Changing Form

source: seattlegov

With sweeping views of the city, Kerry Park is one of the most scenic places in Seattle and its much-photographed vista often includes the park’s landmark steel sculpture, Changing Form. Created by Doris Chase, the artwork’s open geometric structure produces circular frames that highlight the skyline and create multiple picturesque cityscapes as the viewer’s position changes.

Chase originally intended Changing Form to be a kinetic sculpture with the top-half able to rotate by hand 360 degrees, allowing visitors to adjust the configuration of the sculpture. Later, to avoid damage to the piece and prevent injury to park visitors, city staff welded the upper section into a permanent position chosen by the artist. This fixed the sculpture into place but still inspires movement, rewarding an active viewer with a multitude of scenic panoramas.

Chase states: “I loved this piece and I designed it with a park in mind.” Kerry Park is “an ideal space,” she adds, a sentiment shared by a community of sightseers, amateur and professional photographers, wedding parties and picnickers, among others, all enjoying the beautiful view of the city captured by Changing Form’s artful design.
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source: waymarking

This sculpture, “Changing Form” was created in 1971 by Seattle artist Doris Chase. Primarily known for her pioneering work in video art, her work has won honors and awards at 21 film and video festivals, and has a permanent place in the archives of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It is collected by major museums and art centers in eight countries.

The piece was commissioned by the daughters of Mr. A. Kerry, the benefactor who gave the city Kerry Park. The park is located on Queen Anne Hill between West Highland Dr. and West Prospect St. at the intersection with 3rd Ave. W.
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source: washingtonedu

Doris Chase has achieved international stature as a pioneer in the field of video art since she moved from Seattle to New York City in 1972. An artist of remarkable and continuous creativity, Chase now divides her time between her video headquarters in New York and a Seattle studio where she works on new projects in painting and sculpture.

Beginning as an innovative painter and sculptor in Seattle in the 1950s, Chase created sculpture that was meant to be touched and manipulated by the viewer. Chase then developed large-scale kinetic sculptures in collaboration with choreographers, and her art was set in motion by dancers. In New York, her majors contribution to the evolution of artists’ video has been her work in videodance. On videotape, dancers and sculpture evolve into luminous abstract forms which represent some of the most sophisticated employments of video technology by an artist of the 1970s. In the 1980s, Chase began working in the nascent genre of video theater. In these productions, she uses the imtimacy of the video screen to achieve a new synthesis of visual and dramatic art. Her video theatre compositions present multicultural and social commentary, utilizing scripts by writers such as Lee Breuer, Thulani Davis, and Jessica Hagedorn in the “Concepts” series. Collaborating with actresses Geralding Page, Ann Jackson, Roberta Wallach, Joan Plowright, and Luise Riner in the “By Herself” series, she focuses on the viewpoints and experiences of older women. Today, coming full circle, Doris Chase in Seattle is exploring a renewed interest in painting and sculpture as well as in the modernist aesthetic she never really ceased pursuing, even during her most adventuresome multimedia years.
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source: finslab

Doris Totten foi uma pintora, professora e escultora, mas é mais lembrada por seu pioneirismo na produção de obras importantes na história da videoarte. Ela era um membro da Escola Noroeste. Nos primeiros anos de sua carreira, o preconceito de gênero estava vivo e bem entre o estabelecimento da arte Northwest, que tendia a tratá-la como uma dona de casa com pretensões. Doris teve uma carreira substancial como uma pintora e escultora antes dela partir para Nova York, onde ela fez vídeos inovadores. Prosseguindo a sua arte era mais fácil do que em Nova York, no Noroeste, onde ela sofreu condescendência considerável por ser do sexo feminino. Sua arte posterior, que muitas vezes defendeu a causa das mulheres, é uma indicação da dor que esse prejuízo causou.