School is almost over!

The end of another school year is a dominant theme in our household these days.  Jacob has several big projects coming to a conclusion, including Friday’s big extravaganza.  Jacob was Thomas Jefferson.  I came to see all the presentations in the library, and the kids did a fine job with their early American personalities.  I’ve been stopping in to support Mrs. Tamborrino as an algebra tutor some mornings and having a lot of fun with the kids.  I even helped participate in the rocket-building exercise—launch is set for Monday!  To wind down after a long day when Jim was out sparring Wednesday, the boys and I took a nice walk in the neighborhood and played a fun rhyming word game.  Who knew swapping spit with a Russian communist was a ‘Bolshevik lick’? 

On our trip we ran into a big herd of deer roaming the neighborhood.  Depending on your point of view, they were either enriching our lives, eating our flowers, or menacing helpless pet and bicyclists.

Between all my other responsibilities I have slipped off to the art studio to move my projects forward.  I completed all the tree trunks for the foreground of the piece, and I think I have enough branches created for the canopy.   

As school winds down, I’ve been able to pirate a few of the wire from spiral notebooks that are no longer needed at school.  It’s actually a good time of year to collect those.  I warped the loom and started weaving the extended trail through the woods.  The lower layers begin with a sumac weave that will be covered with a dimensional crochet technique that will form the final path.  I’m using up a lot of yarn colors that I don’t normally have a lot of use for.  That includes soft peaches, pale yellows and beiges from my collection. 

Last night we held a meeting of the artists who organized this year’s Open Studio’s Tour.  We gathered in our dining room for a potluck and talk about this year’s successes and what we’d like to do differently next year.  The kitchen became the staging area, with a wonderful collection of foods.  There was even an interesting pie that featured blueberries, mild goat cheese and basil.  Yum!  I think everyone was enthusiastic about the event, and everyone in the group seems to appreciate good food.  As I’m writing this I have a belly full of strawberry shortcake with freshly baked biscuits in my tummy.  Jim is working on a biscuit version that doesn’t have shortening, which I encouraged.   

They haven’t been perfected yet, but they were still really good!  And as I write and think how to finish this week’s blog without a picture of a pie, I’m looking out at the beautiful spring flowers in the garden.  They’ll have to do for now.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Three weeks full of art excitement!

My life certainly has been full!  I’m afraid it has gotten in the way of blogging.  The good news is that I have three weeks chock full of art news to relate.  Two weekends ago we opened up our house for the Open Studios tour.  I hosted Talia Halliday as a guest artist and my two boys supported the operation as doormen and greeters.  Talia does beautiful work with recycled materials to create art books. 

She took over part of the living room and hallway, while I displayed my work in the dining area.  Anyone who wanted to see my studio came downstairs to see my latest loon piece at an early stage.  We had a few familiar faces come through, but there were a huge number of new faces among the eighty-six visitors on Saturday and fifty-six on Sunday.  I enjoyed showing them the space.  Generally new visitors are amazed at how much material I have stored downstairs.  I often use between fifty and one hundred different yarns in any given piece to get the intermediate tones I want for each element and the color gradients I use for the backgrounds.  I have boxes and boxes of raw materials I’ve purchased, inherited, traded, or recycled from one source or another.  Anyway, the show came off without a hitch.  People commented on my polite and well-dressed doormen.  On the slow times, Jacob and Talia even collaborated on a book, so the freshest art was always on display.

I currently have two elaborate pieces that I’m trying to bring together before my first summer art fairs.  The first will feature a loon on the water, which was in progress during the Open Studios Tour.  I have since finished the water and I’m well into the cattails.  I haven’t completely decided whether there will be one loon or two just yet.  Right now I’m leaning toward one and calling the piece ‘Where is She?’  I’ll have to see what feels right when I get farther into the first loon.  I’m also working on a large format piece featuring a trail through the woods.  It is similar to a commission I did last year that I really liked.  I hope to have it completed in time for the Des Moines show at the end of June, and I’d like to find it a home in Iowa!  

 Right now I’m working away on the large tree trunks, tree branches, and mountains of leaf clumps I need.  The leaf clumps I’ve been making out of the mountains of green yarn I dyed last month and blogged about.  I do have two and a half gallon bags of leaf clumps completed, but last time I remember I thought I had enough, but I seriously underestimated how clumps I needed.  The tree trunks I need are coming along nicely too.  I make these out of Grandpa’s old army blankets.  I cut up the blanket and wrap pieces (triangles, actually) around some used baling wire before stitching it all together.  Of course the blankets are wool, so I’ve been felting them by sending them through the washer and dryer.  Speaking of the washer, I’m on a pause right now because it isn’t spinning, leaving me with a load of clean but very wet clothes. 

The helpful fellow from Morrison’s Appliance should be here this morning to have a look at the beast for me.  Between the washer, the roof leaking again, and Jacob’s trips to the eye doctor after getting bashed with balls on two separate occasions (he’s fine!), my life has been pretty full—even hectic!  And just when I thought my art was on a good trajectory for my Des Moines show, I mentioned to an art friend (she owns the Hidden Closet) that I wasn’t doing any art shows until June.  She burst by bubble by pointing out that June is next month!  And only three weeks away!  A big flurry of art has to happen between now and then. 

Looking back over the last few weeks, there have been some great times and big rewards.  I’ve been up early to do Bollywood at nine most Saturdays, which cuts into Farmer’s Market time.  Last week I was up at seven and bounced downstairs, ready to go.  I persuaded my boys that we needed to go to the market and off we went.  The bad news was that it wasn’t officially opened at seven.  The good news is that they sold us strawberries and rhubarb anyway!  We initially bought two pounds (rhubarb) and two quarts (strawberries), but the berries were about a third gone (thanks to Tommie) before we got very far. 

We picked up two more quarts for shortcake and eating at home.  They didn’t last more than a day.  The rhubarb wasn’t enough for my big pie plate (lovingly made by Jan Arborgast), so Jim was forced to make a delightful strawberry-rhubarb pie .  Mmm, was that ever good!  Jim baked some biscuits for strawberry shortcake too (Jacob doesn’t like rhubarb-based pie), so everyone was happy.  Tommie then took over making biscuits, a new skill he learned in Home Ec class in middle school.  That’s the first useful skill he’s learned—I’m sorry, I can’t count making microwave brownies as a life skill!  The pie lasted until about Tuesday, and Sunday was Mother’s day, so of course we needed to fulfill the rhubarb-pie-on-Mother’s-Day tradition.  Jim got busy again, this time with three pounds of rhubarb (last Saturday’s trip to the Farmers Market).  This one was great too, but I think I prefer the one with strawberries mixed in.  It has a richer flavor, a little more color and some different textures.  But I’m not complaining!  I’ll take two pies in two weeks any time!  For Mother’s Day Tommie made some more fresh biscuits that we had with jam for breakfast (do you get the idea that I’ve been eating well lately?), Jacob made me a beautiful card, and Jim made me the pie.  Unfortunately, someone gave me a cold too, so I wasn’t at my top form.  Still, my loving family helped me through.  What more could I ask for?

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Beach Dreams

In my last blog posting I set out on my ‘North Carolina beaches’ daydream.  This week I continued down the same sandy trail to the beach.  I moved along more beach piece themes, including finishing the background weaving for my ‘Sally Sells Seashells’ reprise.  Over the winter someone gave me some sea stars, which I’ve never incorporated into a weaving before.  In the background I also included sand dollars and a wealth of shells, which creates a movement in the piece that I like.  I make sandy frames for my beach pieces, and I created one before the rains came this week.  Unfortunately, the high humidity and low temperatures have prevented me from completing the polyurethane seal on the frame.  I’m hoping I can get to that project later in the day, but I’ve got a lot going on!  

 It’s the Trashion-Refashion show at the Buskirk Chumley theater tonight.  There will be a Discardia pop-up store where I’ll show my latest Re-Shirts and new spring Sweater Petals.  I’m really looking forward to seeing the designs, which are a tightly kept secret before the actual show.  It’s quite the challenge to keep the designers from leaking images of their work on the web before the show, because everyone is excited about their contributions—but happily, they have. 

My life took me to some interesting venues last week.  I watched the boy’s first lacrosse practice last Sunday, which went well.  On Monday was the Spinner’s and Weaver’s Guild auction.  It’s such a funny group, and we haggle and negotiate over all the yarns.  Most of them create wearable pieces, so their yarn needs to be soft and cozy.  They know if there’s a hideous green, scratchy fiber I’ll probably want it—which is true!  I need a diversity of colors and textures, and it can be hard to find the perfect yarn for grasses and vegetation.  On Wednesday I did an interview with a fellow from WIUX.  He and I met at my History Center show and we talked about the art and life in general.  I cancelled a 4^th Street Festival meeting on Thursday night due to predicted weather that never really materialized, so I did have one quiet evening at home.  

 Friday, however, I went to the FiberFair in Greencastle with my friend Ruth Rives.  It’s our yearly adventure, which always seems to be horribly cold and often wet.  Because of the rain I wore my rubber boots, which led to two frozen feet before we had gotten too far.  One of the vendors was selling alpaca felted boot liners.  I bought a pair and, oh-my-gosh, they were amazing!  Ruth of course said she could have made me felted wool liners, but I needed them right then.  I picked up lots of green fleece and yarns, as well as some dried yellow and oranges.  I depleted my stocks considerably when I completed my pepper piece late last year.  The Fiber Fair is a good venue to re-stock and interact with the vendors I only see once a year over the past ten years or so.  All in all, it was another great week!  But…   no pie!  Shouldn’t the rhubarb be up by now? 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Channeling North Carolina

It has been a long and very busy winter, which means I’m starting to have thoughts of vacations to North Carolina beaches.  The weather did become delightful over the weekend, but whenever I’m stressed and need to get through a difficult patch I channel the beach.  I remember the surf, sand and seashells that Tommie and I find when we walk along the beach.  I like watching the birds as they run in and out with the surf—the whole atmosphere is very calming to me.  Those are the images that have been running around in my mind, and it has come out in my art.  The beach piece I’ve been working on is a variation on a piece I’ve made before called "Low Tide."  The seashells incorporated into the piece are ones we collected on the outer banks in North Carolina.  The driftwood is from the beach in the Tawas State Park in Michigan.  The sand dollars come from beaches in Florida, brought back by my friend Dawn.  Oh, and a few of the shells come from friends on their trips to beaches.  The whole piece brings back a lot of memories and warm feelings.  

I always have several projects moving forward.  I made sweater petals this week and I’m transitioning to Re-Shirts.  The sweater petals are a good project for busy work when I’m watching the boys and their activities.  The Re-shirts will soak up a big block of my time this week.  To get ready, I brought out Grandma’s sewing machine.  I’m also going to take my back-up machine to Klaiber’s—they did a nice job refurbishing my main machine, so if that fails I’ll have a backup.  My Garden Walk show is hanging at the History Center.  Today I was delighted to see a picture of one of my bicycle pieces in the Herald-Times.  It’s always exciting to open up the paper and see one of my pieces in color.

In addition to my mainstream art projects, I did some volunteer work for a project at my son’s school.  Binford has a “Recycling and More” group, and we have been trying to draw attention to the recycling bins that most of the students ignore.  I was inspired by a vision of my son Tommie when he first started playing Minecraft, his current game of choice.  He created a virtual house but kept losing track of where it was.  He built a giant yellow arrow pointing down on his house so he could always find it from a distance, which I thought was brilliant.  I took the concept and applied it to the situation at hand with the underused recycling bins.  I created five giant arrows built from cardboard from recovered from hh gregg (they don’t capitalize the letters, so I won’t for them).  I decorated them with plastic bottles and cans from people involved in the recycling project, attached with my trusty glue gun.  I hoisted them on square dowels I purchased from Bender Lumber in town.  They were really just eight foot long 1 by 2’s that they ripped in half for me.  I used bunjee cords to attach the whole thing to the bases I use for my card racks and set them up around Binford for the big Carnival event.  The school is going to store them for future events, so I feel good about their continued usefulness.   And while I didn’t get a pie this week, the boys did win a couple of cakes at the cakewalk event.  The angel food cake went into the freezer, while the caramel-pecan covered monkey bread went into the refrigerator for breakfast.  I’ve been enjoying pieces for breakfast, warmed in the toaster oven and served with an espresso. 

The rest of my week’s events were all odds and ends.  The taxes are filed, the last of the firewood kept us warm on a cool weekday evening, and I’m gearing up for another seashell piece this week as I work on Re-shirts.  The boys went to a birthday part on Saturday evening, so Jim and I got out to dinner at the Owlery.  That’s a really nice vegetarian/vegan restaurant on the square that we don’t get to enough.  I ordered the poutine, which took me back to skiing on a mountain and warming up and filling my belly at the chalet.  Yum!  Maybe I can hold off for another week with out the pie.  Maybe. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Spring comes to Bloomington!

Our first decent spring temperatures arrived this weekend, with temperatures in just peaking over seventy yesterday.  We have daffodils all over, a few hyacinth, and a smattering of color from scilla, chiondoxa, wild tulips and few other little treasures.  After a long winter, when the temperatures go up I know it’s time to get out and… dye yarns!  I had a whole bunch of skeins waiting to go and huge containers of RIT dyes on the shelf.  Not only do I get the colors I want, I feel good about the fact that they’re made in Indianapolis.  They’re non-toxic, such that they claim you may dye in your cooking pots.  That’s not something I would ever do, but it’s reassuring to me that the dyes aren’t nasty.  

Of course my color of choice right now is green.  I’m envisioning making a large piece for the summer art fair shows similar to a commission piece I did last year.  I just enjoyed its presence in my art studio.  The best part about the completed piece was lying on the ground and looking up into the tree canopy, which made me feel like it was summer.  I need a big batch of green boucle yarn as one of the half dozen or so yarns I use to crochet into the leaf clump shape.  I also need a lot of green yarns to create the green grasses and forest understory.  After a winter of weaving spring pieces I was getting a little low on crunchy greens.  I ended up dyeing skein after skein of greens and I’m delighted with how the whole project turned out! 

In other art news, my life has been too busy to launch on big weaving projects.  I hung my Walking Through Gardens exhibition at the History Center and distributed rack cards all over town to promote the show.  I’ve been helping to organize this year’s Bloomington Open Studios tour.  That will take place on April 27^th and 28^th this year.  I just learned that my primary greeter (Tommie) will be off at an Academic Superbowl event that day, so I might have to go to my ‘sixth man’ (Jacob).  The Trashion-Refashion show is coming up on Sunday, April 21^st, and I’ll have my Re-shirts for sale.  It’s at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater again, but this year I’ll be in the audience enjoying the show instead of creating new designs.  I did start experimenting with some spring sweater petals, which I want to display at the upcoming Artisan Showcase, a part of the Midwest Cultural Tourism Conference that takes place April 22 at the Bloomington Convention Center.   

When I looked at the muted earth tones colors I felt like they all belonged in the fall and winter seasons, not spring.  I pulled out some bright, cheery colors that came out of a project I did with a Boy Scout troop earlier in the year.  On a whim we tried overdyeing some wool sweaters.  It turns out that the results were perfect for spring sweater petals, and making more sweater petals made me happy this week.

On the home front, Jim and I went out to dinner at the Uptown on Friday and then on to the Bloomington Playwright’s Project.  The dinner was delightful and the new play, Ampersand, was wonderful.  It was funny and full of twists you didn’t expect.  The ending, which had some grim aspects, really was perfect and heartwarming in its own right.  The young actors were good, but the father stole the show.  On the way home we had to stop in to close down BluBoy with a decaf espresso and a shared caramel ganache brownie.  Mmmm, what a nice evening!  

 And in case you were wondering, a peach pie appeared this week!  I’m told that there is only one more pie filling fruit unit in the freezer (another peach pie).  I’m sure that’s a mistake.  If not, the rhubarb better kick it into high gear and start growing, because I’m not a patient person when it comes to pie!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

My Foray into Graphic Design

Monday is a big landmark for me.  I’m due to hang my ‘Garden Walk’ collection at the MonroeCounty History Center.  This represents a series of garden-themed pieces I’ve made over the past few months specifically for the show.  I have blogged about most of the pieces over the past few months, but Monday they will all be up for viewing at the venue (202 E. Sixth St.). 

My life took an interesting and productive turn when I mentioned the show debut to Colleen at Wonderlab. I dropped by to re-stock my cards in the gift shop, which is managed by Colleen.  She told me that visitors who see the cards often ask where they can see the art, and that she would love to be able to direct people to the actual pieces.  She asked if I had a rack card for the show—the kind of small promotional card you can pick up for free to help advertise a show.  I’ve never done one, but that only meant I had a new challenge!  They said they would happily distribute rack cards for the show, as did some of my other notecard distributors, so I was off to design a rack card. 

I spent a big chunk of my week, in between completing pieces for the show, coming up with a design I liked for my new and first-ever rack card.  My final design tells you as much about my friends as it does me, because I got a huge amount of help and input along the way.  When I came up with a prototype I showed it to Cappi Phillips, Dawn Adams, and Sarah Pierce and got some very useful advice to create the second version.  I belong to a Facebook group called Art Girls, and they were wonderful at giving me their opinions.  Sometimes you have friends and don’t know what their background is, and I learned that my friend Pat Hecker used to be a graphic designer.  She gave some great advice to help me finalize my design.  The rack card design is complete and off at the printers, and they’ll appear around town as soon as I receive them. 

As I’m writing this, I’m in the final stages of completing my last piece for the Garden Walk show.  I’ll snap a picture before I post the blog so you can see the lilies I’ve been working on.  I encountered a very unusual phenomenon as I was quietly working away in the art studio.  Usually I listen to WFIU but sometimes I like to work with the music off and listening to my own thoughts, and I swear that as I finished the lilies I could smell them!  It freaked me out a little bit.

With all my energies directed toward finishing my garden collection, there hasn’t been time to think about much else.  Time marches on, though, and there are two big events coming up at the end of the month.  The Trashion-Refashion show is always a big event.  Even though I’m not modeling any clothing this year I will have my Re-Shirts there for sale.  The Open Studios Tour was a big hit last year, so I’ll open my home again for the show at the end of April.  I’d like to have a bunch more Re-shirts for each of those two events, so Monday afternoon I’ll pull out my trusty sewing machine and get to making more.  That should be a fun change of pace for a few days.

On a final note—good news!  With only a little prompting, Jim recognized that it was time to bake me another pie.  I went off to a meeting Monday evening and I came home to the delightful aromas of a cherry-strawberry pie sitting on the oven.  The next day, even before I could get a picture, Jim gave Tommie a slice for breakfast.  Apparently Tommie didn’t want to take a piece because he knew it was ‘Mom’s’ pie, but Jim assured him it was OK.  Just as he lifted it out I came downstairs in the morning and they both looked a little worried.  In the end, I got my picture, a slice of delicious pie accompanied by an espresso, and a relieved and happy family!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Trip to Grandma’s

Last week was spring break for the boys and Jim, so the whole crew got out our winter clothes and headed seven hours north to see Grandma.  Along the way I created 32 green leaves that will go into my ‘Old Friends’ piece that features white lilies.  I know a lot of my friends question the wisdom of driving north for spring break, but we have such a wonderful relationship with Grandma.  We hung out, played ping-pong, ate well, and Jim and Tommie even braved the cold and wind to go on a fishing trip.  I’ll just report that the fish we ate all came from the freezer and Meijer’s.  While the trip was restful for everyone, I’m just not good at just sitting around.  I took my needle felting with me and also managed to finish all of the red petals for the tulip piece I’m envisioning for the Garden Walk exhibit.   All the pieces I’m working on are very spring-esque, including the now-finished tulip piece and the lily piece that’s still in progress.  

In Michigan we had lots of family time.  We even introduced Grandma to fondue, which she liked.   When Jim and Tommie went off fishing, Grandma, Jacob and I headed out to check out a stained glass supply store.  I did a lot of poking around to see if there were some interesting bits of glass that might be useful in my fiber pieces.  As I was looking, Jacob came up to me with a new craft he was interested in trying—now he’s making Kumihimo bracelets.   

He started out with dyed hemp cord and has since launched into bracelets featuring more bling-y material we picked up at Jo-Ann’s in Fort Wayne on our drive home.  He’s even hired me to attach the findings when he’s done, and so he’s off on his latest creative venture.   I suspect that if you come to our house for the Open Studio’s tour in late April he will have a display wall set up to vend his creations alongside my art work. 

Now that I’m back in my art studio I’ve been assembling the pieces I’ve made into completed works.  The first is Spring Tulips.  I love the colors in the piece—they’re just so bright and happy.  The piece is an off-the-wall bouquet and is very robust.  Now I’m gradually attaching the main veins to my lily leaves, and then attaching each leaf onto a major stem.   

I have been needle felting the white lily petals that will eventually be assembled into a lily flower.  All the while I’ve been moving mountains—of laundry!  The big piles down by the washer have all been moved through the system and onto hangers or into piles.  Now if I could just get someone to carry them upstairs! 

Finally, Indiana basketball has been a big thing.  They played an exciting game against Michigan to win the Big Ten Conference title (hooray!), and now they’ve won their first game in the NCAA tournament.  It’s all fun.  The flowers are just starting to appear (finally!), which means crocuses, snowdrops and the first daffodils are appearing in the yard and around town.  And since it’s spring, my thoughts are tuning to…  PIE!  Aren’t we due for another pie soon?  I see the bags labeled ‘cherry’ and ‘peach’ in the freezer.  Fingers crossed!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin