Friday Night:
The Alchemist: Lumi at the Dahl Arts Center

We arrived around 5:30 thinking we would make a quick pass through the gallery, but the room was full and engaged, younger than I’m used to seeing at art openings, and it slowed us down almost immediately. The exhibition is physically divided, with one half displaying La Période Bleue and the other La Période Lumière, and you feel that division as you move through the space.

On the blue side, the symbolism begins to reveal itself the longer you stand there; A skeleton, the moon, a chair tipped over mid-scene. Someone asked about the overturned chair during the talk, and Lumi explained it as the moment to get up and get going. The skeleton, which most of us are conditioned to read as death, she sees as her higher self moving through the challenges she presents in the work. The paintings feel narrative and dreamlike, as if time and memory are folding in on themselves, and she is inviting you to follow the thread she has been tracing.

When you cross into the light series, the literal symbols fall away and the work becomes more structural. Geometry and color take over. Circles expand into layered sacred forms, and pigments blend into new variations that shift depending on what surrounds them. She spoke about how color carries different meanings across cultures and how those meanings change depending on proximity, and I began noticing hints of those references in the compositions. Subtle nods to identity. Small cultural echoes embedded in the palette rather than spelled out in imagery.

Saturday Night:
Float Like a Buffalo: Murphy’s Pub & Grill

We popped down to Murphy’s to catch Float Like a Buffalo out of Denver, a six-piece band built around high-energy rock layered with funk, jam grooves, and a bold brass section.

The place was full, and more importantly, it was paying attention. That alone felt good. Too often you see a band working hard in a corner while conversation hums louder than the music, or worse, playing to empty space. This wasn’t that. People were dancing near the front, others stayed at their tables tapping their toes, and when songs ended the applause came quick and loud. The band had the room, and the room gave it right back.

We stayed for a set and a half. They started at 9:00, which is late for my mid-forties bones to begin a night, but some shows earn that extra hour. I was home by 10:30 and still glad I went.

The horns were the heartbeat of the whole thing. They stepped off the stage more than once, weaving between tables and closing the distance between band and crowd. During “Proud Mary,” they stretched out the slow opening and let it wander through the bar, almost convincing us that was all we were getting. They wrapped it up just before the loud, raucous second half, and we looked at each other like, that’s it?

Then the horns climbed back onto the stage.

“Are you ready?”

They took a breath and slammed into the second half of the song and the place erupted. It was the kind of playful misdirection that only works when a band understands timing and trust. They knew exactly what they were doing