Beverly Lewis.

​Stroll through the romance shelves at any Barnes & Noble, and one subgenre stands out like Harrison Ford in Witness. In a territory marked by heaving chests and flexing muscles, Colorado Springs Christian writer Beverly Lewis keeps sex under her bonnets. But while her Amish romances feature more hand-holding than kissing, more Lord-praising than foreplay, more Pennsylvania Dutch than dirty talk, Lewis has earned a rabid cult following for her emotionally developed alternative to the randy romance novel.

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​What's better than Santa Claus coming to town? John Waters coming to Denver. He's a lot like Santa, except his bag of toys is for adults only, his trademark mustache is neatly trimmed, and his elves include Patty Hearst, Traci Lords and Liz Renay. Waters will be presenting An Evening with John Waters -- his one-man vaudeville show based on his spoken word, "This Filthy World" -- at the Mary Harris Auditorium, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design (RMCAD) on Saturday, March 10, 2012 at 7 p.m.

But Westword has been promised some facetime before the event -- and we want to know what you'd like us to ask him.

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"Serious and normal."

​Danielle Coughlin is a graphic designer and artist who creates online identities for other businesses at her design hub, www.dcmedia-design.com. "This is my passion," says Coughlin. "But I'm not even a year old -- I turn one next month, so I'm hoping to build this up." Because we are so interested in the entrepreneurship and ingenuity of up-and-coming artists, we sat down with Danielle to ask her a few questions. About other stuff.

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Self Portrait.

​Joseph Coniff's about to experience his first solo art opening, This is What it's Like , at RULE Gallery this Friday, August 5. He specializes in photography and sculpture, and his show will feature about eight pieces from both spectrums. What makes Coniff special, RULE owner and curator Robin Rule remarks, is his attention to unique details: "Joey is a very smart, innovative, emerging artist who does conceptual, idea-based artwork."

So we sat down with Coniff to chat. But we never brought up anything about his show.

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Xi Zhang

"Meng Na Li Sha" 2010 Acrylic on linen 16 x 30"

​Originally from China, Xi Zhang moved to Colorado seven years ago. He is an up-and-coming artist whose recent work confronts and explores identity and communication in our modern information age and globalized world. With many painting styles already under his belt, Zhang's philosophical powers come to bear on a series of paintings currently up at Plus Gallery, with one group blending traditions from abstraction and realism, creating a dreamlike visual experience, while the other humorously melds traditional Chinese pornography imagery with modern computer graphics. We talked to Xi Zhang about some of that, but not really.

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​Bailey Ferguson is hard at work in the world of art and design, trying her hand at any and all media. She's been a painter's assistant, a design intern, a freelance painter and chalk board artist, and she's currently a member of the Pirate Contemporary Art Co-op, a photographer, a letterpress studio assistant and an editor of ZeroMile, Metro State's design magazine, all while working toward her degree in Communications Design. And she still found time to sit and talk with us about nothing related to those things.

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Photo: Jessica Sain

​Colorado native artist and photographer Sara Ford started painting in college because she didn't want to take the color theory class everyone hated. Needless to say, she got really good at it. Through photography, she has worked with clients such as 303 Magazine, Denver Magazine and DVLP clothing, among others, while continuing to push herself in the realm of fine arts. Ford mixes media and negotiates a range of styles in both her painting and photography, from elegant line economy to a painterly magical realism that is at once mysterious and familiar. We spoke with Ford about things completely unrelated to that.

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Fresh couture

​Fashion Denver's in-house French fashion designer and artist Raphael Lobello grew up in a fort built in the 1200s. After studying screen printing in Grenoble for two years, Lobello moved near Toulouse and studied fashion design for three more before coming to Denver, where he is learning English and making one-of-a-kind garments for the denizens of our fine city. Brandi Shigley, owner of Fashion Denver said, "His sewing is amazing." Influenced by outsider art, particularly the work of Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Lobello likes to mix paint with fabric to make clothing that is bold and colorful, with influences from native African art as well. With Brandi Shigley as our translator, we sat down with Lobello at Fashion Denver and got inside his head about nothing related to any of those things.

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Axel Geittmann

Gentlemen.

​Local artist Axel Geittmann's paintings take viewers into a surrealist world of psychological landscapes, exploring complex emotional territory by combining gestures of realism with an essence of the other-worldy. Mostly painting with acrylic and spray-paint, Geittmann fuses traditions and viewer expectations to create a haunting mythology all his own. We didn't talk to Geittmann about any of those things.

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