Liquid Sketch

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• Sharpie Permanent Markers
• Seattle Center
• Space Needle

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The creator of this small, loose drawing, Seattle-born Doris Totten Chase (1923–2008), passed away in December after a lifetime of art-making, her career divided between here and New York. Locally, Chase may be best known for two public sculptures: Changing Form at Queen Anne's Kerry Park (through which photographers commonly frame the downtown skyline); and Seattle Center's Moon Gates, a three-part array set near the Space Needle. Both sculptures are tall, cast bronze, with oval cutouts. (Chase is also well-known for being a pioneer in experimental film, back before it was called that.) But she also worked on a smaller, quieter scale, as in her 1963 Ginkakuji, painted on a sheet of stationery from the International Hotel Kyoto. The 17-by-19-inch piece is named for the structure it depicts: the 15th-century Temple of the Silver Pavilion. Her loose, inky lines bear some resemblance to the gestural nature of Japanese calligraphy, capturing the swoop of the pagoda-style roof of this revered Buddhist temple. This mixed-media drawing is simply composed with confident black lines—likely Japanese ink, though it could be a Sharpie—and a few dashes of color to delineate grass and flowers. Beneath Chase's lines, the printed hotel stationery provides vertical jolts of turquoise on the margins. Currently on loan from the Harborview permanent collection, Ginkakuji contributes to Chase's living legacy in Seattle.