A Passion Brought to
Life
Loyal artist’s work on display at New Visions Gallery
For an artist, the desire to create is always pulsing in their veins, giving them the urge to make something new, to take raw elements and combine them into a satisfying whole.
Pat Bell’s life has taken her to some interesting places, but through it all she’s always felt a pull towards art.
“I have always had my hands and head in art, whether painting, drawing, designing or decorating,” said Bell.
A Loyal resident, Bell has artwork on display at the New Visions Gallery gift shop in the Marshfield Clinic lobby. She is excited for people to view her pieces, which include two crocheted ponchos, a full-length sweater coat and several other outerwear pieces. Bell began crocheting around age 40-41 when it was suspected she had rheumatoid arthritis. She took up crocheting as a way to keep moving and prevent her joints from getting stiff. Her mom taught her how to chain and single crochet.
“She showed me these two simple stitches and I fell in love with it. I saw it as another form of art,” said Bell. “When you’re an artist, you want to try everything, every medium.”
As Bell continued indulging in the art of crochet, she gradually learned other techniques, including mosaic crochet, in which the artist works different colors of yarn down into previous rows to create a color pattern; and Swedish weaving, which creates a surface design by weaving the yarn into crocheted fabric.
Bell doesn’t use commercial patterns, but rather creates her own. Each piece is a labor of love, combining color, texture and design in a lengthy endeavor. For example, her “Kaleidoscope Poncho” took about three to three-and-a-half months to finish, with continuous work on the piece. Another piece, a cardigan with Swedish weave and mosaic designs, took about four to fourand- a-half months. Bell likes to create outerwear pieces that are not only beautiful but functional, as she feels everyone should have at least one piece of “wearable art” to feel good and make a statement about oneself.
Bell also has four large photographs for sale at the gallery. She picked up photography a few years ago, taking pictures of plants, landscapes, birds and anything else that caught her interest.
“I just picked up the camera and started playing with it. A friend of the family used to sell cameras, which led me to purchase a very good one,” said Bell. “I like photography because it’s instant.”
She has two closeup photos of daylilies that won a contest held by Gridley Medical Center in Gridley, Calif., where she used to live. The photos were purchased and displayed on canvas at the clinic. Here in Wisconsin, she enjoys taking pictures of the old, rustic barns, as well as all the wildlife the state has to offer.
Bell’s love of art dates back to childhood. She grew up in Sunnyvale, Calif., in the area known today as the Silicon Valley. She spent most of her life in California, with a few years in Washington State. She has been drawing ever since she could hold a pencil. She would use any piece of paper she could find, until finally her parents got her a little chalkboard to draw on so she wouldn’t use all the paper in the house.
“My mom would always say, ‘Can you draw this? Can you draw that?’ And she’d always hand me stuff to draw,” said Bell. “I had to be between 9 and maybe 11 years old, and she handed me a picture of a clown’s face and said, ‘Can you draw it?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’ It was a neat clown’s face. So I drew it, and she took it. Unbeknownst to me, she mailed it off someplace, and later told me, ‘You’ve just been accepted to art university.’ I said, ‘What?’ So she had to call the school to tell them what was going on, because obviously someone my age wasn’t going to any university, anytime soon.”
As she got older, Bell kept drawing and found herself in several art galleries in the Bay Area, all while her main career took her elsewhere. She worked in corporate America for CEOs, attorneys and presidents of multi-million-dollar companies, but also spent 12-15 years doing interior design and decorating on the side, working many times not only with the owner but also with their contractor.
“It was a lot of work, but fun much of the time,” she said.
After her corporate career, Bell went through some changes in her life. Her mom passed away in 2012. Bell and her dad started thinking about what the next chapter of life would hold for each of them.
“My dad and I decided that California wasn’t good anymore. It’s a beautiful state — it had so much to offer, once upon a time, but it’s been destroyed,” Bell said.
As they were thinking and talking about where to land for their new adventure together, they visited the Appleton area to meet some of Bell’s dad’s cousins and their children, found through genealogy research. Bell’s dad was originally from Appleton.
“On our way back we said, ‘You know, that Wisconsin’s not a bad place,’” said Bell.
They had lengthy conversations about where to move and kept coming back to Wisconsin.
“I remember my dad making a comment, ‘Well, if other people can live in the snow, we can too,’” said Bell.
In October 2017, she and her dad moved to a country property on a couple of acres near Luxemburg, along Highway 29 between Green Bay and Kewaunee. She converted the original farmhouse on the property into a boutique called The Downstairs Attic, selling fine art and illustrations made by herself and others, antiques, collectibles and “Bell’s Wearable Art,” so dubbed by her clientele.
Bell did all the design and decorating of the store, including laying colorful Mexican tile on the staircase rises, painting much of the interior and more.
When people saw her shop, “I had people asking me to come and help them do their interior decorating and design layout(s) for new homes,” Bell said.
She operated the store for almost two years. Then, life circumstances changed again. COVID hit and hurt Bell’s little boutique, society went into turmoil and Bell’s dad passed away. All those factors prompted Bell to make a change. She had been looking for a house in Marshfield and even made an offer on one, but it fell through. While looking at the surrounding area, she discovered a house in Loyal. She made an offer right away, as her existing home had already sold. Her offer was accepted and she moved to Loyal in December 2021. She slept on an old mattress the previous owners left her until her belongings arrived a little over a month later.
In central Wisconsin, Bell has found new venues through which to share her art. She entered three crocheted items in last year’s Clark County Fair — a tunic/poncho, child’s afghan and king-size blanket — and they each received a blue ribbon. More recently, she was a guest at an art reception, via an artist friend who was showing at the New Visions Gallery. While at the reception, she connected with the gallery director. Bell’s work has been on display there since early AuContinued from page 10
gust.
Besides crocheting and photography, Bell has worked in other mediums, including colored pencil with colored ink, floral art, sketching, and acrylic and oil paintings, plus refinishing furniture and adding her art to the pieces. For her, the only limit is her own imagination, and the process of bringing ideas to life is just as important as the final product. She feels that anyone, especially kids, can benefit from the life lesson learned through creating art.
“I believe art is a very important class for all schoolchildren to take, to expand the right side of their brain. In art, any form of art, you must learn to see things in a different format, a different perspective, a different complexity. Then you must learn the steps for achieving the end result,” said Bell. “It’s that process of taking one’s time, actually understanding what you are trying to achieve, what’s being asked of you, what you need to do to produce a finished product, that I believe is incredibly important – to teach a child they can produce an important, maybe valuable product. Going through a detailed process and paying attention to the steps required is a concept that can be applied to many areas of one’s life; hence, art is a good avenue to learn the value of having to go through a tedious process to achieve an end result, to be able to show a product because of a process – much like our lives, our society asks all of us to do.”
Bell will do custom pieces; call 920-421-3630 to discuss options.
She also enjoys collecting art, gardening, cooking and spending time with her pets.
Bell’s work can be viewed at the gallery 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. The current exhibition, “Flora and Fauna: Nature’s Beauty Reflected via Collage, Watercolor and Fused Glass,” will be on display until Oct. 13.
HANDMADE PONCHO -Pat Bell crocheted this poncho, now on display at the New Visions Gallery gift shop in the Marshfield Clinic lobby. The gallery/ gift shop is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays.
