By Anne Higuera
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
The finishing touches are the white stars on the boxing gloves, a star-spangled exclamation point on a 12-foot-tall sculptural puppet that will make its third public appearance at the Seattle No Kings rally at Cal Anderson Park tomorrow. West Seattle sculptor Shannon Ninburg calls her Lady Liberty, and among all of the costumes, signs and expressions of support for America’s democracy that many marchers bring, she looms large and compelling, with a message impossible to miss.
(Ninburg holding Lady Liberty’s right arm at No Kings 2, photo by Colleen Stevens)
“When you’re inside of her or working her arms, she’s so big,” says Ninburg, who walks alongside her during the marches. “Just seeing that and seeing the reflection in a window, it’s so exhilarating to see this huge body taking up space. It’s a visceral excitement that I wasn’t expecting. To see little kids and be able to see their faces filled with awe, it felt really good to be giving them that in this moment.”
This moment is where it all started, months before the first No Kings march in June of last year. “I was just feeling really angry and horrified and scared like so many of us about what I saw happening with our democracy and our government and I was feeling like … helpless. So I just started to think, what can I do? What do I know how to do? I know how to make things, make visual things. How can I use that to express something I want to express?” The answer came in the form of a memory from a trip to Brazil, where puppets in a parade towered over all the people, mesmerizing. “I was just tossing around some thoughts, and then I thought Lady Liberty: She’s mad and she’s fighting. It just felt like an image that would give people some hope and a feeling of agency.” There was only one problem: Ninburg had never built something quite like that before.
“I used to work as a sculptor for the entertainment industry in L.A., so I know how to make large-scale things, but I didn’t know how to make puppets. I did it backward.” That meant starting with the head and aiming to make it lightweight, but realizing it might be too heavy. That’s when she connected with a company in the UK that she found online that makes large-scale puppets and whose director, it turns out, used to live in Seattle. He sent her to the Fremont Arts Council and puppeteer Rob D’Arc. Ninburg describes him as “…a super kind person and he said come on over and then he gave me all these ideas so that it would actually work.”
(Lady Liberty’s debut at No Kings 1, photo by Pat Ninburg)
An engineer friend, Redwood, helped figure out how to distribute the weight so that it didn’t list to one side. He’s also the one who has ended up wearing her in each of the marches. “He’s taller, and he’s game,” Ninburg says. Lady Liberty took a couple of months to complete, with a big push leading up to the first march on June 15. “I was literally sewing up her arms as people were getting in the car.” The reaction was more than Ninburg expected, with lots of support from marchers, and coverage of Lady Liberty on everything from Seattle regional media to The New York Times. The Backbone Campaign, with its own large-scale protest piece, a massive Declaration of Independence created at their Vashon Island headquarters, also gave her a shout-out on their website.
(Lady Liberty on the march, photo by Shannon Ninburg)
Having brought Lady Liberty to two marches so far, Ninburg says the process of building her and seeing the effect she has had on people has surprised her. “I’m someone who doesn’t like a lot of attention, but it was kind of fun because it felt like it wasn’t me — it was her — or the message she was conveying.” While the reasons she wanted to build Lady Liberty have not diminished, Ninburg is feeling hopeful as she plans to load up the car with her again and attend the third No Kings. “I still feel those things, but I feel like for me, in these times we’re in, it is its own act of resistance to create and make other things in the world that aren’t awful. It makes me feel like amidst all this other stuff we can make beautiful or hopeful things as well.”
There are two No Kings marches in downtown Seattle tomorrow. One rally starts at Cal Anderson Park at noon and the other at Colman Dock at 11 am. Both marches converge at Seattle Center in the afternoon, with SDOT warning about traffic impacts from 1-4 pm. For West Seattle plans, see this WSB story.