The cool May weather has kept me inside most of the
time. Still, I’ve been having such
a great time working on my ants. I
borrowed a giant book about ants from Mike Hogan (thanks Mike!) and I spent
most of Mother’s Day sitting on the comfy sofa, examining the fine structural
details of big-headed ants. It is
important to me to understand how an organism works to begin to understand
which features are most relevant and must be included in the sculpture. After my session with the book I
started working on the major worker ant.
I began needle felting the body, adding lobes and structure, cutting
away and molding surfaces that aren’t just right, and honing in on the body I
want. I’m working from 2D images
to create a 3D structure, so sometimes it's a struggle to wrap my head around
how to synthesize the 3D image from the flat picture. The next phase is to attach the arms and antennae. I made the anterior limbs, but the
second and third pairs were just too big.
Instead of trying to fix those, I just started over on those
features. The good news is that
the large legs I made will be “just right” for the larger supermajor caste that is next on
my art agenda. I still need to
create the all the facial features too, but I feel really good about my
progress. If I have any concern,
it’s that the number of images available for the supermajor and queen big-headed
ant are limited. I also borrowed
the genus resource book from the IU library—I hope that’s enough. E.O. Wilson, I need you!
I have two other big commissions in the background. One is on hold as I wait for fabric
swatches to arrive to personalize the piece. But I’m enjoying the wait - I like sitting next to the piece in the art studio and having
it keep me company. As I work, I
get to glance up at the path trailing off into the distance. Sometimes it’s really good to just let
a piece sit and ferment for a while before launching into it again with renewed
enthusiasm.
My other project is a
large format commission of fall aspen grove. I spent much of this week in the studio wrapping aspen tree
trunks appropriate for the foreground, background and middle distances. There is a size and tint gradient for
the trunks as they recede into the distance that I try to capture in my tree
pieces - that takes special care.
As I got deeper into the canopy construction, I realized that I probably
won’t have enough of my hand dyed mohair boucle. That means the dye pots will come out in the next few
weeks.
On the bright side, I did
find some perfect yarn at the event when the Monroe County Civic Theater
cleared out two of their storage lockers to downsize their years of collected
props and raw materials. Thanks
MCCT! I had fun sifting through
your treasures!!
On the family front, we’ve been having delightful family
dinners on the newly cleaned-up veranda, even when it was raining. I did get the traditional rhubarb pie
for Mother’s day last Sunday.
This
year it was mostly rhubarb with a few strawberries mixed in. The crust (and pie) was unusually good
this year! Should I hope for
another while rhubarb season is still here? Hmmm.
Until next week,
Martina Celerin
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