Spring season activities!

My spring has been packed with events and challenges.  These have thrown off my usual blogging schedule.  My weekends are now devoted to completing commissions.  I finished my most recent project, which is now happily hanging in its new home.  The commissioners came to my studio, but after reviewing what I had on the walls they decided they wanted a piece that better reflected their own life experiences.  They were drawn to pieces with pathways, fences, flowers and trees.  I created a sketch compatible with the warm honey oak tones they were seeking.  The colors are a bit of a departure from my recent strong contrast pieces.  I’ve been focusing on dark coffee tone tree trunks matched with crisp, bright green leaves.  My goal has been to capture the feel of spring walks in the forest after a rain where the trunks are still damp and the greens present a striking contrast.  This style was a new challenge for me.  I do love the idea of paths that lead off to new places, and the new design featured a path leading through a flower plot along a fence. 

 It’s a secret garden because from the other side of the fence you can’t see the beauty within.  The outsiders never have a clue what’s going on along the other side.  Overall, I’m delighted with how it turned out and the new owners seem pleased.  I’ll mark that project as a spring success. 

My weekdays have been consumed with costume creation for Beauty and the Beast.  Costuming is new, but in addition everything I attempt now is a big change of scale for me.  My wall pieces are small and intimate, but the costumes are grandiose and cartoon-like with solid, in-your-face colors.  I’m happy to report that I have several costumes completed, including the first of the ‘Beast’ outfits.  That piece features a cloak with a removable capelet.  It will be on the beast when he first enters the play.  The intent is to make him look larger-than-life and very much the king of the castle.  The capelet will then snap off and be replaced by a more demure hood for the scene where he frightens the wolves away from Belle in the woods.   

To make the cloak, I rebuilt the base from a coat that was picked up by Melinda Seader last year on a trip out east.  I’ve been making the character bigger than life using a lot of foam and wire to enhance the build of the actor.  The foam fill for the capelet is taken from a yoga mat that I picked up from the Materials for the Arts program.  I’ve also had a lot of fun (which means I’ve been intensely working on) Mrs. Potts.  I needed to make this a relatively light costume.  It’s basic size makes it inherently cumbersome and I didn’t want it to be exceedingly heavy.  The skeleton of the teapot is built from hula-hoops and parts of an old water-cooling system from World Wide Auto.  

 I fleshed that out with synthetic fleece from a comforter donated to Sounds of South that the students took apart.  I upholstered the surface with a sheet from a thrift shop, then I popped on some flowers that were cut out long ago by a parent of one of the students. 

There have been so many helpful and capable people contributing to the project that it’s hard to remember everyone, but every little bit makes a big difference to feeling like the whole thing is coming together.  Along the same lines, I’ve also been working on the Milkmaid, including creating her milk bucket props.  The number of hands that this and every piece is amazing.  The buckets were donated by Oliver Winery to the Recycle Center, collected and cut down to size.  Some of the SOS members spray-painted them brown with paint donated by Bloomington Paint and Wallpaper.  The slats on the outside were donated by multiple sources, including some from Sherwin Williams and some from Grandma’s collection, with the rest contributed by Bloomington Paint and Wallpaper via Nancy Riggert.  Brian Lewis cut them all to size for us.  Some SOS students glued them onto the painted pails and stained the surfaces.  There are a few more steps ahead of us, but I’m hoping to have the final prop completed during the next craft night.  I’m hoping to get bands in place around the slats and holes drilled into the wood to install handles. 

There is much news on the family front.  So much, in fact, that I’m having trouble remembering everything that happened in the past few weeks.  The school year is drawing to a close.  Jacob’s last hiphop class with Jay, who is graduating from IU and moving on to greener pastures, was Friday.  Jay left his JayWalkerz group with a final dance number and a lot of fabulous memories.  My family saw Into the Woods at IU and Pilobolus the week before, so we have had plenty of theatrical fine arts exposure.   

Our summer routine means trips to the farmer’s market on Saturday mornings.   

There have only been slim pie-friendly offerings, mostly very thin stalks of rhubarb.  Our freezer stores are almost gone, so Mother Nature better come through pretty soon!  Last, as a marker of how long it has been since I wrote a blog post, I have gotten TWO pies!  One was a fabulous apple-cranberry, and the other a very nice blueberry pie with the last of the summer berries.  

 I even found a delightful apricot-marzipan tart at the farmer’s market at the new pie vendor.  You might think that would keep me from wondering when the next pie would appear.  Hah!  I know there are still apples in the freezer and Mother’s day means rhubarb pie.  I expect to hear the whoosh of the gas lighting in the oven any time now...

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

From summer back to spring!

Last week I packed up my warm weather clothes and hopped on a plane.  I was commissioned to hold a fiber arts workshop in Tuscon, Arizona.  I left a foot of snow on the ground with a hopeful suitcase full of shorts and light clothes to match predicted highs in the mid eighties.  And Tuscon came through!  I had a fabulous time at the workshop, and the beautiful high desert setting didn’t disappoint either.  I’ve never been to a climate like that before—it’s so distinct from anyplace I’ve ever been.  I’ve seen cacti in New Mexico, but never stands of saguaros and dense fields of cacti.  There were even saguaros in the medians of the highways!  I was amazed!

 I found it fascinating that there were no trees or bushes taller than about fifteen feet.  Somehow that makes the sky look even bigger.   The days were wonderfully warm in the mid eighties every day.  Even better, the group of seven people in the workshop were just an enthusiastic bunch, bringing varied backgrounds and experiences. 

  Some had done extensive workshops in tapestry and were used to being very rigid and structured and exacting.  I tried to push them out of their comfort zone and into creating organic shapes with non-conventional materials.  They mixed different weights and types of yarns and it was interesting to watch them evolve and grow into their more relaxed and reflective creations.   

Others had never woven in their lives, so the idea of creating fabric from yarn was novel and exciting.  They were all ready to try new things and take on challenges.  That made it even more rewarding for me.  When I teach workshops I never begin with a preconceived notion of what the art should look like at the end.  I never hold paint by number workshops—I try to be very much open as to how the process develops.  

 Every hour or so I introduce a new technique, approach or combination that people may incorporate or explore as well.  Every couple of hours we have a stretching fest where I get all of the participants to stand up and move their bodies [I’m thinking of you, Darrelyn]!  

 The participants and I then walk around to see how others are interpreting the new techniques.  By the end of the workshop the people are creating their own applications and sharing what they developed with their cohorts.  They all seemed happy with what they accomplished.   

Overall, I’m delighted with how everything turned out. 

I have to thank my hosts for the five days stay, Lura and Jill.  Oh my gosh they were just so perfect!   

We had such a wonderful time.  I’m so incredibly grateful to them for hosting me.  They were everything from tour guides to wine stewards and baristas.  They came with two wonderful dogs, Teddy and Romie, who took me for walks through the neighborhood each evening.  I discovered amazing rock hounding, learned the names of mountains and plants, and was able to pepper them with questions about the flora and fauna.

Lura is a fabulous gardener and she always had a thoughtful answer to my questions about what I observed.  She is also a production weaver and creates baby blankets and chenille scarves and shawls.  Jill spins exceedingly fine yarn.  I think her favorite is silk and wool that she uses to create lacework.  They work with local cotton growers and are a resource for the processed cotton products in a rainbow of natural colors.  They are both retired nurses that saw the light and are now both fiber people, which gave us a lot to talk about.  Plus, they’re just a lot of fun—we laughed a lot. 

There is a funny story about how the workshop came to be.  About two years ago Wendy, one of the workshop participants, saw my work on Pinterest and contacted me about visiting Tuscon to do the workshop.  The cogs turned slowly but effectively.  Roxanne, the workshop coordinator, brought the whole trip together.  I’m very grateful to both of them for making this all work out.  I came home with a brain full of textures, colors and ideas.  I’m not exactly sure how that will translate into my own work but somehow I know it will.  I’ve already been hearing from my friends that I’ll be needle felting cacti and using toothpicks for spines.  Everyone has an idea for me.   

I came home to a wonderful family with open arms and lots of hugs.  Plus the house was clean—OMG!  It was terrific to see my family.  On Friday I launched back into SOS (Sounds of South) costumes and I just about completed the Le Fou jacket.  This is a costume I sketched on a piece of scrap paper as I watched the boys do Taekwondo before I left.  

 It would be done now if the rainy Friday didn’t prevent me from spray painting the buttons I needed.  Oh, and on the way home I did some sketching for still more costumes.  I need to accommodate the new additions to SOS that auditioned into the group while I was gone.  Things are moving along well on the costumes in progress over the past few weeks, such as completing Babette’s feather duster gloves.   

We riveted the napkin ring waistband closures and laced up the last of the village boy’s shirts.  And no blog would be complete without mentioning the pie status, especially on international pie day (3.14.15).  Sadly, the closest I came was cold, leftover pizza pie with my coffee this morning.  Ugh!  The fruit fairy really needs to visit soon. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin