I was awake at 3:30 yesterday morning, unable to sleep as I
mentally went over my inventory for my upcoming ‘Looking at Water’ exhibition
at the Convention Center in October. I spent a big chunk of
my day locked in my art studio weaving water and creating cattails. The only thing that brought me back to
the computer to produce a long overdue blog post was the dire threat made by
Jim that I couldn’t have more than one pie per post. I enjoyed the first peach pie of the season two weeks ago,
so I knew I better start writing! Now
I'm getting way ahead of myself.
I’ll try to catch you up on what’s been happening.
My ants are finally done! I delivered the colony to Wonderlab this past Thursday. We’ll have a meeting this week to
discuss the display, which might involve making one more ant. Along the way, I feel like I learned a
lot about the anatomy of ants, what distinguishes the species and which
morphologies are shared.
I came to
love my ants, but I’m glad they’re out of the studio. At Wonderlab they’re talking about painting or stenciling
ants along the wall that leads to the exhibition, which sounds fun. If they do that, I really think the
last stenciled ant should be an intermediate between the stenciled ants and the
first three-dimensional creation.
That would make it look like the last ant was crawling out of the
wall. I think that would be interesting,
but it would mean making one more half-ant. I invite everyone to the opening reception on the first
Friday in November. There will be
a fun kids project to create ant parts by wet felting fleece into balls to
produce the body segments. These
will be connected with pipe cleaners.
I have just the most perfect brown noils from Sheep Street that I will
donate to the project. This is just
the ideal material to learn how to felt color-appropriate ant body parts. Come and see!
Of course Labor Day means the Fourth Street Festival. It was a very successful show from my
perspective, with no major incidents.
The weather wasn’t ideal when the show opened Saturday in steady rain,
but Sunday turned into an absolutely beautiful sunny day. The humidity was low with some clouds,
and over 33 thousand fair attendees came out for the two-day event. Happily/sadly I sold one of my water-themed
pieces I intended to show at my upcoming Convention center exhibition that I
described above. I think I’ll be
able to replace the piece and come up with a full complement of sixteen pieces
for the exhibition by the end of this month.
The ‘Looking at Water’ concept means that you’ll see any and
all forms of water, from a drop falling from a faucet to small ponds with
aquatic life and on to vast lakes.
So much of our lives revolves around water that I just had to think
about water and express it in my art.
I’ll hang the show in late September and the opening reception will
coincide with the first Friday’s gallery walk from 5-8 p.m. Please stop by and say hello at that
reception too!
My life is never so simple as to allow me to focus solely on
my own art. I’ve been dividing my
time to help with the Sounds of South group’s ginormous production of Phantom
of the Opera in late October and early November. I have always possessed a passion for the theater, having regularly
attended theatrical productions, opera and plays with my father. I fondly remember having season tickets
to the Stratford Festival performances in Stratford, Ontario. When Tommie auditioned into Sounds of
South it opened the door a crack for me to get involved.
Earlier this summer I made a set ofskirts for the performance, and last month I finished repurposing an evil
monkey on an ornate music box that is central to the performance. I made an ornate hat for the diva in
the performance, Carlotta, and it matches her extravagant gown and personality. I added a reticule to her outfit, which
is now also a new word in my vocabulary (thanks David Wade!). I was also charged with making the body
of Buquet that is hung from the rafters by the phantom. I’ve never made a dead body before. Heck, I’ve never made an alive body –
well, except for my sons!
My life was also filled with big personal events. Jim and the boys tested for their black
belts in Taekwondo on the 16th of August. His brother Tim was the ‘bad guy’ for self-defense and got
thrown around a bit, and Grandma came down to see the performance too. It was a very emotional test all
around. Jacob was praised for his
power and precision in his forms, Tommie for his flexibility and graceful high
kicks, and Jim for just making it through the whole process. We had a big reception at our house
after the party where it was nice to just sit and relax in peace and quiet with
food from the Owlery, cakes and cupcakes from Blu Boy, and a beautiful personalized
cake from Esperanza Hogan.
Oh, and
I did get a peach pie, a rare treat this summer with so few peaches, as a
reward for finished my ants. I
know as soon as I get this posted I’ll get another pie. Type, type, type! Start rolling the crust, Jim!
Until next week,
Martina Celerin
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