Allowance made for Improvisation, 2025
Softwood cellulose nanofiber, shadow, fingering yarn

Now on view at Tumbleweed Found

In the tangible, this work responds to the space, to the light moving across the room, and to the presence of her deceased father’s photographs hanging nearby. In Augusta’s words, her practice “navigates grief, destiny, and choice, within a framework of care, control, and curiosity.” The sculpture holds its own center, yet subtly guides the eye into the next room, inviting a quiet dialogue with what remains.

Suspended in air, the forms appear fragile—almost skeletal, almost botanical—shifting between shadow and light. Augusta works with softwood cellulose nanofiber, a material made of 97% water when wet, yogurt-like in its earliest state. As it dries, transforms, and collapses into itself, it becomes unexpectedly strong. Scientists at the University of Maine describe nanocellulose as a material that can
mimic bone or skin when handled by an artist. Augusta echoes this: “If you look at it closely, the nanocellulose looks like skin or bone… Sometimes it says, ‘Oh, you thought I was done drying? Well, I’m not, and now I’m going to do this.’”

Her process is one of collaboration with the material—an improvisation between intention and surrender. Each gesture is guided by the way the cellulose stretches, curls, and changes as it dries. In her practice, sense-making is a form of ruminating through grief, a way of listening. What hangs above us is as much emotion as it is form.

Augusta Sparks is an artist and educator now living and working between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, California.

She serves as an art consultant with Dr. Hugh Silk and Dr. Sara Shields at the UMass Chan Medical School, developing a database and faculty toolkit to integrate medical humanities into family medicine residency training.

Sparks earned her BA in Photography from Bard College, MA in Arts in Medicine from the University of Florida, and MFA in Intermedia from the University of Maine, where she initiated the use of cellulose nanofiber (CNF) as an art material through the Process Development Center.

She previously founded the Carnegie Picture Lab, an arts education nonprofit, and the Arts in Health: First Aid Art Kits initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most recently her work has been commissioned, and shown in Washington and Maine. She has been published in ArtPlace, interviewed by the Performance Art Initiative, and the Ruralite podcasr, and featured in Art New England.

www.augustasparks.com
www.andwithevery.com

A Quiet Dialogue, Continued
The piece points softly toward her father’s photographs in the next room. William Wheeler Jr., fourth-generation photographer (1947–2025), he leaves behind a story and legacy we invite you to explore at Tumbleweed Found.

augusta sparks

speculative portrait