There's No Place Like Home at Untitled #70 (Roost)

Update: Download the program (PDF) for Friday, August 29.

The Untitled summer series comes to a close this month with Untitled #70 (Roost). We’ve spent June and July wandering and exploring, and now it’s time to return home, settle in, do some nesting and, of course, some birding too.

First, we’re delving into interior design three different ways. Pick the brains of IKEA interior designers about decorating with focal pieces—they’ll show you how using the unique and sometimes funky posters in the Drawn to Action: Posters from the AIGA Design Archives. Apply your newly acquired know-how to collage an inspiration board based on DAM artworks. If your aesthetic is less Swedish modern and more Old World, take a detour through the Design Before 1900 galleries with interior designers from The Little Black Chair to get pro tips for scoring great thrift store furniture finds. They’ll also demonstrate ways to rehab your salvaged piece to look like an antique—maybe even one you see in the museum. Or try your hand at furniture design on a smaller scale. The Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls, and Toys challenges you to put your couch-potato expertise to the test to create furniture fit for the DAM; or, at least, for the doll house-sized reproduction of the DAM. Design and build couches, chairs, beds—whatever you think works—in miniature with guidance from experts in mini craft.

Wanting to do some actual roosting? Artist Tracy Weil is creating a Tom Wesselmann-inspired perch and a Material World-inspired chicken coop, complete with chickens (not real chickens, but “Weil” chickens), for this month’s installment of the MakeARTtalk series. Also avian-themed: go bird-watching in the galleries with the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory and chat with DAM curator John Lukavic about recent controversies surrounding the use (or abuse) of Native American feather headdresses (see: Khloe Kardashian, Pharrell Williams, Victoria’s Secret, etc.).

Untitled #70 (Roost) is also about getting back to your roots (roost spelled a different way). Find your family’s place in a larger-than-life timeline of U.S. immigration and discuss immigration issues past and present with the American Friends Service Committee and Warm Cookies of the Revolution. Then celebrate all things Colorado. Chat with the designers and builders of Summer is…, WORKSHOP8 and Blue Spruce Design & Construction, about the locally sourced and sustainable materials used in the project. Take part in a museum-wide scavenger hunt for artworks with a Colorado connection. And eat and drink local: food trucks The Bistro Bus and Scrumptious Ice Cream are on the plaza and KJ Woods Distillers will be sampling their Dead Drift whiskey, made from Colorado-grown ingredients.

See you at Untitled #70 (Roost) on August 29! For more info, check out our Facebook event.