where people of all levels of artistic talent come to practice and network, socialize and create. Together, Lumenati and Pruitt want to throw Denver a weekend-long party and they’ve pulled out all the stops to do so. Starting Friday at 7 p.m. and ending Sunday at 6 p.m., you have almost no excuse to not visit the creative get together at some point.
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Featuring over 80 visual artists, the weekend art party is called The Order — a clever title when the hosts go by a name that references the Illuminati. Some of Denver’s favorite local artists, including Ladies Fancywork Society, Anna Charney, Abram Bebo (Aleo), Ahmed Alwazzan (Balance 313), RUMTUM and Mike Graves will be showcased. Other artists to look out for are Jayce Wallingford — a tattoo artist specializing in sacred geometric designs with a waitlist longer than you care to know — and John Van Horn — a Helikon Gallery & Studio artist resident with more of a neo-noir style. With that many artists, it’s safe to expect a plethora of different styles of art, from tattoo to painting to murals. The Order will also display art with both live painting sessions and gallery-style hanging. Some artists will even have prints and more affordable pieces for sale.
Ahead of this weekend’s events, Lumenati has been busy connecting and networking with local artists. Some of them have stopped by the warehouse to paint murals, both inside and out. Well-known character artist Graves, with street art all over Denver, painted a piece on the side of the warehouse in preparation for the inaugural event. Because Lumenati specializes in video creation, they put together a short clip of the mural painting, showcasing Graves’ process and inspirations. It provides a special (and short) glimpse into the artist and reveals how his iconic characters come to be so odd and yet so endearing. It also exposes the true nature of Lumenati and Pruitt’s vision — artists highlighting other artists.
On top of the visual art, The Order will also entertain with live music both during the day and at night. This component adds a special element to perusing art and it will be interesting to see how the two enhance and aggrandize each other. Friday night brings DJ Low Key and Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m. the DJ from Tnertle performs solo. But no Denver festival is truly complete without food trucks, and there will be food trucks.
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All of these great offerings are free to enjoy (except purchasing food and drink), but because it’s technically considered a “private event” all guests must RSVP and sign-in upon entering. Lumenati expects to host somewhere between 150 and 250 people each day. RSVP by emailing jess@lumenati.co or on the Facebook event page.
Hours of the festival:
Friday, April 6 7 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Saturday, April 7 2 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Sunday, April 8 12 p.m. – 6 p.m.
The warehouse is located at 3839 Jackson Street, Denver.