The La Center Arts Fair has reached annual status in its second year of bringing together artists with different mediums at Holley Park.
The La Center Arts Council’s event brought in a couple dozen vendors and many visitors to explore, shop and experience arts and crafts on Saturday, May 10. A couple of vendors in attendance empowered artists and sparked interest and enjoyment to visitors.
Pamela Grant, a painter, mixed media artist and more from Vancouver, and Natalie Campbell, a crocheter from Kelso, shared their love for attending events such as the La Center Arts Fair and what got them started in their crafts.
Pamela Grant
Grant said her creative side has been with her for her entire life, but transforming her vision to canvas with a brushstroke began just before the pandemic.
“And then I just gradually worked into multimedia type of things,” she said. “I do a lot of acrylic. I’ve been doing some watercolor, and so, as you can tell by looking at my booth, I like color, so I tend to be a very colorful artist.”
Grant’s trips through the American Southwest have brought inspiration through the desert, red rocks and colorful skies. Grant’s largest print at her booth on May 10, “Eastern Gate,” gained inspiration from her travels, people in her life and past experiences.
“Sometimes, art has a message to it or has a strong feeling to it,” she said. “And some of it kind of goes with some of the experiences I’ve had in my life. So I feel like art is kind of reflective of who you are and where you’ve been.”
When Grant attends art festivals, she said it is tough at the start when she packs everything, unpacks it all and then packs it back up at the end of the day. But she added that the experience between arrival and departure is what makes it all worth it.
“I like it because it’s just a way to put your art out there and have people visually see it,” Grant said. “Whereas, if you’re looking at it on the internet, you don’t get the same exact feeling. Like if I post it on Facebook or something like that, people are like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s really nice,’ but when you actually see the piece of art, you know, it’s really different. And I like going around and seeing what other people are doing too.”
Pamela Grant’s art can be found on Facebook and Instagram at Pammy Blessed Art.
Natalie Campbell
Campbell, owner of Sensory Fiber Arts, put her lifelong crocheting skills toward a bigger meaning as she gained inspiration from Instagram and Etsy to put her own spin on stuffed animals.
“I decided that I wanted to try to do that myself and I kept making different patterns because they were fun to kind of see the differences, you know. And after I’d made one for the different kids for my friends, I just kept making them, and I was like, ‘I should probably try to sell these or I will be drowning in stuffed animals.’”
Campbell’s fiber arts aren’t just stuffed animals made by crochet. They are interactive.
“A lot of it is going to Etsy and looking for those interactive ones because both of my sons have ADHD and so they need little fidgets that they can do in class,” Campbell said.
Her interactive animals and characters use a quieter material that is suitable for a classroom. One of her most popular is a turtle that can “lay eggs” by squishing it like a stress ball. Campbell also developed stress pets with the same material inside. One stress pet, a whale, was designed to look like a whale blowing out water when squeezed.
Her hand-crafted items garner a lot of reactions, which is her favorite part of attending art fairs.
“So my favorite part of attending shows has got to be the reactions of people as they see things,” she said. “I’ve had a couple of people that come through and they’re like, ‘your booth is my favorite,’ or, ‘oh my gosh, you make such cute stuff,’ and I’m like this is the little dopamine thing that I’m going to get from this.”
Campbell’s Sensory Fiber Arts can be found online at dot.cards/sensoryfiberarts.
