Old-school ideas about art and literature get an update in these Denver gallery shows

To best appreciate the work of artist Sherry Wiggins, it helps to know a bit about her process.

In essence, it happens like this: She studies the lives of famous women, real and mythological, then uses costumes and props to inhabit their characters through her own lens, that of a 68-year-old woman living in the 21st century who is well-read and fully enmeshed in both present-day feminism and contemporary art.

Then she finds a setting — in the case of the works on display currently at Michael Warren gallery, a series of outdoor fields in Holland and Portugal — and has someone else take her picture. For the past several years, she has collaborated with photographer Luís Filipe Branco on these endeavors.

The result — the actual art product — is the photo itself, and at Michael Warren, viewers can see her recent takes “On Sappho, Helen and Aphrodite,” as the show’s official title explains.

The images are, as so many of Wiggins’ objects that have appeared in galleries and on social media, captivating at every level. And just to add a few more adjectives: brave, timely, smart and very self-indulgent. Wiggins dreams up these scenarios and gives them everything she’s got.

In some way, they are instructive, a chance to explore the real person that was the poet Sappho and the larger-than-real personas of Helen of Troy and the goddess Aphrodite. Accompanying the photos at the exhibition are texts of poems written by Sappho and translated by present-day scholars. They are passionate odes to love and sacrifice, and deeply felt, and they set the tone for Wiggins’ own extremism in her work.

The photos are also objects to enjoy on a visceral level; they are daring, full of rich colors, careful cropping and so much drama.  Wiggins lets her age show — under theatrical lighting, no less. Every wrinkle and sag is on display — and honestly, that sort of bare-it-all, anti-ageism is, let’s face it, rare in our culture.

There is a deflated romanticism about the photos that makes them endearing. These characters are big and sincere, and surely glorified. They surround themselves with roses and wear fancy gowns and crowns. But they do suffer tremendously in the way that classic literature demands. In one humorous photo, Wiggins gives us her vision of “Helen After Troy” — she’s tired from the slings and arrows of wars, kidnapping and lost love; the famous beauty appears as an unkempt, bedraggled and clearly depressed woman of a certain age.

But they also challenge our intellect and blur common understandings about contemporary art. The question that hangs in the air as you gaze at these pictures is unavoidable and consuming: What is it, exactly, that Sherry Wiggins makes?