Jason Soles of Gods Below Interview
2026-5-13
Seattle WA
Marc17: I am here with Jason Soles of God's Below. How are you doing tonight, Jason?
Jason Soles: I am exhausted. We just got through doing Georgetown Carnival and it was about 15 hours. So yeah, it'll sun stroke you. Okay.
Marc17: I've known you for a long time and you've gone into mainly metal casting lately, bronze and I think you do some silver and other things. Is that all you do now or do you still do resin?
Jason Soles: Well I do a bit of everything. The bronze and silver work, the jewelry work is stuff I mostly limit to a couple months a year early on before.
Marc17: So what medias are you working with right now?
Jason Soles: I sculpt in clay, usually monster clay at the moment because I have mostly monster clay. I cast in polyurethane resin, hydrostone, sterling silver, and bronze. And the bronze I do, sterling silver and bronze is jewelry scale. And then I also do larger size sculptures in bronze that I cast here at the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle for, I'm kind of looking for, see there's lots of homes in here. I'm looking for a new foundry. I'm going to go tack to a foundry or two in Walla Walla. See if we can get some larger sculptures. Yeah, it's like that.
Marc17: So you have a lot of your pieces have evocative names. I think there's a hunter's mask and other things or is there?
Jason Soles: There's about 200 hunters masks. It's just the style. I was with Ann Koi on a trip through the East Coast in ‘99. I think we were there for New Year's Eve ‘99. And we were visiting a friend of Ann's who mentioned bow hunting his neighbors, and that kind of stuck with me. So I've been making masks for people to wear while they bow hunt their neighbors for the last, you know, 27 years or whatever.
Marc17: What about your other pieces? Do they have like, do you have any like fictional mythology or real mythology that goes with them?
Jason Soles: I mostly pull from folklore and mythology when it comes to kind of how I name.
Marc17: Your inspirations.
Jason Soles: Well, my naming conventions. It comes down to a seed of an idea and as I'm developing it, whatever enters my head, whenever I'm thinking about that moment, I tend to work in that direction.
Marc17: You used to live in Seattle, you moved to Spokane. How are things in Spokane? You're just living there and the art scene as opposed to Seattle.
Jason Soles: Well, it's a tundra, so it's freezing in the winter, knock on wood, or it's blazing hot in the summer, which we're about to enter. But as far as the scene goes, we've got a good group of friends.
We just started an art collective called Psycho Pom and we're doing kind of our own art shows and starting to work with some local businesses and kind of increasingly developing a presence in town. It's an entirely different place.
It's smaller, but also that just means you get to know everybody rather than just being one name and face amongst many.
Marc17: So you work in the gaming industry. Do you want to mention your day job and any other ideas you might have for projects?
Jason Soles: I've worked for Privateer Press since 2002.
Marc17: You did a game called Unhallowed Metropolis. Can you tell us anything up with that lately?
Jason Soles: We released Unhallowed in 2007, so it's coming on to its 20 year anniversary, and there is a few ideas I have for future evolutions in the game. I can't really talk about it right now. Just starting to put pen to paper.
So usually, traditionally, I get so far in a game and then in my free time, so far in a game before the real world drags me down and whatever it is I want to do, I can't give a steady thought right now.
Marc17: Where can we, what are we, what do we look for on the internet if we want to find you in your work?
Jason Soles: You can find me on Instagram, the Gods Below, also Facebook, also Etsy, primarily.
Marc17: So what do you think about dark art? That's a term that's used a lot. Do you think there's something to it or is it just an easy thing for what the kids that dress in black like or?
Jason Soles: I don't like it.
Like… OK, you know what? That's a good question.
I think that art should evoke emotion. It should evoke a response, and I think a lot of art, if not most good art, is dark. And if you're not being questioned and questioning what you're looking at, if it's not provoking thought, it's not doing its job.
And I think if you're just creating art for the sake of it being dark, you've kind of missed the point. So I'm not a big fan of dark art per se, although I realize I fall into dark subject matters often.
Marc17: Do you have any advice for aspiring professional artists or artists that wish to become professional? Or at least solo work.
Jason Soles: So stick to your vision and work hard. Develop your skills.
Do not, don't, get bogged down by failure or if something isn't matching your vision. Everything's an experience and you learn more from doing than not doing. Even if you're not happy with the piece, the next piece will be better. Constantly develop, constantly sharpen, and constantly keep working. It's one of those things, I'm a big believer in practicing your craft until it's perfected.
I spent COVID with a kind of a monastic attitude. I spent most of my time, most of my free time in one room perfecting my craft day after day. And I mean, I would sand and smooth and polish to perfection. I still go back those pieces all the time.
And it was the only time in my life I have had that much free time to focus exclusively on craft, and I kind of miss it.
And suddenly the world opens back up and you have to produce and you have to manufacture and get the pieces to sell. And it's not quite the same thing anymore. The audience is different and actually being able to step outside that room really kind of focuses you on the here and now rather than on that continual practice. My best advice is stick to it and think about your work in the long term and refine it, refine it, refine it, refine it.