Each of my art seasons has a very different feel to it. May is a transition time, when I plan
and prepare for my summer art travel season. I love working outside on the veranda on warm days, skirting
fleece and pulling apart the clumps.
The spring weather is glorious; my art studio still has the cold chill
of winter. My art making
activities are devoted to commissions, preparing for summer fairs, and thinking
about how I’m going to pull together an October exhibit I agreed to do at the
Convention Center.
Right now I have four major projects that I’m trying hard to
move along. First, I was
commissioned by Wonderlab to make a suite of bigheaded ants. They’re installing a major new exhibit
in November that features a colony of the striking creatures. The ants fall into one of three castes,
and I’ll make three of the minor workers, a major worker, a supermajor ant as
well as a queen. The ants are only
a few millimeters long, but I’ll create ants to scale that range from six to
eighteen inches. This is a fun
project, which means it’s moving along nicely.
I have also made great progress on my large format
commissioned piece. This features
a stone path through trees in the foreground and background, and I have now
completed and installed all the tree branches and trunks. I’ve made a lot of progress on the
stones for the path. I make these
by needle felting wool on to a chunk of Grandpa’s old army blanket that I cut
into pieces. I laid out in the
flagstones in a satisfying pattern and needle felted them onto the path, which
makes a huge effect on the weaving.
Next I’ll start creating the flowers and explode colors all around the
meadow. I’m hoping the person who
commissioned me will send me some of their wedding chuppah to incorporate into
the flowers. It’s a rich purple
and will both look great and make the piece more personal.
My other projects will come together as I can find
time. I’m still moving all of my
washed fleece through the tedious process of preparing it for weavings. I’ve gone through three more bags since
I last wrote but I have seven more to go.
Still, I feel like I’m seeing light at the end of the tunnel.
The latest patch of dry, warm weather
helps pull me out of my studio and onto the veranda to work. I’m also starting a new commission
piece that will feature autumn aspens in a large format. I put in an order for a custom frame
with Tom Bertolacini, my frame maker.
I’ll start moving into the details of that piece as my current projects
wind down. As I mentioned above, I
agreed to do an exhibition at the Convention Center built around the concept of
looking at water. I felt really
good about my exhibit at City Hall and Meadowood that I called ‘Portraits of
Trees’. Launching on a theme and
exploring related ideas led me to pieces I would not otherwise have considered
and created, some of which are special to me now. Water is such an integral part of my life that I thought I
would try to create pieces based on the beaches, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls
that help me relax and rejuvenate.
I still remember conversations with my father about the two ‘elements’
(water and fire) that are so basic and meditative that I could stare at them
for hours. I’ll try to visit some
of those places for the October exhibition.
I’ll close with just a couple of notes from my non-art
world. Tommie and I spent a Saturday cleaning and spiffing up the veranda and now we've been enjoying meals out there - including bread (made by Tommie) and Canadian cheddar-broccoli soup - yum!
Jim and I made it to our
first farmer’s market Saturday.
Tommie was off at his Academic Superbowl event (his group placed third
of fifteen teams in his event—hooray)!
Jacob wanted to sleep in, so we left him home. We got coffee and hot chocolate to help keep us warm on a
cold morning (thanks Marina at Le Petit Café!) as we bought strawberries,
asparagus, honey, herbs in pots and a few other necessities. Oh, and Jim made a delightful apple pie
from the transparent apples at Grandma’s house, harvested last summer.
I’m hoping that Sunday, which is
Mother’s day, will bring the traditional rhubarb pie. I think that as long as I can get Jim back to the farmer’s
market to ‘discover’ some rhubarb things will turn out well.
Until next week,
Martina Celerin
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