Weekly Art Hit: 'Highpoint' by Daniel Laskarin

Weekly Art Hit: ‘Highpoint’ by Daniel Laskarin

Walking up to the High Point Community Center, you are greeted by colorful set of table and chairs. Looking more closely, you notice that one chair has been displaced and is perched high above the community center atop a yellow spire that soars from the furniture grouping through the roof. If you peer into the coffee mug that is sitting on the table (and is a pink color that matches the lofted chair), you will see the changing scenery that an imaginary, restless occupant of that chair would see: views of downtown Seattle, shifting and tilting in the distance.

Daniel Laskarin’s Highpoint includes a panning camera at the top of the tall spire that transmits images onto a screen in the coffee mug, providing an intimate view of the broad landscape beyond. Included in the High Point Community Center that was rebuilt as part of the 1999 Community Center Levy, the artwork is, for the artist, a metaphor for the place the facility holds in the neighborhood. He says, “In an immediate sense the table and chairs of the artwork suggest the comforts of a home or friendly setting and in an imaginary sense the artwork opens out onto the world beyond. As the High Point Community Center’s expansion allows its public greater access and more facilities, this artwork may give presence to its friendly character, its hopes and its role in this community.”