Patrick Fleming Art
This is What I Do
Story of An Artist
PATRICK FLEMING
After graduating with a degree in Illustration I spent several years working as a Graphic Artist where my goal was to solve other people’s visual challenges. After our first child was born I returned to school to follow a desire to be an art teacher. Painting and sculpture became the means of expressing my own vision. I started digging and processing local clay in 1970 and have been making pottery and ceramic sculpture from it for 49 years. Some of my work is in local, regional collections and in several European and Asian collections. There was a time when you could use my coffee mugs, soup bowls and, yes, even ash trays, in several local restaurants. Through the Bon Marche and Cole’s Plant Soils Inc my work became commercially distributed throughout the western United States. It is kind of cool to walk into a store in another state and find your planters on their shelves.
Ceramics Monthly has printed three of my articles on using local soils as ceramic material.
This is my 47th year of teaching art from 6th grade through graduate school and a prison. I feel like I was born to do this and do not feel good if I am not working. In essence, this work has become the most interesting thing I do. I am satisfied to say “This is what I do.”
Contact Me
(509) 627-8980