Aspens, ants, and evil monkeys!

Where did this month go?  I’ve never taken a three-week hiatus between blogs, but I know I was focused on making art!  I buckled down and have been working furiously on finishing three ongoing projects that need resolution.  One of them is a large-format commission piece that features aspens in the autumn showing golden leaf clumps in the canopy.  The understory is a nice olive-y green color with a few fallen aspen leaves, while the canopy is solid golden.  When I work with aspens in art pieces I remember being mesmerized by them during my trip to Colorado after graduate school. 

My father took me there in October 1995, and the images are still vivid in my memory.  To make the tree trunks I pulled out my box full of shoelaces and old macramé cord.  I wrapped them with a yarn that has a lot in common with a friendly shelter dog.  The yarn was destined to become upholstery fabric, but it ended up unwanted and tossed outside with the trash.  A friend of mine saw it, rescued it and gave it to me.  It gives me extra pleasure to know the history of my materials, which gives the combined piece a richer character. 

The crocheted yellow clumps were made using yarn I dyed last month, combined with an assortment of materials drawn from my yellow remnant box.  I feel like the piece is finally coming together.

As I work on projects, I feel like all of my deadlines are falling around October 1st.  Another ongoing project I have described before involve a series of bigheaded ants for permanent exhibition at Wonderlab.  I have the colony ants completed, but the queen is the final character I need for closure.  She’s coming along nicely!  Her legs are all made out of predominantly reclaimed materials - reclaimed baling wire, wrapped with a partially used skein of red-brown yarn from my collection.   

The antennae are made from Jim’s old guitar strings.  I like the deeper ‘E’ and ‘A’ strings the best because they are the thickest diameter wire.  Maybe I need to encourage him to play his guitar more.  I’m definitely running out of material—the queen needs her antennae!

The third major project that I have taken on involves the Sounds of South, the choral group at Bloomington Highschool South that puts on musical performances.  This year they’re producing Phantom of the Opera.  Tommie is part of the group, and I now see how enormous an undertaking these performances are!  A huge amount of preparation, construction, painting and groundwork go into the professional product they produce.  One of my tasks is to convert a happy, smiling Gundt monkey sitting on a black box into an evil little cymbal-playing monkey on an ornate music box.   

Somehow I managed to volunteer to transform the little guy into his role.  I have a ways to go, but I have removed the stuffing from his face and replaced it with wool.  I needle felted more wool over the facial structure to sculpt a look more consistent with the production monkey.  I still have to add the skin, i.e., some maple tree bark-dyed fleece to the monkey’s face and replace the stringy fur with some fake fur.  My friend Cappi Phillips generously offered to donate material that should work out perfectly—thanks Cappi!  I also dug out my gold paint and fancy trim to transform the music box into something more ornate.  This should come together shortly.

Last, I want to mention the wonderful, cool weather of late July and early August.  That allowed many enjoyable dinners outside on the veranda, grilled and otherwise.   

I even had a cherry pie that Jim and Tommie baked while I was apparently too busy to notice!  The pie was in the oven while I was downstairs in the art studio just before dinner.  They slipped it out and onto the veranda without me knowing or smelling anything!  It was a wonderful surprise, although as I think about it, one pie in three weeks seems a bit low.  I’m sure something will turn up soon.  I do have a big project, though, which will intercede into my art world.  This week I need to put away my art stuff and don my French maid’s outfit to transform the house into a presentable place for a reception.  Then I’ll smile and pretend the house always look like that!  Along the way, many bags of things will go to the recycle center and much Windex will be consumed.  It’s all because the three boys will test for their black belt in Taekwondo on Saturday the 16^th.  Jim’s brother Tim, his wife Bobi, and Jim’s mother will all visit for the test.  Afterward we’re having a reception at 4pm in our back yard, catered by the Owlery and BluBoy from downtown – come if you’re in town!  I won’t promise a pie, but there will be lots to eat and drink!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

May showers bring rhubarb pie for Mother’s Day

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 

… And the goose is getting fat!

Christmas is approaching, and that means family traditions are in full swing. St. Nicholas has already visited and filled stockings, Jezisek is on track, Santa is approaching, and the Cookie Fairies have been working feverishly to satisfy family and friends. The Cookie Patrol team members are keen to start deliveries on Monday. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The holiday fury really begins after Jim’s birthday on the 11^th. The family makes a candy house, which is really a gingerbread house v2.0. Our neighbor Emily persuaded us that gingerbread is over-rated—it’s too stale to eat by the time the holidays are over. Now we both make a cardboard house and cover it with royal icing and transform it into a magical candy house. It’s a little less than romantic on the inside but looks colorful and cool on the outside. We gather all the decadent delectables we can find, including leftover Halloween candy and yellow dye #5-free candy from Bloomingfoods, and put everything in wooden bowls. Each family member picks a side of the house, where the two prime locations include both a side and a roof. The real trick as the project coordinator is to minimize munching on the construction materials—I guess we’re a little like the Fraggles eating the Doozer constructions. After Christmas we rip off whatever hasn’t frozen into the icing over a window of a few days.

Yesterday was supposed to be blog day, but it turned into cookie baking day. The annual cookie fest is Tommie’s favorite part of the holidays, since he’s a big baking fan. Yesterday we made five different kinds of cookies: Zebra cookies, even better than the Scholar’s Inn (and smaller); Vanilkove rohliky (you probably know them as Russian tea cakes, but we Czechs don’t); a thin sandwich cookie with cherry plum filling and rum and almond icing (they’re delicious!); chocolate sugar cookies that we iced and decorated; and my traditional favorite, medvedovy tlapky (bear paws). We mixed and rolled and baked and iced and decorated like crazy all day long. I also made marzipan from scratch and marinated some fruit to put into the Stollen we’ll bake today, plus we’re planning to make some date pinwheels and thumbprint cookies today. Eleven tins are filled and placed out of reach in the pantry.

It’s been a good art week too! Most importantly, I finished my Autumn Aspens commission piece. It has more variation in depth and I’m pleased with how it has turned out. I spent an afternoon with in the Creek-Love Classroom, aka the multiage schoolroom that is the home to my second grader Jacob. This week we worked on a wet felting project using Merino noils. The coveted fibers from combing are the long fibers, or top, and the shorter fibers are called noils. They’re not useful for needle felting, but it turns out they’re great for wet felting. I got these from my friends Nancy and Pat at Sheep Street in Morgantown, where I’ll return later today for more goodies. The kids have been making felt balls that we’re going to use to embellish gourds in a project we’ll do when the weather warms up a little. The kids love to do projects like this, and they enjoy teaching their friends how to do it. It’s cool to them because it’s new, even though a couple of them are from sheep-raising families, and they’ve seen me working on felted ornaments in class. Even some of the parents in the classroom wanted to make one.

But now I have to run! There are presents to wrap, cookies to bake, plans to make and kids to keep half an eye on. If you have kids you know why this season is so full of energy and special. I hope you all have a terrific holiday season!

Until next week…

Happy Halloween, Trees and Treats!

As anyone who lives in southern Indiana knows, this is a beautiful time of year. The reds, yellows, and oranges compete for our attention with the holdover greens of summer and the coming browns of winter. As every artist knows, no matter what the medium, you really have to become one with the part you’re playing to make it real. Since I’m working on an Autumn Aspens piece, among other fall projects, I decided that I had to become an autumn goddess, or perhaps a lesser wood nymph or sprite. You just don’t know until you get out your box of felt, which I did. I solicited the aid of my family to cut out leaves of every shape and color. They helped, but I ended up doing most of the cutting. Out came my old brown oversized mock turtleneck, two glue guns, and enthusiastic gluers. The felt leaves ranged from plums through reds and oranges to some yellows and even a few tasteful browns. I couldn’t have done a better job if I’d rolled in some Elmer’s glue and then rolled in the backyard carpet of leaves. For my crown I got out my straw sun hat and glued on the branches my son collected from the backyard. A few leaves went on the hat too, plus the acorns that Tommie decided should be on there too. I let the glue set, pulled on some old brown pants, and voila! I’m a formidable tree creature from the forest!

Tonight is Halloween, and I’m really looking forward to the festivities. My boys, at ages 7 and 9, are at the prime trick-or-treating ages. I have one red ninja and one fearsome phantom with a featureless face. Don’t be frightened if they come to your house! They’re polite, and they’re good at heart. I’m sending them out with the HoA (husband of artist) to keep them on the sidewalk and away from the curmudgeon’s house. Now he can be scary. I’ll be home in my leafy costume handing out the treeeets. Sorry! I couldn’t resist.

On other fronts, I’ve been diligently working in the art studio to finish my ‘Autumn Aspens’ commission. I had brought out all the grays, browns and purple yarns to create the background gradient. There are hints of green and yellow throughout to give the piece depth and continuity with the foreground trees, but the darker colors create the sense of the forest mystery under the bright yellow canopy. I then topped the weaving with some dense yellow foliage, mostly because I couldn’t resist getting out my bright yellows for some color at the top. I stretched out the piece in an oak frame that I stained to have a hint of yellow. I stitched the piece onto the frame using reeled silk, which I love to work with because it just kind of glides along your fingers when you work with it. It glides along your toes, too, if you don’t have enough hands for the job. The next step is to start embroidering the piece with all my different yellow yarns. My art studio will be glowing this week, and so will I. Plus, there should be enough leftover Halloween candy to keep everyone in the family buzzing all week long.

Until next week…

How artists recover from illnesses.

I’ve had a miserable week fighting pneumonia. My allies were friends, antibiotics and breathing treatments, and slowly I’m winning the battle. My friend Cappi Phillips brought me homemade macaroni and cheese, made with whole-wheat noodles with flax in them—what terrific comfort food! Thanks Cappi! Today I left the house for the first time in a week and I even had a salad with my family at Buccetto’s. Look out world, I’m on the mend.

To re-engage myself in the art world, and use weaving as part of my recovery, I decided to break out my yellow yarns. Yellow is such a happy color, and I decided to start a commission piece to make a variation on my ‘Autumn Aspens’ theme. I first pulled out my big box of cord, strings and shoelaces to form the core of the tree trunks. Then I got out my variegated taupe yarns. You probably know that ‘taupe’ started out to mean the average color of a French mole—until the artists got their hands on the word. I started with my beige and brown taupes (take that, you linguists!) and started wrapping the aspen tree trunks. My strategy was to create the foreground variegations with light to medium color yarns first. Then I moved on to medium to dark yarns and finally the darkest yarns. The goal was to create a sense of depth based partly on the color of the tree trunks, with the darkest shades in the back.

Then came the big moment in my recovery—I pulled out my big box of yellow yarns, which was like opening up a box of sunshine! If you live in central Indiana you know it’s been an awful week weather-wise, with cold, overcast rainy skies dominating the weather (and lots of people have been sick). But my yellows brought a smile to my face—how can you not be happy looking into a sea of yellow! Right about then was when I had my flashback to the genesis of the first ‘Autumn Aspens piece—a trip with my father one October many years ago. I had just defended my Ph.D. thesis at the University of Western Ontario, and to celebrate we traveled to Utah and Colorado for a vacation. I was stunned by the endless yellows of fall in the American West, with all the subtle differences in color. Yellow is just too flat a word to use to describe the tints and shades of yellows, with hints of oranges and greens, all spread out over miles of open landscapes. It was just amazing!

Then I landed back in Bloomington Indiana, thinking how I have to get my family out there some autumn. With kids in school and everyone fighting to stay healthy that’s going to be a tall order, but someday we’ll make it. I hope that where ever you are in the world when you read this that you’re healthy and happy. But if you’re struggling with something, my advice is to bring out the yellows. It worked for me!


Until next week…