Yes, the waters in my art studio have long since receded. The combination of busy summer art fairs and
travel took me out of the blog-writing routine, but I’m going to try my best to
get back into a rhythm that lets me write.
I’m also at a point where I’m excited about creating a whole new body of
work that I’ll write about here. First,
let’s do a little catching up to set the stage.
Saturday night was the last performance of Sounds of South’s
Guys and Dolls. I did the costumes and
props for the show, all while enjoying the efforts of the kids who put together
an outstanding set of performances. I
like creating more whimsical costumes, which I got to do in Hello Dolly,
Pippin, and Beauty and the Beast, but I pushed myself into a completely
different approach for this one. I
decided to do the opening scene, called Runyonland, all in sepia tones to
capture a historical feel. It gave a
warm aura to the movement of background actors who set the tone for the play. I did the male leads in plaids and the
females in polka dots and bright colors.
My most recent art directions have developed around
transitions in my life and in the world, especially with regard to places and
cultures. My family emigrated from Czechoslovakia
in 1968, which brought me to Ontario. Science
brought me to Indiana and the United States, but art and my family have rooted
me here.
Some trips are such a
part of my being that I can’t imagine not doing it, which makes me think about
monarchs and warblers traveling thousands of miles and crossing the
international boundaries without noticing or caring. And of course the human contrast is the
single life-changing migrations, such as my family coming here from Europe, or
people from South America trying to migrate north to seek asylum. Each individual has to make a profoundly
life-changing decision to commit to uprooting and attempt to re-establish in a
completely different environment.
They each bring their own histories, traditions and experiences to their new home.
They each bring their own histories, traditions and experiences to their new home.
I got to thinking about the shorter trips to various places life takes me, such as my trips to art fairs in different states, or just traveling to Indianapolis for a day to explore galleries and restaurants. Our extreme mobility lets us move hundreds of miles to a place where we don’t know anyone, confident in our security and ability to discover new people and events. That’s more of a whimsical migration, but we bring our interests and experiences and temporarily plant ourselves in a new place just for fun. I’m creating work that speaks to each of those ideas about migration, movement, and the transitions that occur along the way.
Over the past summer I was thinking about the barriers to
the life changing single events that exist for humans but not birds or insects.
I created a piece called border patrol as I merged the two worlds in my
mind. More recently, having just
returned from a day trip to Indianapolis with Dawn Adams, I realized that those
shorter, whimsical migrations really make a huge difference in one’s
disposition and outlook on life. A piece
that I was working on as individual components suddenly came together as a
cohesive composition.
I’m going to
create a piece called Tree Concert Trio.
It touches on the amazing singing that the Sounds of South students have
been doing, and I think that somewhere the polka dotted costumes started
appearing in the markings for my whimsical bird singers that will populate the
piece. I’m imagining them singing
together on purple branches with green leaves.
It’s a happy, feel good piece about my life.
I have also had some pretty big changes in our family
life. We dropped Tommie off at Oberlin
College, or perhaps better said he packed the van, drove us all there, and
assumed a new life full of study, Rugby and Aikido in his spare time. That means the house is a little quieter as
we tend to the last bird in the nest. We
did visit him a few weeks ago, and he led me to a big haul of black walnuts on
the ground that I scooped up for dyeing.
When I got home, I husked them, broke the husks into one inch pieces and
filled my dye pot with them and water to simmer on the veranda. I didn’t know how the smell would be.
After an hour boil and overnight steep I
pulled out the husks and added a pound of washed, white fleece. After another boil and steep I pulled out an absolutely
scrumptious warm brown fleece, more beautiful than I could have imagined. I moved on to overdyeing some green, red and
teal cottons and wools to great effect, and I’m hoping to do a couple more
rounds of dying. Jim always said you
have to embrace the spectrum of browns if you want to be a true Midwesterner! I’m getting closer.
I hope you’re not surprised to hear that I’ve had a few pies
since I last wrote. In prime raspberry
season, we brought home two pints from Mark at the farmer’s market each week
and I had a fresh pie for five straight weeks.
Jim was working on perfecting his tapioca filling technique, and I tried
to tell him this was just too many pies for me.
I waited until he was off at work, of course, so he didn’t really hear
me....
We even had a raspberry pie from frozen
farmer’s market berries that we got to share with our family members Dave and Martha
from Mississippi when they were here for Guys and Dolls last Saturday. Sadly, the raspberries are now out of season
after the frosts, and I’m not much of an apple pie person. Like in my art career, I guess I just have to
wonder what’s coming next!
Until next week, if the creek don’t rise,
--> Martina Celerin
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