By Mary Voelz Chandler

December 7, 2006

"The Denver Art Museum's new Frederic C. Hamilton Building has been open for two months, and the discussion continues - or is it a debate? - over its form both inside and out.
Laud it or loathe it, I think it would be difficult to find anyone who believes that Daniel Libeskind did not give this city a building like nothing else, elevating the level of conversation about architecture here while inviting people in to look at work from two museum collections and, for the next few months, three superb special exhibitions.

The act of creating - how that building came to be that building - is at the heart of "Inspiration, Process and Place," a show of works on paper by Libeskind at Sandy Carson Gallery.

Carson first approached the architect about the venture a couple of years ago, but his schedule made it impossible. Fortunately, she tried again, looking at a fall exhibition that could amplify the architect's way of seeing and working after residents had a chance to experience the museum.

The result is an installation that includes two extravagant collage drawings Libeskind made in 1981 (have fun inspecting the fantastical The History of Vegetables and So Forth), a wall of chalk and charcoal drawings that relate to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and four intricate and abstracted ink on paper works from a 1989 series titled "Theatrum Mundi."

As would be expected, the bulk of the work hits close to home: More than three dozen pieces derived from the Hamilton Building project include five colored marker drawings that are pure expressionism, drawings (OK, glorified doodles) on hotel stationery, as well as sketches on note paper and just about anything else at hand. In some instances, these are lyrical interpretations of the museum and the nearby building designed by Gio Ponti, and in others, sheets of changing views of the dramatic angles of Libeskind's new museum building as it shifts and becomes more concrete.

If there is a limitation here, it is that viewers have a near-blank slate in terms of context. Some pieces easily indicate where: Libeskind drew and drew and drew, on stationery from places as diverse as the Sherry-Netherland Hotel to the convention center in Jerusalem. But the sense of evolution - and basic documentation - is sorely lacking. And what was going on in 1981 to produce pieces with such unusual imagery?

Still, any chance to get inside a designer's mind is an opportunity to take a trip like no other.

The second part of "Inspiration, Process and Place" addresses photography by Andrea Modica.

Modica's past series (and books) include "Treadwell," about a young woman in Upstate New York, and "Human Beings," a record of the bones found when officials discovered a cemetery at the Colorado Mental Health Institute. For a while, Modica lived in Colorado. But she moved to Vermont, where she has a studio, and also lives in Philadelphia, where she teaches photography at Drexel University.

In past work, Modica found a delicate balance between life and death, isolation and community, guided by her hefty 8-by-10-inch camera.

For the 2006 "Northeast Kingdom" series displayed in a distinctly separate space at Carson, she has enlarged the scale of her prints to capture the cycles of life in an apple orchard. There are blossoms, there is fruit ready to pick, and there are apples lying in the dirt decaying. They are beautiful and sad, all at once, with strong shifts in focus and steady compositions that impress with their sensitivity and honesty."