SPark (Utah)



SPark is a professional fursuit creator and artist.

Biography
S. Park, or SPark as she prefers to be called, was born in Utah in 1978, but her parents had moved six times by the time she was eight years old, and have kept roaming since, so she's lived in dozens of different places in the western United States.

As a child, her greatest ambition was to be an artist, though she went through a brief phase of wanting to sell insurance, because her Dad did it, and "anything Dad does is pretty cool when you're eight". She realized that insurance wasn't what she had thought of it to be and pursued art instead. After many years of practice, and a great many classes, she decided she was good enough to try and make money at art. That lasted about a year before she realized she did not enjoy doing commissions, and instead attempted to pursue a degree in Education, so she could teach art.

As she began college, she encountered the Internet, and quickly gravitated to the dragon community, and from there learned about such things as Otherkin and Furries. Having long pictured herself as a Dragon, and having been fascinated with animals her entire life, she joined into the draconic and furry communities with enthusaism, and developed several different personas, both furry and non-furry.

SPark is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also called the "Mormon" church, and took a break from school and her artwork to serve as a missionary in Ireland, from 2000 to 2001. Her faith is an important part of her life, but she seldom discusses it in public forums, regarding religious matters as personal.

In December of 2003, her then boyfriend, who wasn't himself furry, but who was very accepting of her furry lifestyle, decided to buy her a tail for Christmas, so she could "be" one of her fursonas. This proved to be a massive turning point. Not because the tail was good, but because it was, in fact, all wrong. The wrong shape, the wrong color, the wrong markings. She decided that surely she could do better herself, and set out to find fabrics and learn how to sew. A few months later her first very simple partial fursuit debuted at the local science fiction convention, where it was a hit with furries and geeks alike.

Soon she was working on another, more ambitious personal fursuit, and less than a year later began taking commissions.

Art and fursuits
SPark is now a full-time fursuit creator, with a steadily growing portfolio of suits. She currently lives in Oregon, with her husband. She has a number of fursonas, and is known online by several different names, including Bladespark, FlameSong Firedancer, Serapha Rhiannon, Aidan Rhiannon, and YinWolf.

SPark has long loved drawing both fantasy and furry subjects, starting off with a childhood obsession with horses, and moving on to her current and continuing obsession with dragons and dragon hybrids. She no longer accepts art commissions, but draws merely for the love of drawing. She has also done a fair amount of 3-d work including sculpture and ceramics, and has studied art at Weber State University in Utah for three years.

She carries those skills and interests over into her fursuit making work. She's quite happy to make the usual foxes, cats, and wolves, but is happiest when she can make a strange hybrid or invented creature.

Life goals, work and interests
In recent months, SPark has withdrawn from some areas of the furry community, wishing to avoid drama and intolerance, and mostly concentrates on her fursuit making. She can usually be found these days lurking on fursuiting message boards, just waiting for the chance to share some of her ideas and techniques. Her philosophy is that anybody who's good enough to take her techniques and compete with her would end up competing anyhow, so she happily fosters up and coming fursuit makers.

She maintains a fursuit making forum, dedicated to the open sharing of methods and ideas for fursuit making.