Jamie Sparks is a metals and textile artist living in Asheville, NC.  She is an AAS candidate in the Professional Crafts Jewelry Program at Haywood Community College.  She is a member of Haywood Professional Craft Studios. Jamie is an instructor in multiple mediums at The John C Campbell Folk School, Olive’s Porch and Local Cloth and has been a teaching assistant at Penland School of Craft. With a background in botany and herbalism, her work is deeply inspired by flora and the natural world.  She participates in regional craft shows, where you can find her cast and fabricated pieces.   She works in mixed metals, primarily silver.   

For as long as I can remember I have collected relics, antiquity and the objects shed from nature’s seasonal cycles.  Through my work as a metals artist, I can breathe new life into these vestiges of last season or last century and offer them as beautiful body adornments, intended to inspire connection and curiosity.  Looking through the treasures within a cigar box of mementos or foraging the woods and stumbling upon some peculiar bones inspires the calm and focus I seek, yet rarely can find in our modern world.  Through casting and fabrication of metals, I transform these keepsakes into wearable, beautiful pieces that can hold a story for the wearer.  Mused by the cycles of life, I draw imagery from life phases of flora, fauna and humans through time.  I find awe and inspiration in creating mementos, talismans and symbols of our connections to our surroundings, our loved ones and the cycles of life, our own and that of nature.