Ask locals where to see the best art in Denver and more than a few will point you toward the famously angular Denver Art Museum. Multiple Uber drivers will suggest you visit the trendy RiNo district. Both are good ideas, but keep pestering the nice people of Denver and the recommendations start to get more interesting. There’s the American Museum of Western Art. There’s Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station, though I leave it up to you to decide whether that’s really art. There are the eye-catching public installations, many rather horsey, like Donald Lipski’s The Yearling and the sculptor-killer, Blue Mustang (Observer correspondent Nick Hilden rightly pointed out some months back that Denver has a thing for big blue mammals). Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s monumental dustpan, Big Sweep, is certainly something. And Leo Tanguma’s murals in Denver International Airport are said to hide the secrets of the Illuminati.

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But I’m not here to see any of that. I’ve traveled to Colorado’s capital with a friend for the sprawling Cherry Creek Arts Festival—an annual juried event that attracts applications from thousands of artists and supports arts initiatives across the state. This year’s festival was spread out over six short blocks with tent after tent of exhibiting artists plus at least four cross streets with more artists’ booths and food vendors, live music, a silent auction and a crafty area for kids, which is where we stopped for shade and shaved ice on Day 0.

It wasn’t just the heat that got to us. As Jason Horowitz—now Rome bureau chief of the New York Times but once staff writer for this publication—put it in 2008: “Even if you are not thirsty, the one thing everyone in Denver tells you to do is drink water. That headache you feel is not a headache, it’s dehydration. Don’t take Advil, Bayer or Tylenol. Drink water. Lots of water. Keep water on your bed stand and water in your car. Put water in your backpack.”

My friend put water in her bag; I did not, but I did pack sumatriptan, and she was kind enough to share her water with me during our whirlwind semi-self-guided tour of what’s on in Denver. We had two days and two nights to experience as much art as possible—like a pub crawl of culture. Our host and home base: Hotel Clio, one of several upscale hotels in Denver, home to Toro Latin Kitchen & Lounge (more on this later) and the site of one of the most well-appointed fitness centers I’ve ever encountered. Also, deep, deep bathtubs. I took two baths per day, just because I could, but beyond the baths, here’s what our 48 hours of art in Denver looked like.

I pick up my friend at 4:45 a.m. for a 7:30 a.m. flight. Neither of us plans to check a bag, but I am naturally anxious and like to be in the terminal two hours before boarding to confirm that my gate actually exists. We breeze through security, our gate does in fact exist and we grab breakfast sandwiches that I can’t eat because who the hell is actually hungry before nine? I end up tucking into my gluey room-temperature egg and cheese on the plane while cringing through the new Mean Girls and then Jules, which I’d never heard of and am honestly still not sure I’d recommend. My friend graciously takes the middle seat and sleeps through almost the entire flight.

We land at Denver International Airport without incident and despite how much I’ve talked up the absolute weirdness of it—from the subterranean reptiles dwelling in the bunkers underneath to the Flat Earth propaganda in the murals to the resident ghosts—I’m too tired to even look for the famous gargoyles. I am, in fact, desperate for two things: to get more coffee and to get to the Uber that arrived roughly a minute and a half after I ordered it. Once on the road, we gaze unblinkingly out the windows, anxious for a glimpse of Blucifer, but we’re on the wrong side of the highway.

It’s too early to check in, and I don’t want to visit the Cherry Creek Art Festival until we talk to PR head Bryant Palmer, so we drop our bags at Hotel Clio—briefly admiring the art in the lobby on loan from Clayton Lane Fine Arts, which we’ll visit tomorrow—and head away from the long line of artists’ booths just around the corner. By now, we’re exceedingly hungry, but our first stop is Masters Gallery, which has a fun mix of bronzes and other sculptural works, paintings and glass art. We were particularly taken with Lawrence Feir’s fantastical metalwork wall sculptures that rendered the human form in something like chainmail (but make it sci-fi). Lunch is hand pies from the nearby Pasty Republic.

In the early afternoon, after checking in and refreshing ourselves—that’s bath number one—we have a quick meet and greet with festival PR head Bryant Palmer, who gives us the Media tags that will get us into the daily festival VIP lunch and hopefully make it less awkward when I ask artists if I can record them. During our brief chat, he tells us that last year’s........

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