Today's featured event: Mark Penner-Howell makes a splash at CORE

CORE New Art Space member Mark Penner-Howell will celebrate his second show in the CORE fold with the debut today of Too Big to Fail: Handsome Paintings for Ugly Times, a sophomore display of his big, bright paintings satirizing popular culture (we wrote about his freshman show last year). Reminiscent of some new painting coming out of China these days, but with an all-American spin, Penner-Howell's canvases blow up mid-century images from Dick and Jane primers, Boy Scout manuals, romance novel jackets and the like on backgrounds borrowed from the artist's other career as a graphic designer, for an overall effect that's pretty eye-catching.

Penner-Howell, along with fellow CORE member Vrba, will host an opening reception tomorrow night from 6 to 9 p.m.; the joint shows then continue through April 12. Log on to CORE's website or call 303-297-8428 for details.

For more ways to rock the night and kill the day, go to westword.com/calendar.