Butterflies in my art studio!

I just never know when ideas for compositions are going to come to me.  My last inspiration grew out of a wonderful conversation about monarch butterflies with one of the Sounds of South parents.  It turns out she’s a biology teacher interested in monarch migrations.  She raises monarchs and commented on my In Transit piece currently hanging at the BPP that features monarchs.  It turns out that Bloomington is on a flight path on their migration to Mexico, and we both wanted to see the monarchs in their overwintering grounds.  I played out the conversation several times in my head, which got me thinking about how much effort we humans invest in our travels.  

We depend on technologies, knowledge from past travels and histories passed down, and we expect our creature comforts along the way.  We have many modes of ground transportation, but butterflies just float above everything we do on a predetermined flight every year without external help or directions. 

I decided to celebrate the migration of the monarchs by creating a weaving - because that’s what I do.  I finished weaving the background canvas and I began to incorporate all of those little markers of human travel into the background.  I included a compass, motel keys, aviator sunglasses, watches, suitcases, luggage locks and of course a little travel cash.  I needed some travel direction, so I decoupaged pieces of maps of the states over which the monarchs fly on their flight path onto used cut up CDs.  I wove those directly into the weaving.  I’m currently creating the six butterflies that will be in the foreground but flying over the human travel necessities.  I’m hoping this will all come together in the next couple of days.  I’ll post a finished image on Facebook. 

If you know anything about me, you know that I love pies.  My wonderful husband is the official pie chef laureate in our house, which works out well.  We’re in a tough season for pie bakers as we transition from ‘no fresh fruit’ winter to a few months of great bounty.  The stepping stone pie is the traditional strawberry rhubarb pie, which marries the tart rhubarb base with the sweet and flavorful strawberries.  That’s the traditional Mother’s Day pie and since Mother’s Day is Sunday, I’m very hopeful this will appear after a long, pie-free week.  After that we’ll be close to the first blueberries, raspberries and tart cherries—I can’t wait!

Of course thinking about anything usually translates into a weaving, so I decided I needed to create a piece called Pie Tools.  Of course our house is well equipped with these objects.  A piece like Pie Tools needs some fresh fruit, so I’ve felting the little pops of color in the form of cherries, blueberries, raspberries and apples that I’m so looking forward to finding in pies this summer.  

In the meantime Jim has been scavenging the best available fruit from the grocery store and surprised me with a blueberry lemon pie last week.  It was wonderful!  The crust was baked to a golden-ey perfection.  The tartness of the lemon juice and zest with the blueberries was just delightful.  Of course it’s gone.  Soooo sad.  Time for Mother’s Day!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin