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Since 2006, The Clocktower Cabaret has been the heart of downtown nightlife. Hidden beneath the historic D&F Tower on 16th Street, this independent venue has hosted world-class burlesque, comedy, live music, and theatre for nearly two decades. This month, check out the show Oracle, presented by Taka, where the audience chooses the cards—and the cards choose the show. Each reveal unlocks a new path as tarot archetypes come to life in a blend of magic, chaos, and hidden truths. No two performances are ever the same. Saturdays in April: 11, 18 & 25. Learn more and get tickets at https://www.clocktowercabaret.com/shows

RPM Agency began with a simple, powerful idea: insurance could—and should—be better. What started as a small, community-focused agency in Colorado’s mountain towns quickly grew as more people discovered our honest, approachable way of doing business. They weren’t interested in chasing quotas; they were committed to building relationships. Shifting their focus toward the thriving Denver metro area, they embraced new technologies, partnered with leading carriers, and expanded services to meet the needs of a growing, diverse community. But some things haven’t changed—and never will. Learn more at https://www.rpmagency.com/discover

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Featured Song: “Sweat” by Manmademadman

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Looking for clear vision and quality eyewear? Visit Central Denver Eye Care, where they offer a wide selection of stylish frames and top-tier lenses to suit every lifestyle. Their expert opticians are here to ensure your eyes get the care they deserve, from routine eye exams to custom prescriptions. Plus, with their affordable pricing and personalized service, you’ll leave seeing better and feeling confident. Stop by Central Denver Eye Care today—your eyes will thank you! To schedule an appointment or look at frames, visit them in Denver at 1075 Acoma St Ste 110. Or go to https://www.centraldenvereyecare.com/

Art from Ashes empowers struggling youth by providing creative programs that facilitate health and hope through expression, connection, and transformation. Since 2003, Art from Ashes has partnered with more than 200 youth serving organizations to empower 19,000 young people through poetry, spoken word, and art. For more information, visit artfromashes.org.

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Featured Song: “Let Me Be” by Sista Soul

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Petals & Pages is an independent bookstore founded in 2022 in the historic Santa Fe Arts District in Denver, CO. Voted as the 2024 Best Bookstore in Denver by 5280 Magazine and the 2025 Best Small Business in Denver by CityCast, the bookstore is a place for community to come together over a shared love of literature and the arts. They also host author events, book clubs, writing workshops, poetry slams, and much more. Check out their event schedule and consider becoming a Petals & Pages member at https://www.petalsandpagesofdenver.com/

Time machines make great gifts! Treat your special person to the trip of a lifetime, where they’ll discover the cool spots on Colfax in 2084.... Why the Botanic Gardens turned psychedelic... What’s going on behind that razor wire around the Brown Palace... And with Al running everything, can two people still fall in love? Find out in The Future Lies, the award-winning local indie novel available at https://johnbe.com/shop.

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This Week’s Song: “What I Said” by The Rough Times

When people asked why I left Chile, I alternated between “I needed a job” and “I was tired of reggaetón.”

To be honest, I left because I couldn’t sleep.

Something was off with the apartment I shared with my little brother Andrés in Santiago. Objects kept dropping, sliding off counters. If you were in the bedroom, you’d hear forks or knives making their way to the kitchen floor. If you were in the living room, you’d hear a faint clatter of trinkets in the bedroom.

To make sure it wasn’t all in my head, I invited a few classmates over for Carménère and pasta. They heard it too. And when the last drop of wine was gone, they bolted. “¡Chao!”

*

We moved to Santiago when Andrés turned twenty and declared himself an artist.

We lived on the seventh floor. “Heaven’s number,” an old neighbor announced—mischievously—in the elevator. We’d escaped the mold, the smell of firewood, and the damp walls of our childhood in the South.

It was fun for a while.

But when the Big Sad got the better of him, I caved. I didn’t consult with him before packing my bags. I just left. And later, when he stopped answering my texts, the guilt snuck up on me.

*

In America, years later, a waitress asked Tom and me if we needed refills.

“I’ll have another,” Tom said. He had little scars all over his face, and his left eye was a dim opening, the result of an IED.

I was on the reckless end of depression, in need of novelty or shock. I also wanted to see what a chiseled hero wore off-duty. Charcoal jeans and Converse All-Stars. Feeling buzzed by the bourbon, I let my knee touch his fidgeting leg. Leaning closer—close enough to get a whiff of his scalp.

A fruit bowl in front of us had a Jesus figurine leaning against limes and tangerines. Plastic zoo animals and G.I. Joes crowned the nativity scene. I didn’t tell any of my friends I was going out with him. He’d been deployed several times, and they would’ve seen him as a walking red flag.

He showed me an app on his phone that counted the hours, minutes, and seconds until his retirement.

After his third round of whiskey, he told me he missed the war. He missed the nights in Afghanistan. But I’d seen Restrepo and thought the Korengal Valley was hell. How was that possible?

“In combat, your mind is seriously jammed. You have a mission, and that’s all you can think of,” he explained.

“There’s no room for worrying, being scared or sad. There are no bills to pay, no wife to deal with, and the future doesn’t matter.” Afghanistan was the only place where he slept like a baby, knowing everyone in his platoon had each other’s backs. Ever since his homecoming, he’d felt alone and listless.

He also hated guns. They had no place in civil society, he said. He was so sick of stitching up gunshot wounds from Denver’s rowdy Colfax Avenue that he transferred to a sleepy mountain town. These days, his shifts as a paramedic were mostly uneventful. There were nut allergies, overbearing moms, and, on rare occasions, a hiker mauled by a bear who needed to be airlifted.

We were the same age, born a few days apart. And we both loved hyenas. I told him that the females give birth through their giant clit.

“They’re tough as fuck,” he said.

*

He let me touch his tattoos. It saddened me when he called one of them cheesy.

“One of my buddies did it when we were stationed in Baghdad, and we were bored out of our minds.”

“Looks painful.”

“Very.”

Hovering over his heart was the silhouette of a man pressing a gun to his head. “A reminder of when I hit rock bottom. We were playing Russian roulette, and I pulled the trigger… Twice.”

Without his clothes, he looked like a pitbull. I told him I liked his body. “It’s covered in scars.”

*

The ease I felt around Tom was akin to the camaraderie I’ve only ever found with third-culture kids: people raised between languages and borders, who feel queasy when asked about “home.” The ones who leave.

*

On a day my roommates were out of town, I invited Tom over.

He followed me into the kitchen and grabbed my face. “The mouth is a large brain,” I remembered from Jana Beňová. I led him to the garden, where the air was warm and the moon bold. He asked how I was doing.

“I’m okay.”

“Are you really?”

No. But I didn’t want to sour the evening, so I talked about chimpanzees. “When they’re bored, they gang up on solitary males and beat them to death, just because. And they use sex for favors.” Much like humans. Tom added, “You have no idea how awful people can be when they think no one’s watching.”

I didn’t want to know. I scratched his back, and we stayed in a motionless hug for a while. He broke the silence to ask if he could go down on me. I half-smirked, “Yeah,” and he pulled me closer to the edge of the bench. He knelt on the cool grass and lifted my dress.

*

Last summer, I was in Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico with friends. We were sitting on rocks, waiting for the sun to go down. Waiting for the bats. That’s when I learned that vampire bats don’t actually suck blood. They lap it up like a dog.

*

Back home, in my last year in Chile, my brother Andrés had fallen head over heels for an older woman named Isabel. They were one of those couples who broke up and got back together, over and over: shouting, crying, slamming doors. During a drunken rendezvous, she got pregnant.

Since the relationship was already doomed and neither of them had wanted children, he suggested they “take care of it.” But Isabel decided to keep it, and it took only one look at Aurora for Andrés to become attached to the baby girl. Isabel weaponized his suggestion to keep him from ever seeing her.

He despaired.

He stopped eating. I’d come home and find a zombie version of him, dragging his feet across the increasingly sticky kitchen tiles. Or passed out in the bathroom.

I called my dad and said someone had to keep an eye on Andrés. He accused me of feigning worry so I could steal the apartment.

I didn’t speak to either of them for months.

“I’m not my brother’s keeper,” I kept telling myself as I planned my exit to the United States.

*

Tom traveled a lot and handed me a copy of his keys.

“So you can write peacefully… or what is it that you do?”

“What if I steal from you?”

“I wouldn’t be too broken up about it. Things are just things, you know?”

This time he was headed to Missouri, where they’d add pins to his already busy chest. He acted like it was a drag, and as he packed, he swore he hated wearing his fancy uniform.

“Why?”

“Because some people—people who know nothing about me—treat me with respect.

*

It was already nighttime when I first got off the train near Tom’s place. I quickened my pace and attempted a poker face as I walked past the men drinking on the sidewalk. It was too dark to make them out clearly, but I could tell they were the kind of guys who make the American flag look scary. Like a warning.

By the time I arrived at the building, I was paranoid. What if it was a trap? What if the key didn’t work, and I had to go back out again, in the dark?

But #207 was unlocked, and it was quiet, as Tom promised.

There were a few pictures on the walls and several military decorations. A leadership award for his performance in Iraq. A silver plaque declaring that his sacrifice, loyalty, and performance of duty aligned with the Army’s Warrior Ethos. I cringed when I read that his “selfless service to this nation will never be forgotten.”

*

Tom’s closet was just as meticulous as the rest of his place.

The uniform I’d seen in his photos hung beside a helmet and a pair of boots so heavy I couldn’t imagine how anyone could run in them.

I knew I was intruding when I reached for the metal box tucked in the back. Inside:

snapshots from smoking breaks in the desert, the portrait of him I studied so hard before we met. Standing before a Humvee, Tom’s face was covered in dirt. He was squinting, and it was hard to tell which direction, or what, he was looking at. His pillowy lips remained pink. He looked handsome, in a Marlon Brando type of way, or a less puffy version of DiCaprio.

There were also homecoming shots, Tom kissing a bulldog in his arms. Pictures of him and his ex-wife. She was almost as tall as him and much prettier.

At the very bottom, a Polaroid. A white cake with black icing that spells out:

I’M SORRY I BLACKED OUT, TRIED TO KILL YOU & ALMOST GOT US ARRESTED.

*

In our Santiago apartment, I often caught a shadow slipping at the edge of my vision. I told myself it was nothing, that it was childish. Still, whenever Andrés was out partying, I couldn’t sleep unless the lights were on and 3rd Rock From the Sun or Seinfeld played on a loop.

One night, while working at my desk, I heard footsteps. I felt a stare burning into the back of my neck. Prickly. I turned around, ready to snap at my brother. But I was alone.

*

The last time I invited Andrés out for dinner, I could tell by his white-clenched lips and the pulsing blue at his temples that he wouldn’t finish his meal. He’d hardly touched the ravioli or the glazed Brussels sprouts. He was telling me about political prisoners and why we should write them letters. They’re often a lifeline—a you-still-exist nudge that can mean the difference between hell and a good day. I nodded, hoping to reignite his appetite.

“How’s the mural going?” I asked.

“I fucked it up.”

I knew better than to push, so I steered us back to political prisoners.

“What would I even say?” I asked.

“Literally anything. Tell them about your day, or the last thing that made you laugh. Just don’t ever ask why they were sent away.”

“Okay, if it’s that important to you…”

“It’s not about me.”

“I know.”

“Give them prompts, something to spark their imagination. Would you rather questions are always fun.”

Andrés’s jaw loosened, though his neck stayed vigilant. There were new greys in his haphazardly shaved face.

My little brother had always been sensitive. His doe eyes welled up easily; his voice was a fraught whisper, or else swelling, a boiling timbre.

*

“How can you sleep with a guy like that…? What if he snaps?” my Colorado friends demanded.

Fair enough. There was plenty I didn’t know about Tom. I knew he’d hurt people. But I also knew that he was trying to course-correct, volunteering with refugees.

Most importantly, our bodies liked each other. He enjoyed playing with me until I was left dry-mouthed and raspy.

I didn’t fool myself into thinking we belonged together. I understood the healing aspect of touch. And it was only trapped between him and his new bulldog, Spade, that I felt safe. Sometimes Spade slept awfully close to me. I could feel his warm sighs and the dainty stroke of his eyelashes against my bare back.

*

Several months went by before I felt a sudden urge to see Andrés. A gut-punch that had me panting as I hopped inside the crowded subway.

“Andrés?” I called out when I reached the apartment.

I was met with silence and a chill draft that made me regret my skimpy tights.

“I know you’re in there.”

His bedroom windows were thrown open, and it was freezing. Andrés was lying on the floor, his legs unnaturally bent. Overdosed. He was already blue. When I lifted him, his weightlessness shocked me.

The doctor told me later that if I had arrived a few minutes later, we would’ve lost him.

*

In my dreams, I’m usually back in Chile, in that apartment. The wind cracks my lips, reddens my eyes, and every shape erodes into ash. Sometimes they manage to pump his stomach in time. Other times, Andrés is hanging from the ceiling and I’m a few seconds too late.

Tom lay awake beside me, earbuds in, listening to podcasts. Every so often he rested a hand on my hip or pulled me closer. He said that when he dreamt, he was back in Iraq. They were speeding, fleeing gunfire. “It’s not that easy to stop a Humvee.” He stared into a little girl’s eyes right before they ran over her. Other times, it was a man he shot in the face. The man survived, his jaw dangling from a tendon.

We rested our eyes until five in the morning, when we surrendered, got dressed, and drove to LaMar’s for coffee and donuts. He dropped me off on campus. I suggested we go to the movies, or get dinner sometime. He agreed but never made it happen.

*

The last night I spent at Tom’s alone, the place was a mess, Spade shed fur everywhere. His trash can was brimming with Jameson bottles. A single hair clung to the faucet. Up close, it looked blond. Long enough to suggest a woman. Maybe he had a friend over? But there was nowhere to sit. Then I noticed straight black hairs in one corner.

A ginger curl tangled in the sheets. My heart hiccuped, and I blushed.

My hair was blue.

*

Tom once told me that if I really wanted to understand how he felt, I’d have to read Karl

Marlantes and watch The Hurt Locker.

“Pay attention to the cereal scene.”

“Cereal?”

“Yeah, this whole country is like that fucking cereal aisle.”

*

I finally watched The Hurt Locker only after Tom and I broke up. Inside the grocery store, Jeremy Renner’s character, Staff Sergeant William James, is tasked with picking cereal. His hyper-vigilance is contagious. He’s overwhelmed and rendered useless in front of boxes of Cheerios, Lucky Charms, and Nesquik. The camera’s low angle exaggerates the seemingly endless repetition of labels. It’s unnerving. It’s almost like the hallway in The Shining, but bombed with fluorescent lights.

Then there’s a scene when James is home with his wife, and they’re prepping dinner. He argues that they need more specialists like him out there in the Middle East to deactivate the bombs that are killing so many people. He tells the story of a man in an Iraqi market who offered free candy until he lured enough children and civilians around his truck. When he detonates, he kills roughly 59 people.

His wife replies, “Can you chop these [onions] for me?”

*

It’s 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic keeps almost everyone indoors. Heeding the CDC’s guidelines, I haven’t touched anyone in months. Initially, it seemed like a blessing in disguise. But I was promptly slapped out of my rosy-colored stay-cay.

Baudelaire said society had three kinds of people: the warrior, the priest, and the poet. Each deserving respect, each needing the others. I’m not entirely convinced, but it makes me think of Tom.

Out of the blue, he texts:

“Can I see you?”

“We’re in the middle of a pandemic.”

“I could really use a hug right now.”

“…”

I cuss when I reply:

“Me too.”

When Tom holds me and repeats, “I got you,” I appreciate the sentiment. I run my fingers through his hair, tracing a “C” behind his ear, hoping it’ll soothe us both. But I’ve begun to see a shadowy figure from the corner of my eye, and I know it won’t make any difference.

Political punk band Dead Pioneers, never misses. This song, in particular, goes incredibly hard. Gregg’s vocal delivery is almost painfully direct, no beating around the bush here. The music chugs harshly, aiding the poetry to its point. “He hates me, I like that.” Loud and clear.

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Giving you a piece of me means sanctity
unfinished; unblemished is the duty of the heart
whether it is liver, lung, or kidney that you seek.

Skin, vein, tendon.
My eyes are two offerings soaring
over blue, over incandescent rays so bright
they burst to flutter

perfect passion
to give, to proffer my hand so you can get
out the hole of unnerving unknowingness.

Notice the soft tissue of my devotion’s love—
the warmth, the pulsing nativity.
We are more than evolved cells and systems,
not here on Earth for only ourselves.

Sisterliness. Brotherliness. A fellow feeling
of unselfishness reverberates to any core
living, breathing, feeding
to be the channel to the next flare of stars.

Giving you a piece of me feels like destiny
invariably written.
O’ what a world to be ink on another’s story;
to be flame, spark, electricity.

           Hope
                       actualized          incarnated.

My blood could river you towards faith.
My gift could project you into a future.
Grant my soul the ultimate deed,
cast what's left to the flowers and to dreams.

You and I are life eternal, friends of a never-end.
I extend my best parts to you, even the intangible ones.
Use it to rewrite this poem, conjure your own epic.

I give because I believe
body and life doesn’t begin with bone;

                          it begins with opportunity.

Denver Noise Fest re-launched on October 24-25, 2025, at DIY space The Denver Music Venue (aka the DMV) after around a decade of being dormant. The DMV has become the de facto place to see noise in Denver in the last year or so, as well as some of the improvisational and experimental music performances that have become a more active facet in the music s…

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Of those available, pickup basketball is not the best path to enlightenment. It’s not the best way to meet new people or make friends, as communication mostly happens in one or two-word commands and high-fives. It’s not the best way to get in shape, because you’re more likely to get hurt than play consistently enough to see s…

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Those who tuned into Charlie Kirk’s memorial with the volume on are most likely to remember the straight-forward fascism of Stephen Miller’s encomium to blood and soil. Those who watched with the volume off, however, were maybe struck by the not-quite-fascist, but nonetheless curious catharsis that rippled through the crowd. The atmosphere was distinctly Baptist, and to many it was alien.

Josiah Hesse wrestles with this reality in his new book, On Fire for God. The book has a clear agenda, to trace the cultural and economic forces that gave way to the Christian Right of today, yet its author is much more fair-minded than the thesis would suggest. Despite growing up queer in a wildly repressive Pentecostal environment, Hesse has written a searching account of his religious upbringing in Iowa, where the people are well-meaning, but their methods of moral and spiritual instruction, glossolalic or otherwise, can be ruinous.

A solid portion of the book explores the ruin, tallying up anecdotes of every flavor of hypocrisy and self-abnegation imaginable from Hesse’s youth and young adulthood. Some stories are hard to read, while others are darkly hilarious (Hesse’s dad was a wild dude), and though it may sometimes feel a little voyeuristic, the reader never senses that Hesse is pinning his family, friends, and neighbors to the cork like some exotic moth destined for secular taxonomy. At worst, you might call it auto-therapy, but Hesse is clearly withholding certain stories, and never devolves into outright score-settling. Despite being an “exvangelist,” Hesse has not lost the Christian impulse towards grace when dealing with his subjects.

Hesse weaves his personal story into the broader narrative of the Christian Right, all while staying focused on his hometown of Mason City, a small, erstwhile farming community that punches above its weight in cultural relevance. He traces the blast radius of the economic bomb that was the Iowa Farmers Crisis, making a good case that the dispossessed farmers were being lunched on by wolfish pastors who demanded “seed faith,” or money beyond the tithe, a sort of holy insurance policy that looks an awful lot like Catholic indulgences if you squint. Amid all this, Hesse pulls back the curtain on a strange perpetual motion machine of grievance and despair that has served as a formidable engine of right-wing politics over the past half-century, demonstrating that the gospel of prosperity invariably yields to an unforgiving politics of austerity.

The writing stays pretty wet throughout, and despite its often weighty content, the book never feels too heavy to pick up. The parallels he draws between the huckster antihero of The Music Man, a canonical American play set in a lightly fictionalized Mason City, and the avaricious reverends that prowl its streets today is a narrative stroke of genius that serves his thesis well. He sometimes gets a little carried away, seemingly pulling out a Music Man quote at the drop of every pork pie hat, but after reading this account, it’s the sort of zeal you can forgive.

Denverse Magazine: How would you classify your art style? It seems a little more industrial, similar to H.R. Giger, but with more of a slice-of-life focus.

Joshua Porter: I think it would be classified as dark surrealism, but that’s pretty broad. Giger had his own message. But he did always strike me as someone who made this very intricate, very dark and beautiful imagery and attached a commentary that was a little more inward, I guess. It was more about introspection, which I certainly touch on. There’s a Polish artist Beksiński, who’s also a huge influence on the imagery and technique that I’m using. His work was post World War II, you know, so he was trying to express the atrocities of war. The post-apocalyptic imagery is kind of tied in with that.

I look at artists like that and their work as being like language. Like, they’re speaking a specific language, and how can I use this language to communicate something else? Something I’m observing in the world, or how other people see the world. A kind of interpretation. You know, I’m staunch public transportation, I like try to interact with the community as much as I can.

I really like to live in a city. I work kind of out by the stadium, and there’s the old factories, things like that. The outskirts. That industrial side of things.

DM: What, what was it originally about that dark surrealist art style that drew you to it?

JP: So I have a background in addiction and recovery. And I’ve sort of always felt like I lived on the fringe of society. Outside. It’s sort of an alternative lifestyle to be in recovery, I guess. To have gone through recovery. And coming out of that world, seeing both sides. And then I have a continued interaction with people from all walks of life through public transportation.

There’s more of a connection to a side of humanity that people don’t access. You know, I think a lot of people tend to go from car to work to car to home. You know, it’s sort of a bubble. To be out on the streets and interacting with the people you encounter there and other people that are commuting, I don’t know, it feels like there’s more of a pulse there to me. It’s something I try to capture.

I think a lot of times my work comes across as kind of intense. And very dark. But I do want there to be this element of humanity and beauty within, you know? It’s like, they’re terrifying and horrific things. It’s sort of an exaggerated American Horror Story. And I think it does sort of require an empathetic lens to get the whole picture of what I’m trying to say.

DM: Hence the elements of the everyday. Is this common in the dark surrealist genre?

JP: As far as I know, that is the unique edge I have found with my work so far. Through Instagram, I’m connected with a bunch of different dark surrealist painters and sculptors. We have sort of a group chat where we share work and talk about what we’re doing. You know, a lot of people who are using a similar aesthetic tend lean towards, like, I’m making something scary, just terrifying to behold. Like, it’ll be this gruesome visage, you know?

And it’s like, okay, but what does it communicate? What does it say? And if the answer to that is that it’s just supposed to be scary for the sake of being scary doesn’t feel as powerful to me.

I guess I look at the world around us, and I’m like, there’s plenty of things that are terrifying and that seem insurmountable that sort of become everyday as you’re passing them by. Different people in different situations. Different corners of the world we live in. There’s enough there to amplify that and touch on that with those same aesthetics. And I think that it’s a lot more effective that way. It has something to say.

It’s like realism, which was sort of controversial at the time for depicting working class people in working class situations. The grit, the reality of what life like that was. As opposed to romanticism, where it’s like elites and upper class society depicted as these larger-than-life beings, in almost fantastical situations, you know?

I like to take that kind of approach, but turn it up a few notches, use the hyperbole of surrealism to push that sort of communication even further. Take people from different parts of society in different situations, show the “reality” of that, but amplify it, make it more visceral. I feel like we need now to actually feel a sense of shock and horror at the reality of these things.

DM: What are some these things? What do you want to present as horrifying?

JP: I do think there’s a tendency in art to ask the question, Are you qualified to make a commentary on these things? Maybe that’s a personal feeling of my own, but, stemming from that, I do touch a lot on addiction, recovery, being locked in that cycle.

DM: Do you think that you have to be qualified to depict those things?

JP: Not necessarily, but I do think it gives you the mindset to appropriately approach those things. You have a sensitivity, perhaps, which honestly, I do feel like I push sometimes. But I try to approach things with a level of reverence where I can. Homelessness is a big one. The houseless situation that we see more and more, which kind of goes hand-in-hand with addiction a lot of the time. This lack of a societal safety net for pretty much everybody after a certain point is horrifying. And it’s something that can potentially be fixed, you know. But some people’s reality is jarringly different from what you and I experience, and I want to shine some light on that or bring that forward. It may be kind of uncomfortable or terrifying to be told, but it is reality.

DM: When did you start painting these figures or incorporating them into your work?

JP: You could probably pull it up on Instagram and find an exact date.

DM: Oh, so you’ve been active online with your painting all along?

JP: Kind of. I’ve only really been painting and taking it seriously for four and a half, five years now, but I do have a background in traditional illustration and drawing, which is mostly self-taught. I never got a degree, but I did go to college for two, three years.

I do think of it as being a lot more like self-taught, like, what do I know how to do, and how can I use that to create the kind of things that I want to create? My painting is all the things I know how to do, but I think it also sort of exists as shadow work, like an exorcism of some negative energy. It’s good way to process things.

DM: You never got that through illustration?

JP: No, it doesn’t quite hit the same.

DM: Why?

JP: I don’t know. Maybe it’s the time investment or because it’s sort of pulling out all the stops. Like illustration is almost… I think of it as being the more marketable version, so to speak. Fine art or painting is the expression of the self without regard for necessity. People have different approaches to this, but for me, it’s very much like, I’m going to make this because I feel like I have to paint this. There’s a spiritual side to it that’s important to be fulfilled. More so than, say, I am making this thing because it’s marketable and this is what people want. Or I’m making this for a specific purpose. It is useful to know how to do that though. I’m doing an album cover for a Denver band right now.

DM: By the way, what’s this music you have on right now?

JP: Oh, it’s Klaus Schulze. He’s an electronic composer. This is the last album he made before he died. [He pulls out the CD case]. Yeah, it’s based on Dune. If you can pick up a copy, I would recommend.

This collage, published in Denverse #7, was the winner of our subscriber-only art contest! Make sure to watch your inbox for subscriber events and chances to have your own work featured in the magazine.

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