Arts & Culture / Julie Dugdale

Arts & Culture

5280: Denver's Mile High Magazine • January 2025

Meet a Coloradan Who Wrote a Book About His Explorations in the Alaskan Arctic

When Jon Waterman first visited the Alaskan Arctic in 1983 as a Denali National Park ranger on patrol at the wild Noatak River, he had no idea how profoundly the experience would shape his life. Today, the Carbondale-based award-winning author—as prolific an environmental writer and researcher as he is an intrepid explorer and adventurer—has just released his 17th book, Into the Thaw: Witnessing Wonder amid the Arctic Climate Crisis (November 12, 2024).

5280: The Denver Magazine • July 2023

Top of the Town 2023 (cover story)

We found 116 reasons to fall in love with the Mile High City all over again. From the tastiest scoop of ice cream to the most inviting patio for summer sips to the hippest new lodging in town, we tracked down the best of the best that the Mile High City has to offer. The result is a curated list of 37 editors’ choices that complement our 79 readers’ choice winners.

5280 • June 2022

6 Places Around Denver to Take Your Kid in Need of a Play Date

Navigating the last two-plus years of pandemic twists has been taxing on everyone, but parents: We see you. We hear you. (We are you.) From constant quarantines to canceled play dates, we’re guessing you’ve exhausted your reserve of backyard activities—and maybe your sanity. We’re all for family bonding, but with school out and summer in, we’ve rounded up some warm-weather ideas for getting your offspring to mingle with someone their own size. Let the play dates commence.

Denver Life • March 2021

Our Happy Place: The Lifestyle We Live And Love [cover story]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past year, it’s to appreciate the place we live—because, well, we’ve all been spending a lot of time here. We found ourselves rediscovering what we love about the institutions, venues, businesses, restaurants, parks, and people that make up our (suddenly smaller) world. Sure, the way we go about crafting our lifestyle has been—and will continue to be—outside the norm these past months, and the places that infuse the personality of our neighborhoods may operate differently or more intermittently than they ever have, but their contribution to the character of our city remains.

5280 Home • May 2019

Meet the Mastermind Behind Zeppelin Development's Hip Shopping Spaces

Retail is having a moment—or, rather, “a weird moment,” says Zeppelin Development’s retail director Mathieu Mudie, who oversees the shopping and cultural experiences at the company’s industrial-chic marketplaces, including Zeppelin Station and the Source Hotel and Market Hall. “I don’t think brick and mortar is dying; I just think it’s redefining itself.”

5280: The Denver Magazine • August 2018

The 5280 Kid

We talked with a video game inventor, researched exploding whipped cream, and interviewed local fifth-graders about their dreams and concerns to create this story exclusively for Denver's next generation.

5280 Home • July 2018

The Local Art Museum to See Now

Check out our (design-lover's) guide to the new Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art.

Time Out • June 2018

The 10 best museums in Denver

As the hub of a state rife with fun things to do, restaurants, natural beauty, Wild West lore, cultural pride and booming technology, Denver lies at a crossroads of historic preservation, inspired creativity and innovation—and its museums reflect the pulse of the region.

New England Home Magazine • October 2017

The Lay of the Land

Nancy Friese’s landscapes are more than snapshots of inspiring locations. She uses the term “composite” to describe her technique: a blending of her feelings, interpretations, and memories of a place. A self-described perceptual landscape artist, the Providence-based painter, drawer, and longtime faculty member of the Rhode Island School of Design works outdoors in what she calls an open-ended fashion over multiple sessions—sometimes taking a month, or even up to a couple of years—to gather the sum of her experiences into one piece.

New England Home Magazine • June 2017

Fabric of Our Lives

Karen Henderson’s artwork isn’t what it seems at first glance. From a distance, the canvases look as if they were layered with brushstrokes in muted, natural shades to create delicate landscapes: a fog-shrouded field or a forested path or a sunrise over a pond. Each is hazy yet familiar, like a vision in someone’s dream. But a few steps closer and you realize the evocative imagery isn’t simply painted on a canvas...

5280 Home • November 2016

Artist Watch: Stella Maria Baer

By reconnecting with her roots, the Denver artist brings the spirit of the Southwest to her celestial paintings.

New England Home Magazine • July 2016

The Sky’s the Limit

When Paul Kelly travels abroad, he takes a sketchbook instead of a camera. Flip through the pad and you’ll find pages of pencil-smudged buildings, streets, and hillsides—scenes he likely jotted while stopped at a red light. “This is my tool,” he says. “This is how I see things."

New England Home Magazine • December 2015

Artistic Statement

A Massachusetts artist uses collage and canvas as a vehicle for commentary about today’s pressing sociopolitical issues.

New England Home Magazine • November 2015

Underneath it All

In any suburb, behind the neighbors’ closed doors and neat shutters are unspoken feelings, thoughts, and struggles that the rest of us can’t see, and that’s exactly what inspires McGonagle’s edgy paintings, wall coverings, and installations. “The idea is, everybody looks perfect from the outside, but family dynamics and relationships might be filled with dysfunction,” she says. “We are all imperfect. That’s what I’m really trying to express.”

New England Home Magazine • June 2015

Discernable Patterns

At first glance, you might think the room is primed for an elaborate banquet. Long tables stretch fifty yards from the center of the room down the length of the rectangular space. Each table is swathed in white fabric, some of it boasting colorful and intricate patterns. But this is not, in fact, a function room awaiting party guests.

New England Home Magazine • March 2015

Metal Winner

Most people would call Peter Diepenbrock a metal sculptor. Indeed, the Jamestown, Rhode Island–based metalsmith is known for large-scale steel, bronze, and copper installations, both residential and public, as well as edgy wall pieces. But Diepenbrock will tell you that he works not so much in metal welding as in the “practice of spatial reasoning.”

New England Home Magazine • December 2014

Let There Be Lights

Felicia Hwang Bishop flicks a switch in a smallish room that occupies a corner of her 4,000-square-foot studio. A single white clay form, graceful in its sculptural simplicity, stands on a table near a backsplash spattered with jewel-toned hues. This is where the magic happens, she says.

5280 • June 2014

Booked Up

Four-year-old Rachel Vlietstra takes a deep breath and reads aloud from her picture book. “Mom said, ‘Make your bed,’” she says, and then glances at the illustration of a little boy in his messy bedroom. There’s a pause as she turns the page—but there’s no rustle of paper. In fact, there’s no physical book. Instead, Rachel’s mouse arrow hovers over a button on her computer screen. Click. “So I made my bed into a library and read and read and read.”

New England Home Magazine • June 2014

In Stitches

From his chic urban loft in Providence, Michael Savoia embroiders luxury textiles to furnish the interiors of our country’s most sophisticated residences.

5280 • February 2013

Wellness: A Place At The Table

Nearly six years ago, I examined one of our state’s—and America’s—most pressing problems through the eyes of six Coloradans in “The Face of Hunger.” These individuals came from different backgrounds, lived in different corners of the state, and had very different life experiences. They all had one thing in common, though: food insecurity. I learned that it’s not a stereotype relegated to the panhandler on the corner with the cardboard sign.

Load More Articles