Pat Spark
Pat Spark is a practicing artist with areas including mixed media collage, printmaking and dyeing techniques. She has over 50 years of experience both producing and teaching art. Currently, Pat is happily creating her art and exhibiting as part of Gallery Calapooia in Albany, Ore.
Handmade Felt “Watercolor Series”
I have been making felt for over 30 years and I have been a watercolorist for about the same amount of time. But, it’s only in the last few years that I’ve been combining the two. That is, I’m taking concepts from my painting and applying those concepts to my feltmaking. The result is the watercolor series. Felts that are conceptually similar to watercolors, but which are totally made of dyed fiber. There is no actual painting involved, unless you consider the placement of each individual colored fiber as “painting” with the fiber. With these works, I create rich backgrounds and use these backgrounds to help define the foregrounds. By themselves, the foregrounds would be flat, but by making the backgrounds visually exciting, the foregrounds are enriched.
