Courtesy of Kate Patera   Block art: Bellingham, Wash., art teacher Kate Patera is the poster artist for the 32nd annual festival, which starts Monday, April 3, and runs through Sunday, April 9. She will display her block art at Annie Kaill's, 244 Front St., during First Friday on April 7. In April, she starts a three-week artist-in-residence stint at Gastineau Elementary School, whre she will teach print-making and felt-making to kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders.

Patera, an art teacher in Bellingham, Wash., is the poster artist for the 32nd annual festival, which starts Monday, April 3, and runs through Sunday, April 9. She's coming to town for her first festival and will also be one of the guest artists at Annie Kaill's, 244 Front St., during First Friday, April 7.

A printmaker since 1990, she hand-carved the wood block she used for the poster original and hand-colored the rest with water colors.

"It was a musical theme, obviously," Patera said. "I love the fiddle, and I've dallied with violin repair for a little while. It's my favorite instrument. The cricket is the insect that makes a sound that's most like a fiddler."

Besides print-making, Patera creates silk paintings and carves silver. Most of her work includes Northwest Native motifs. Patera teaches art in Bellingham through the Whatcom County Parks and Recreation Department. She has a 41Ú2-year-old son, Dylan, whom she will bring to the folk fest this year.

In April, she starts a three-week artist-in-residence stint at Gastineau Elementary School. Patera will teach print-making and felt-making to kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders. The kids will create a large installation for display in the school.

Courtesy of Kate Patera

Patera has created art for most of her life and began print-making professionally in 2000. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting, with a minor in art history, from Western Washington University in 1993.

She has shown pieces in Alaska, Seattle, Chicago, Texas and Australia, and her work is featured in the collections of Princeton University, Western Washington University and the University of Kansas.

She has work at Annie Kaill's; Fairweather Prints and Impressions Gallery in Sitka.

Patera is a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed able body seaman and has worked as a fisherman, scow operator and tugboat crew member for 16 years.

Courtesy of Kate Patera

She graduated from Steller High School in Anchorage and began working in Sitka as a deckhand for trollers and longliners. She moved to Santa Fe, N.M., where she sold seafood wholesale. Then she returned to Sitka, where she was a fish buyer for Sitka Sound Seafood.

While in Sitka, she worked on the Won Cho scow, buying fish in Whale Bay, Murphy Cove and Baranof. She also spent three offseasons living with a partner on an 25-by-30-foot anchored float house near Goddard Hot Springs.

"In the summertime I would fish, and in the winter I would live pretty much a subsistence lifestyle," Patera said. "It was wonderful, doing what you wanted with your own time. In the middle of winter, maybe March, you didn't want to be there for a little while. But it was just really a wonderful experience. I really wish I could go back and show my son what that was like - exploring the islands, catching fish, smoking them, hiking around in the mountains and beachcombing."

Eventually, Patera found employment working on tugboats out of Seattle. She transported chemicals to the Ketchikan Pulp Mill, drove freight to the Aleutian Islands and ferried rail cars between Seattle and Prince Rupert, British Columbia.

"I would take blocks with me on the boats and carve blocks when I was off watch," Patera said. "The cool thing about tugboats is you have all this time at home. You're gone quite a lot, but you have quite a lot of time, more than people with regular jobs, to pursue your interest."