Attacked by flying pens and falling dirt.

The whirlwind of holiday activities lessened and the boys went back to school this week. That let me get right back into the art studio and weave like the wind! A big focus this week was my large format commissioned piece. I got out my weaving equivalent of the big shovels and heaped some of dirt and stones into the piece. Now you might imagine that weaving a five-foot wide by three-foot high piece while sitting on the ground would force me to hold up my arms up all day, and you’d be right. In a minor cosmic convergence, my Zumba instructors decided it was time to bring out some new moves that focused on arm strength. It feels like I just flew in from Chicago, and boy are my arms ever tired! I do see the results, though—I’m becoming the new Arnold Schwarzenegger of the Midwest. I just need a couple of rocket launchers and some determined liquid-metal androids to chase me around town. Instead I’ve got baling wire that I’m wrapping to create the carrot stems. I’m using a green wool yarn that I dyed the last time my dye pots were out, bringing back nice memories of summer activities. I still have to leaf them out, but everything seems to be coming together nicely.

In between weaving, wrapping and generally getting buffed up I worked in a few other projects and activities this week. I have a commission to make five round ornamental pieces. I’ve been literally poking away all week in my spare time to move them forward. I also took a little time for catching up this week, doing a little housework and traveling to Indianapolis for lunch with my friend Erin. We worked together in Mimi Zolan’s lab a few years back, and we were both pregnant with our first children together. We were reminiscing about maneuvering ourselves around in restaurants at a time when turning sideways didn’t help you get past obstacles. We had a good chuckle about that. I then met up with Chad, the artistic director at the Bloomington Playwright’s Project to talk about a commission they’d like me to do for them. I’m pretty excited about creating a signature piece for the BPP based on their logo, but the project has to wait until I’ve finished with the other commissions in progress. I have to create some evil flying pens before tax day in April. Somehow that seems fitting.

That covers the big news. I’ll close with a proud moment from the week. I’ve managed to lose fifteen pounds doing Zumba over the past few months. Some of my favorite pants are falling off me, and some of my exercise pants won’t stay up any more. I forced myself to go shopping this week to upgrade my image a little. The BloomZum owners wanted a ‘before’ and ‘after’ set of pictures to show how well the program worked for me. I’ll share the ‘after’ photo here. It has been a lot of fun, and I’ve made new friends along the way.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin