Visionary Surrealism at the Pike Place Market

Seattle artist Jon Strongbow has published a new book showcasing his fellow artists who sell their work at the Pike Place Market.  The artists he presents are part of  "an ongoing grass roots art movement that could be designated as Magic Realism, or Visionary Surrealism, or what is now called Low Brow Art or Pop Surrealism in some circles. It begins back in the 1970's when the Market started allowing artists and craftspeople to participate in the market, which had previously been dominated by farmers and flower growers."

Some of the artists included are Tim Winstrom, Paul Sloan, Dharmic Engineers, Rob Schouten, Ray Pelley, Milo Duke, Winston Haycock, Kim Drew, Melanie Reed, Mark Holter, Blake Klazmer, Craig Anderson, Aaron Murphy, Dave Ryan, Robert Williams, Jesse Link, Alex Achaval, Sally Simmons, Kevin Darras, David Gould, Graham Callen, Rob D'Arc, and Scott Alberts.

Visionary Surrealism at the Pike Place Market is available to purchase here.

We also carry books of Jon Strongbow's own work.  His detailed black and white line drawings of Seattle cityscapes juxtapose realistic architectural renderings with scenes embracing indigenous cultures from all over the planet, including extinct and endangered species. Though he didn't set out to record the city's changing landscape, these drawings also inadvertently document the disappearing places of Seattle.

Pistil Books Outdoor Book Sale 2018

On Saturday we held our annual outdoor yard sale/book sale.  I scheduled it a month ago when Seattle was experiencing heat in the 90's combined with smoke from wildfires and didn't expect that I would be worried about rain in the first week of September.  Saturday was gray and cloudy and I felt a couple of raindrops fall, but luckily we made it through the day without showers.

We had a steady stream of browsers and customers the whole day.  People were sitting on stools and cushions reading, chatting, and drinking lemonade.  We were visited by a mix of people who knew about Pistil and had been to our annual sale before and those who had never heard of us.  They found out about the book sale from our email announcement, telephone pole posters, Craigslist ad, and plugs from The Stranger, Seattle Review of Books, and SeattleMet listings.

Jon Strongbow came by, as he does every year, and presented us with a copy of  his spiral bound book-in-progress, Visonary Surrealism at the Pike Place Market.  It is thick and full of color images of artwork.  Jon even mentioned Sean and I as Seattle collage artists, though since we aren't part of Pike Place Market, our work wasn't included.  He left the book sale with a cloth bag of books precariously hanging from his bicycle handlebars.

Our neighbor Eletha--who used to shelve books in our retail store in exchange for book credit-- came by to show us her sketch book full of beautiful color pencil drawings she made based on images of animals and bugs from volumes of the Golden Book Encyclopedia she had found at our free pole.   She left the book sale with a set of laminated illlustrated pamphlets depicting the insects of Britain.

Our friend Marin arrived to cut down a damaged branch from a tree on his neighboring property that was hanging down over the sidewalk.  When Sean saw him with his small chainsaw, his chainsaw competiveness reared up and he went and got his bigger chainsaw (for use on his rural property, not normally something that comes in handy on Capitol Hill).  Not every book sale has timber felling.  Greg B., a local English  teacher and longtime Pistil supporter captured the event on film.

Chris, from Left Bank Books (a collectively run bookstore in the Pike Place Market which is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year) came by, as he usually does, and gleaned a box of books.  We exchanged tales of bookselling in the age of cell phone culture.  He said he overheard someone say as the passed Left Bank, "Are books hip again?"  At our sale I observed one woman ask her friend if she should buy a book or just take a photo of it.  She took a photo and walked away...

At the stroke of 4pm, the advertised end of the sale, all the browsers vanished and we immediately packed up, boxes of books going into the back of the Pathfinder for distribution to Little Free Libraries.

Thank you to Kam and Michael J. for helping us set up and shut down.

Pistil Books is 25!  1993-2018