Interview by Vivian Hua.
By juxtaposing relatively uncommon influences with modern day landscapes and landmarks, Strongbow's pieces become surreal, dream-like sequences that provoke thought. The pieces always have much more to say than they initially seem to, and the justification for creating this series has notable implications for the current age.
Strongbow's current body of work, the
Secret City Series, began in 1992. The series showcases a hodge-podge of tribal and religious influences from cultures which are underappreciated or have long become forgotten to most individuals in the Western world. For example, his first piece,
The River of Time, was inspired by holy people from Seattle's Sakya Monastery, which teaches the practice of Tibetan Buddhism.
"They have a special energy that emanates from them, and it's a very calming energy," Strongbow explains. "I thought it would be cool to put them in the city and have them levitating and basically healing the city with their prayers and meditation." In the piece, one monk levitates above a fictional modern city, with colorful waves of shapes and energy radiating from his body.
The River of Time
By juxtaposing relatively uncommon influences with modern day landscapes and landmarks, Strongbow's pieces become surreal, dream-like sequences that provoke thought. The pieces always have much more to say than they initially seem to, and the justification for creating this series has notable implications for the current age.
"Ever since the Industrial Revolution, people have taken a lot of things for granted. We've kind of become a soulless society in the sense that everything is wrapped in plastic..." states Strongbow. "But there are people all over the planet -- the aboriginal people, the tribal people, pagan filthy heathen people, [some] might call them -- who have managed to live in harmony with the planet and create their own unique art, and yet, they haven't ever created anything that destroys the environment. No bridges, no buildings, no waste and filth... and they're still alive, and they're very spiritual."
With an underlying message that speaks largely to concepts of change, destruction, and creation, it's obvious that the pieces need a strong backdrop to match their strong message. As previously noted, "The River of Time" was set in a hypothetical city inspired by modern living. Sprinklings of Gaudi architecture and even the Chrysler Building made its way into the background.
After that, however, Strongbow spent some time in the Four Corners area where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah intersect. He became inspired by the Hopi tribe's spirit people, the Kachina, and conceptualized his second piece, which eventually took root in Seattle.
"I thought it would be really funny to have [this spirit person] waiting for a bus... but I didn't really know where to do it," recalls Strongbow, "so I was riding my bike down Eastlake and I saw that beautiful area where the road goes over the freeway, up to Capitol Hill."
From that point onwards, Seattle became the backdrop for and the heart of all the pieces of this series. It's an inclusion that helps Strongbow's otherwise very divergent pieces fit in at Pike Place Market. Passerbyers who are looking to take home a token of Seattle can in fact find iconic Seattle landmarks such as the Space Needle or the Fremont Troll in Strongbow's works. And rather than purchasing a generic, commonly recreated image of Seattle, shoppers can go one step further and purchase images of Seattle landmarks accentuated by Native American iconography. Each original piece is also accentuated by blacklight-reactive colored pencils -- yet another detail which helps Strongbow attract a younger, worldly, and more open-minded demographic than many other artists at Pike Place. In fact, open-mindedness is important, because his work is actually more controversial than one might think. Some of the symbols and characters in Strongbow's works incite strong opposition.
The Rain of the Pre-Christian Goddesses
The Rain of the Pre-Christian Goddesses features fertility goddesses from multiple cultures descending from the sky like raindrops. One elderly Christian couple was horrified, and eventually called the piece an "abomination" to Strongbow's face, but could not provide much elaboration on their disgust beyond that. It's incidents like these which rub Strongbow the wrong way. While he does not have a problem with what he calls, "the wisdom inherent in Christianity," he does have problems with closed-minded fundamentalists who have problems with his work.
"Within their limited frame of thinking, [those fundamentalists] condemn anything before Jesus, which is sad," Strongbow fumes, almost regretfully. "They block themselves off from so many beautiful things."
Strongbow himself embraces all different cultures, and it's part of the reason he believes Seattle serves as a perfect location for his works. "When I was just beginning [the series], it was just one idea after another," Strongbow recalls. "When I look back, however, [Seattle] is named after a chief, and it's really a highly-integrated city, with all kinds of people. It's a Rainbow City, right?"
This body of work puts a diverse face on the arguably segregated population of Seattle, but it also serves another purpose. Because the series has been around since 1992, it serves as a long-running document of Seattle as the city powers on through with gentrification. Parking lots that no longer exist and empty spaces that are now apartment buildings appear as portals into the near past. This documentation, in itself, seems to strengthen Strongbow's underlying theme of extreme construction in the modern age ousting out aboriginal respect for the land.
Strongbow's works are rich with spiritual and tribal influences, and it's obvious that he has clear intentions for each piece before he begins creating it. Still, he's surprisingly slow to preach a solid message to passerbyers.
"People always ask me what my pieces mean, [but] that's why I like surrealism or dream-like sequences," Strongbow says. "People interpret things in interesting ways. I can tell you what I was trying to do, but I can't tell you what it means. [What it means] is a personal thing."
what do you think?
