Brief sketches of what's happening in the Denver art scene.
Typically, the show in the main room at Pirate: a Contemporary
Art Oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058) has nothing to do
with the one in the associates' space. That's not the case this
time, though. Pirate member Marie E.v.B. Gibbons is a friend of
Pirate associate Jimmy Sellars, so the two have coordinated
their exhibits. Not that there's anything about Gibbons'
ceramics that's remotely like Sellars' photos -- it's that both
artists used water as a metaphor.  For Float, Gibbons created a
group of installations. Hanging on the walls are small,
beautifully glazed bas-reliefs depicting fanciful sea creatures.
On the floor is the title piece, "Float" (detail above), an
evocation of a swimming pool filled with bathers -- fifty self-
portrait heads. Gibbons chose the number fifty because that's
her age, and each head indicates a different stage of her life.
She's "submerged" the heads at various "depths," though it's all
an illusion since the "water"