Camp Christmas Returns to Stanley Marketplace with a Full Holiday Takeover

AURORA, CO — Stanley Marketplace is thrilled to announce the return of Camp Christmas, the beloved holiday extravaganza created by local artist Lonnie Hanzon, in partnership with DCPA Off-Center. This year, Camp Christmas expands beyond its previous footprint for a full Marketplace-wide takeover, transforming Stanley Marketplace into a dazzling, joy-filled holiday destination. 

Beginning in mid-November, the Camp Christmas Takeover at Stanley Marketplace will invite guests to explore: 

  • Three themed pop-up bars hosted by some favorite Stanley establishments 

  • Dazzling decor throughout the Marketplace, free to enjoy during business hours 

  • A Marketplace-wide Merry Badge scavenger hunt – free and fun for all ages, with prizes for those who complete it 

  • Free visits with Santa in public spaces every Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 1pm 

  • The Camp Christmas Gift Shop, stocked with quirky and delightful seasonal gifts 

  • And the debut of Camp Christmas Express, a brand-new walk-through experience designed to tune up your holiday spirit 

 

“Camp Christmas is a celebration of joy, nostalgia, and the magic of the season,” said Lonnie Hanzon, creator of Camp Christmas. “This year, we’re bringing that energy to every corner of Stanley Marketplace. It’s a place where people can gather, explore, and rediscover the wonder of the holidays—whether they’re sipping a themed cocktail, searching for Merry Badges, or boosting their holiday spirit through our new Camp Christmas Express.”  

Stanley Marketplace spokesperson Allyson Fredeen shared her excitement: “Camp Christmas has brought incredible energy and foot traffic to Stanley in years past, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome it back in this new form. It’s a perfect reflection of what Stanley is all about—community, creativity, and fun.” 

The Camp Christmas Express opens on Friday, November 21 and runs through December 24, 2025. This new, 15-minute walk-through experience is designed to take you from “meh” to “merry” in six dazzling cycles, from “Pre-Soak” to “Fluff & Buff,” with interactive installations and playful prompts. Visitors will check their emotional baggage (literally) before emerging renewed, glittering, and ready to take on the season. Admission is $10 per person with walk-up tickets only, no advance purchase necessary. Open Tuesday through Sunday. 

Check out the Camp Christmas Takeover at Stanely Marketplace details here.

 

ABOUT STANLEY MARKETPLACE  

Stanley Marketplace is a vibrant community space housed in a repurposed aviation manufacturing facility in Aurora, Colorado. Originally built in 1954 by aviation pioneer Bob Stanley, the building was once home to Stanley Aviation, the largest employer in Aurora during the 1950s and 60s. After sitting vacant for years, the 140,000-square-foot facility was transformed in 2016 into a collaborative marketplace grounded in community values and entrepreneurial spirit. 

Today, Stanley Marketplace is home to more than 50 locally owned small businesses offering a unique mix of dining, shopping, fitness, wellness, creative studios, and community events. Guided by the “Stanifesto,” a vision for bringing people together and supporting positive change, Stanley continues to be a dynamic, inclusive space for connection, creativity, and community impact. 

ABOUT HANZON STUDIOS 

Hanzon Studios is a Colorado-based creative studio led by renowned installation artist Lonnie Hanzon, specializing in immersive environments, public art, and theatrical experiences. Known for transforming spaces into vibrant, story-rich worlds, Hanzon Studios has created iconic holiday installations for Neiman Marcus, Houston Zoo Lights, and Denver’s Parade of Lights, as well as large-scale public art across Colorado and internationally. With a focus on community engagement, visual storytelling, and experiential design, Hanzon Studios continues to push the boundaries of art and imagination. 

 

ABOUT OFF-CENTER   

Off-Center produces unexpected theatrical experiences that put the audience at the center of the story. What began in 2010 as a small theatrical test kitchen has grown into a signature line of programming for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, credited with bringing immersive theatre to Colorado and helping establish Denver as a national hub for immersive art.  

Among Off-Center’s large-scale productions that have garnered local and national praise are: the world premieres of Theater of the Mind created by David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar, Sweet & Lucky created with New York-based Third Rail Projects, Camp Christmas with artist Lonnie Hanzon,  produced a 360-degree staging of The Wild Party, presented The Last Defender, Space Explorers: THE INFINITE, and launched the national tours of acclaimed immersive experiences DARKFIELD: FLIGHT, SÉANCE, + COMA and MONOPOLY LIFESIZED: Travel Edition. With support from the Doris Duke and Wallace foundations, Off-Center has been recognized as a leader in developing new programming that attracts new audiences. Through Off-Center, the DCPA is the only professional regional theatre in the country regularly developing, producing, and presenting large-scale immersive and experiential work. www.denvercenter.org 

 

Rebuild of Lonnie Hanzon’s Immersive Art Experience, ‘Cabinet of Curiosities & Impossibilities,’ Breaks Ground at the Museum of Outdoor Arts’ Marjorie Park

A stand-alone building is being constructed to host a collection of fairy tale relics and serve as a venue for experiences and events.

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. – March 16, 2023 – This month the Museum of Outdoor Arts (MOA) broke ground on a stand-alone building in Marjorie Park, located in Greenwood Village, for a reimagined permanent exhibit by acclaimed Colorado artist, and former MOA “Wizard in Residence,” Lonnie Hanzon called “Cabinet of Curiosities & Impossibilities.” The roughly 400 square-foot building, reminiscent of an English curio shop, will be an immersive experience and will contain a collection of objects from fairy tales and children’s rhymes that tell stories about particular subjects, including early optics, geometry, magical tools, the heavens and objects of art among others. The opening of the exhibit is anticipated for summer of 2023.

“Cabinet of Curiosities & Impossibilities” originally grew out of a group art exhibition in 2009 at the former headquarters of MOA, a spacious indoor gallery in Englewood, and in 2011 was later interpreted into a semi-permanent and favorite exhibit among patrons for over a decade. In 2022 MOA closed their indoor galleries and moved their headquarters to its recently renovated Marjorie Park location at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre and the artifacts and relics were put into storage. Hanzon will include several of the original objects in the reimagined experience, as well as many new treasures and stories. The cabinet will also serve as a programmable immersive theater experience in the near future, to include actors and audience participation, making the installation truly a one-of-a-kind and further exploring Hanzon and MOA’s extensive work in the immersive art space.

“I am honored and excited to reimagine the Cabinet with MOA after all of these years. Being able to take the rich and magical setting of the cabinet, and use it as a reservoir and springboard for an immersive theater work is a dream come true,” said artist Lonnie Hanzon. “It combines all of the art forms that I have been working in for several decades, and brings them into a cohesive offering… a whole world!”

Cabinets of Curiosity emerged as a form from the European traditions of royal keeps and religious reliquaries of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Although the general form of presentation springs from the Baroque period, the style of MOA’s exhibit is Victorian, with objects ranging from antiquity to the present day. Classic Cabinets of Curiosities attempted to be encyclopedic and all-encompassing, but this cabinet will tell stories on amusing oddities and objects of art with a focus on fairy tales and children’s rhymes like Miss Muffet’s Tuffet, Little Red Riding Hood and Alice in Wonderland. Museum patrons will also enjoy the collection of Alice in Wonderland maquettes of life-size bronze sculptures located within Marjorie Park, just outside of the cabinet.

“This project has truly been a labor of love for MOA,” said President and Executive Director, Cynthia Madden Leitner. “We knew that when we moved our headquarters that our patrons would miss “The Cabinet” and so we have worked very diligently with Lonnie to bring it back into an even more exciting experience as part of our many offerings at Marjorie Park!” Construction is currently underway at Marjorie Park and planning for several preview events for media and MOA members is currently in the works.

About MOA: Founded in 1981 by Cynthia Madden Leitner and parents, John and Marjorie Madden, MOA (Museum of Outdoor Arts) is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to making the visual and performing arts accessible to everyone by implementing its mission of “Making Art a Part of Everyday Life.” MOA owns and operates Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre in collaboration with its tenant AEG Presents and features more than 150 pieces in its permanent collection. Additionally, MOA runs an artist in residence program and a signature education program, Design and Build, an annual opportunity for young artists, students and creative minds to work with professional artists on collaborative art projects. MOA is a forerunner in the placement of site-specific sculptures in Colorado. MOA’s art collection is located within various public locations throughout the Denver metro area. From commercial office parks to botanic gardens, city parks and traditional sculpture gardens, art is placed to interpret space as “a museum without walls.” MOA is headquartered at the newly renovated Marjorie Park located next to Fiddler’s Green in Greenwood Village.

Come to Camp this Christmas!

Off-Center, the DCPA's most adventurous programming wing, announced a creative partnership with renowned installation artist Lonnie Hanzon called Camp Christmas, which Off-Center Curator Charlie Miller describes as "the ultimate immersive Christmas experience." Beginning November 21, Camp Christmas will take patrons on a journey through different eras of Christmas with extravagant installations filling the 10,000-square-foot Hangar at Stanley Marketplace. Read the full article here.

Keep It Trashy, Baby.

We love fashion, we love the Earth - why not put on a fashion show that encourages conservation and upcycling?  That was the basic line of thinking that brought us to the idea to put on Denver's first trash fashion show. 

Did you know that the fashion industry has become one of the biggest perps in perpetuating  global waste?  Sad, we know.  Millions of TONS of textiles wasted in 2013 alone!  Much of it to landfills.  And we're like, why?  When you can make truly beautiful and unique fashion pieces out of very little new material, and create next to no waste. 

This goes out to the DIYers crafting new outfits for themselves at home out of thrift store stuff, and it also goes out to the high-brow fashion types who want to go all out.  So, that's why we're challenging you to make an avant-garde garment fit for the runway - all out of scraps, salvaged material, things that would otherwise be headed for a dump.  

TRASH FASHION SHOW . COM

It's a Project Runway-esque challenge... but our judges are nicer.  There will be seven categories for designers to compete in.  Then we have a big party at EXDO to show off what we came up with, and throw some prizes around.  We're going to prove that one's materials don't have to be factory-fresh to make something super sweet.  Plus, it will give you special vision: to see the junk all around you; litter, alley scores, thrift store t-shirts, your own recycling bin or mailbox contents as possible material for your next creative project. 

If you and your friends want to get involved, please do!  We're accepting applications for designers, models, and photographers through the website.  Or if you just can't wait to see the show, grab tickets for the event on June 9th.  Not so sure what kind of cool can come from crap?  Check out TrashFashionShow.com's Pintrest page for massive inspiration.

Step Inside the Wizard's Chamber

The Glen Creighton neighborhood (the Glens) is hosting the third annual Glens Art Walk and Open Studios. Come stroll through Lakewood’s oldest neighborhood and visit 9 home-based artist studios located between Kipling and Wadsworth and between Colfax and 20th avenues. Join 20-plus artists showing work ranging from jewelry, metal sculpture, painting, photography, fine violins, illustration, textiles, mixed media, pottery, local wax and honey, and Halloween folk art plus live music. Artists will welcome visitors starting at 10 am on October 7 and studios will remain open until 4 pm. Find more information at www.facebook.com/glensartwalk or email glensartwalk@gmail.com for a printable map.

UPDATE:  The Glen's Art Walk makes Westword's "Best Art Events in Denver" list for October.  
Read the write up here.

Colorado Dream Team

In response to a interview by Susan Froyd of Westword, I hereby post my 2014 list of my dream team, that I would call to serve if the Mysterious Patron with endless money appeared. I work with many of you often and seldom. Love what you have done and taught me.

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