Westword Music Showcase invites four muralists to paint the RiNo Art District

When Westword Music Gallery take over RiNo Art District On Friday 17 September and Saturday 18 September, it will celebrate the arts more than just music.

Friday night, four top street performers in business will paint across the neighborhood. These artists, selected by the RiNo Art District, will add to the area’s growing collection of murals. Here they are and where they work:

Draw button
Ironton Distillery and Crafthouse
3636 chestnut place
Lifetime Coloradan Drew Button, of DB Ink, started in 2020 to become a full-time artist. He loves to think about how humans project characters onto animals and nature, and his colorful murals depict dinosaurs and other wild creatures from the sea, along with butterflies, beetles, and landscapes. He painted murals for Ironton Distillery & Crafthouse, Empourium Brewing, Bruz Beers, and Mockery Brewing. During the Westword Music Showcase, he will return to Ironton to do another piece.

Rommel
No. 38
3560 chestnut place

Detroit-based abstract painter Rommel creates gesture-rich murals that explore the healing potential of color and the cities in which she paints. She had residencies in Forge and TAXI Denver, where she began using spray paint on canvas. When she’s not painting, she’s the creative director of Babe Walls, a feminist and non-binary mural festival, and she’s obsessed with how art helps individuals and entire communities.

Chelsea Lewinsky
ReelWorks Alley Denver Behind Tracks
1399 35 . Street

In recent years, Denver-based muralist Chelsea Lewinsky has found rapid fame on the city’s street art scene, with huge, stunning portraits of everyone from Georgia O’Keeffe to Bob Marley. She has painted at mural festivals and major corporations around town. But during the last Crush Walls game, she broke her wrist in a motorbike accident and couldn’t resume drawing until winter. She’s now back at her, and we can’t wait to see what she’ll put on the wall behind Tracks during the show.

Jorge Quartas
Berstadt Warehouse
2875 Blake Street

Jorge Quartas, born in Jamaica, Queens, and based in Miami, is a Renaissance man. He prides himself on his skills as a world-renowned athlete, editor, designer, illustrator and graffiti artist. “As a freelancer, I have worked in everything from skateboarding to mountain biking, triathlon, BMX, Road Racing, and Motocross as a competitor, team manager, event producer, writer, designer, illustrator and editor,” the website says. He had been painting graffiti since 1985, and by 1994 he had worked in nearly every major city in the country. A master of wild style writing, Cuartas will bring old school graffiti to the walls of the Bierstadt.

In addition to the live sketch, of course, there will be live music in the Westword Music Showcase. Dozens of locals will play stand-alone venues, while headliners including Young the Giant, Thundercat, Matoma and Hippo Campus will be on major outdoor theaters, and Kaytranada and Duke Dumont will be inside the Mission Ballroom for a ticketed event.

For the full lineup and more information, go to Festival site.

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