By Alicia McNally, LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER – Hundreds of steel profiles swirl in a giant funnel four stories above the heads of its visitors. But this new public art display won’t be found in the Denver Art Museum. Try a few blocks west, in the new $295 million Denver Justice Center.
As construction for the new justice center wraps up to hear its first criminal court case on July 6, so are its $2 million in aesthetics. Two of the four public art installations will wrap up this week: the 2,000-pound steel funnel designed by Massachusetts-based sculptor Ralph Helmick moved into the atrium by the main public entrance on June 11, followed by a luminous installation from fellow Massachusetts artist Catherine Widgery, set for completion June 17.
Both pieces were created with the jury in mind. Helmick’s “Denver Convergence” is composed of 1,344 laser-cut profiles, modeled after real Denver citizens, swirl around a steel frame. Each of the profiles is a photograph of a Denver resident, six women and six men of different ages and ethnicities, arranged so each profile faces one another. As the diameter of the steel funnel gets smaller towards the top of the sculpture, the faces overlap, or converge.
“I liked the physical space, but even more interesting to me is the audience of a bunch of strangers assembling in the morning in an unfamiliar psychic state,” Helmick said. “I think the jury is the most truly democratic subset for many audiences. We’re being judged ourselves into a jury, and if we get on that jury, then we’re asked to judge somebody else.”
Read more about Helmick and Widgery in the June 21 issue of Law Week Colorado.
