“I’m a little bit country and I’m a little bit rock and roll,” sang Osmond, and few places typify this lyric like Denver. Located about as centrally as an American city can be, it and wider Colorado, stand at a national crossroads geographically, culturally and even politically. It’s a city of cowboys and decriminalized psychedelics, pickup trucks and jam bands. Accordingly, there is a kind of tension to the city aesthetic—a tug-of-war between counterculture and Coors commercials. In this atmosphere, art endeavors tend to almost aggressively assert themselves in an attempt to prevail over counterbalancing forces.

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The most immediate example of this comes upon leaving the airport, where alongside the highway looms the Blue Mustang, also known as Blucifer. Thirty-two feet tall, this enormous horse rears in a bizarrely threatening stance, its glowing red eyes appearing particularly fiendish at night. It is a strange visual welcoming visitors to the city, made stranger still when you know that its sculptor was crushed to........

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