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Tom Ross

Tom Ross' column appears Tuesdays and Sundays in Steamboat Today. Contact him at 970-871-4205 or tross@SteamboatToday.com.

You know you've spent too many consecutive days in the 'Boat when you find yourself walking down Sherman Street in downtown Denver and craning your neck upward to gawk at the really, really tall bank buildings.

My Valentine and I had not been out of Steamboat since October, and that last trip was a desert camping expedition. Sure, we stopped in Grand Junction on the way home from Utah, but that doesn't really count as a city fix.

Increasingly, Denver's cultural offerings give it legitimacy as a major American city. Lacking the time, and reluctant to spend the bucks to head out to San Francisco, we settled for LoDo.

Too many years have passed since we have attended a play by the Denver Center Theatre Company, and now that I've been again, I'm eager to return.

We bought tickets for the world premier of "Dusty and the Big Bad World" on Saturday night. It was exciting to walk among the well-dressed crowds streaming into the Denver Center for the Performing Arts where an opera and three plays (two of them sold out) were poised for nearly simultaneous curtains.

Our anticipation for "Dusty" was heightened by the fact that the producing partners include Steamboat couple Jim Steinberg and Karolynn Lestrud, along with former Steamboat residents Terry and Noel Hefty.

The play produces plenty of laughs while dealing with American perceptions of non-traditional families and the clashes among censorship, art and politics. The play and the issues it raised still were rumbling around in my head when we awoke the next morning.

If Denver is struggling with the effects of the recession, it was not apparent on the 16th Street Mall on Friday and Saturday nights. The free shuttles were packed with people from all walks of life, and the pubs and restaurants still were packed at 11 p.m.

Of course, we went for the culture, not the mall crawl.

We've become admirers of the Denver Art Museum, but had not previously visited the smaller Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. If you're up for exhibits that challenge your previous notions of what art is and can be, you'll enjoy this museum's new LEED gold-certified building, which was completed in 2007.

The museum is close to the South Platte River at 1485 Delgany St., just a few blocks beyond Blake Street. MCA Denver frequently rotates its five exhibition spaces to ensure that visitors see new art with every visit.

I was intrigued by an installation by Maria Ana Hernando, who makes frequent trips to Peru from her base in California to study the traditional textiles of Peruvian women. Specifically, she is creating art from the colorful knitted petticoats the women create.

Hernando drapes the bell-shaped petticoats over rubber exercise balls and coats them in resin to allow them to hold their shape and stand on their own. In the museum, she piled a huge stack of them on the gallery floor.

Near the top of the tall gallery walls, on all four sides, perpetual video loops show the artisans dancing and hopping like birds. A soundtrack of birds chirping enhances the effect.

I can't do Hernando's work justice in this space - you'll have to experience it yourself.

My favorite work currently on display at MCA Denver is that of Enrique Chagoya, part of a broader exhibit celebrating the work of Lyons-based master printer Bud Shark. Chagoya creates limited edition folding books modeled on the Pre-Columbian style used by the Mayans, who made books on the bark of wild fig trees.

Chagoya takes a mind-bending approach, blending Mayan and Aztec mythology with modern Western religious symbols, and both American and Mexican pop figures from television, music and comic books.

Steamboat has a rich performing and visual arts scene of its own. However, if it's been about 16 weeks since you spent a weekend that didn't involve buckling your ski boots, you might gas-up the SUV and head for the flatlands.

You can learn more at Denver Center and MCA Denver.

- To reach Tom Ross, call 871-4205 or e-mail tross@steamboatpilot.com