My first blog line is starting to sound repetitive, but my art focus has been on the next commission piece in the queue. This refrain will be continued over the next couple of months as I work toward completing my next four commissions...
This
week I’ve been making more cute vegetables. The carrots are done and await installment onto the
weaving. The celery stalks are next,
made by needle felting the needed shapes from raw wool that I washed and carded this summer. I need both center
cut stalks and pieces closer to the white root section – the ones that are
shaped like a paddle. I now have
three of the five naked celery stalks for the piece made, and when I get all of the
forms made I will clothe them in celery-green-dyed wool. And then I’ll be on to tomato
completion. I resumed tomato poking
again to create the meaty part of the sliced fruit, which requires a slightly
different shade of red from the juicy part.
I’ll
finalize the slices by creating the seeds from wool that I dyed with the bark
of maple trees from Grandma’s house in Michigan. When that’s done I’ll have five of the ten vegetable piles
and I’ll be off on the trail of broccoli florets. This commission was promised for the middle of December and
I’m feeling good about meeting the deadline. I’m hoping to find just a little window of some warm weather
soon to do some more dyeing, though.
I have a couple of large, forest-based commissions pending that I’ll
need more of my green mohair boucle to make leaf clumps. Then I can just huddle down in my art
studio and try to weave and stay warm until winter passes and I don’t need to
imagine spring greens.
I
did have some measure of closure on a project for my boys and me. The final “Phantom” performance was
Saturday night. Sunday was tear
down morning. A whole bunch of
cast family member volunteers showed up to reduce the set to a nicely organized
pile of lumber for the next performance.
The costumes and materials have been packaged for future performances (go costume clean up crew!),
and some key prop pieces borrowed from Cardinal Stage Co made their way back home. All in all, it was an exuberant bunch
of musical theatre art supporters and I was impressed at how quickly it all went away.
I
did spend some time this week getting ready for the upcoming holiday
season. I assembled a bunch of
five packs of note cards, packaging them with ribbons for delivery to local art
galleries.
I’ll bring some along
to the upcoming Artisan Guild Show at the Convention Center where I’ll feature
my Re-Shirts and weavings.
Of course my ‘Looking at Water’ exhibit will still be up in the adjacent
Rogers room, so my framed pieces be well represented. I did also hold a pop-up exhibition at the Spring Hill
Suites downtown. Ashley organized
an evening show for a couple of local artists. She and the hotel staff did an outstanding job bringing it all
together. There were wonderful
champagne aperitifs and beautiful catering—the food was good but the crab cakes
were delicious.
It was really nice
to hang out and chat with both people who came specifically for the show and
some hotel-goers who stopped by to see the art.
Finally,
on the horizon is the Opening Reception for the Big-Headed ant exhibit atWonderlab. Come and join us this Friday (Nov 7, 2014) from 5 - 8:30 pm for art, ants and activities. Both
children and adults are welcome to create their own miniature Big-Headed ants by
felting balls of merino noils (thanks, Sheep Street!) for the head and abdomen
and using brown pipe cleaner for the appendages.
Erin from Wonderlab and I made the prototype, and we had a
lot of fun doing it. I’ll be
there, hanging around in case anyone wants to talk about ants. If not, I’ll be poking at
vegetables. I’ll bring all my
little veggie piles for people to see.
And speaking of cranberries, Jim made me another cranberry apple
pie! This time he used a whole bag
of fresh cranberries. It had a
delightful tart flavor and I’m looking forward to a week of espresso and pie
breakfasts. That, and some leftover
Halloween candy should keep me zinging and creating more art!
Until
next week,
Martina
Celerin
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