Under the weather…

I was sick…which means I completed less than I had hoped this week. I even missed Zumba for two days. The good news is that even when you’re sick you can still needle felt. I spent a big chunk of time creating aggressive writing pens for my BPP commission piece, and I had a pretty good time doing it. I was again reminded that there is nothing to watch on daytime television. Oh, and if being sick wasn’t enough, it rained much of the week. I feel as if we’ve been soggy for months, even though it’s only been a couple of weeks. I slogged through my soggy days, though, and I diligently finished the hand for the piece and its big yellow letters. By late in the week I started assembling the piece. The exciting part was when I could see that it was really coming together. The finishing touches involved needle felted the logo onto the background in cursive text, followed by attaching the 3D yellow BPP letters I made last week. They were connected using wires that allow the letters to float over the piece. The finishing bit was attaching the aggressive pens and the writing hand. The final piece is very dimensional, so I decided to make a movie of the piece that captures the topography. A flat photograph is just too flat! When my health started to return I delivered it to the BPP to warm reviews. Check it out in its new home sometime!

The skies on Saturday morning broke clear and blue. I woke to sunshine and knew it was time to make our first trip to the Farmer’s market this year. I thought that if I could find rhubarb there would be a pie in my future. Sadly, though, I had to settle for a nice breakfast and a flat of vegetable seedlings that Tommie wanted to plant in his garden. To my surprise, Tommie volunteered to read one page from the book “James and the Giant Peach” as part of the library’s project to read the whole book over a span of four hours using hundreds of local readers. He did a great job and made his parents proud. I’m looking forward to reliving the experience when it’s broadcast (and rebroadcast on CATS).

In the afternoon we stopped in at the Sahara Mart wine tasting event. Jim drove, I sampled and he took tasting notes. If the wine had some special characteristic I let him take a tiny sip, but not too much. I ended up trying 24 different wines! It really only amounted to a glass or so, with a sadly large amount thrown away. Jim decided that I must have looked knowledgeable at the table of a French wine importer, because he pulled out a bottle of Chateau neuf du Pape from underneath the table for me to try. Yum! We ended up picking up a few extra bottles for the wine cellar. That made Jim happy. Two of them even came from Slovakia, which made me happy. One was a Muskat Moravsky 2007 Reserve, a white wine that I really liked. We’ll have it with a mild fish under a garlic topping sometime soon. The second was called Frankovska Modra (2003), which was an earthy red wine. I think it will be nice with spicy food that has some strong character. We vegetarians don’t get the benefits of having wine with grilled meats. I’m secretly hoping that some of my Czech or Slovak relatives will add a comment or two if they’ve tried the wines before and have an opinion. About the wines, that is. I’ll let everyone know when the wines move from the cellar to the table and I can try them with food.

That’s about it for the week. I’m remembering my father’s birthday today. His birthday flowers, the magnolias, are finished, but I saw the first poppies on First Street, smelled the first wisteria of the season, and tomorrow is our biennial spring egg hunt. It would be the Easter egg hunt, but candy goes on sale big time after Easter, so I buy it up in bulk and the boys stuff hundreds of recycled plastic eggs for the hunt. Now we just need one more day of blue sky and dry soil! Think good thoughts for us!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Ratatouille is the first to leave the sinking ship

I began this week reveling in the late stages of completing my major art pieces, "Summer Harvest" and "Ratatouille." My photographer, Tom Bertolacini, came over to take photographs for my portfolio. He sets up all his fancy lights and gets out his fancy camera and takes some really nice pictures. Even better, though, is the fact that I brought the pieces upstairs when he was done! That’s important because two major storms passed through Bloomington on Friday. The second one woke us up around midnight when the tornado sirens went off. We trundled two sleepy boys into the basement studio, with blankets and pillows, and they lay down there. Fortunately, we got to see the window well filled up with water and watch the water start to pour in. By that time the tornado sirens were off and Jim ran out to scoop water out of the well. Then he used the push broom to sweep water out of the veranda and direct it into Celerin Pond which drains into Drummond Creek. That kept a lot of water out of the house, but enough came in to the storage room that I had to jump into defense mode. I cleared the wall storage units and rolled up the carpets in my art studio to let everything dry out. Nothing was damaged, but it kept us up until 3:30. Saturday we did a little drainage remodeling around the veranda and resolved to remove the stone patio that channels the water toward the house. Ah, spring in Indiana—I love it! I just love some parts more than others. A post script here—I could do without the ant invasions too.

This week I began weaving away on my BPP (Bloomington Playwrights Project) commission piece. The structural challenge was incorporating one key aspect of their logo, which is the “turning pages” at the bottom right hand corner on all their promotional stuff. Chad asked if I could somehow incorporate that feature into the piece. I imagined a strategy that I thought might work, but this week I did the experiment. Basically I wove three weavings, and into each of the first wefts I incorporated some used baling wire wrapped with yarn which also continued up the right side of the weaving. I then wove the rest of the weaving. I was able to create a tiered set of weavings and stretched them out on the frame. I snipped away the support strings on the corners and molded the wires outward to create the turning pages. During my travels I’ve been poking at the BPP logo letters. I’ve enjoyed working on crisp edges that don’t have the organic feel that my felted vegetables had. While I like doing natural things, the freshness of doing something new is welcome. To make the letters I used an old wool army blanket that belonged to Jim’s father. I cut six layers out for each letter and stitched them together. I needle felted my tumeric-dyed fleece on top of the blanket letters. Because I want to the letters appear to be suspended in front of the weaving I also incorporated baling wire into the back of the letters to create the look of floating letters. Overall, I feel really good about the progress I made on the piece, and next week I’ll should launch on to the cursive text of their logo, ‘Where theatre is born’. The piece will feature a hand holding a pen, which I’ve already completed and think it looks really good.

I’m sure I did other things this week—I’m a little short on sleep, which doesn’t help my memory. I do remember lunch with my sweetie this Thursday at Malibu Grill. I had the farmed perch from Bell’s in Muncie Indiana, which were really tasty. I had no idea that there were perch in Indiana—I’ve only enjoyed the perch from the great lakes. Jim made kluski for dinner last night, and it was especially good. Even so, after all the wetness and woe I had this week you’d think I might deserve another pie! My friend Wendy got one…but I think that she made that one herself...

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

From Frog Toes to Fall Cooking

My week started off with frog toes. I needed eighteen fresh ones for my red-eyed tree frog piece. Fortunately, I had lots of art-in-the-community meetings this week, plus my usual afternoon slots watching the boys do Tae Kwon Do at Monroe County Martial Arts. I started off by cutting copper wire pieces create the toe structure, then I searched out just the right shade of peachy pink for the sticky orbs. A little wrapping here, a little poking there, and before I knew it the little toes emerged. They’re so cute! They even get cuter when they’re attached to the red-eyed tree frog. The whole project was made all the more satisfying because I had a support section at MCMA that watched the whole thing come together and encouraged me at every step of the process. Except for poking the frog eyes, anyway. The frog is done—Oh happy day! Soon it will be hopping into the fern background before snuggling down in protective packaging for the trip to Ohio.

I also hung a show at the Bellevue Gallery at the Bloomington Playwright’s Project (BPP) front foyer. This fall exhibit is called “Reduce, Reuse and Re-weave.” It's part of this year's Aware-fest: A Greener World and happily, I was the recipient of a BPP/BEAD (Bloomington Entertainment and Arts Districts) grant to create the show. The exhibit is actually spread out over two venues, the BPP and the downtown Bloomington Bagel Company (BBC). I spent my time at the BPP today and on October 1st I’ll set up the rest of the exhibit at the BBC. The opening night reception will be on Friday, October 1st from 5-8 pm—please come! I can’t promise a lot of excitement, but I will bring some nice bruschetta from Trader Joe’s and a fresh baguette from The Bakehouse to contribute to the finger food spread.

My new art endeavor for the week center around a dimensional forest piece that features a secluded walk. I started with some dark brown yarns that I’ve been using to wrap around a core of shoelaces, used packing cords and old lanyards to create the tree trunks and reclaimed copper wire to create the tree branches. For the trees in the background, I’ve been mixing in some lighter brown yarns together to create the illusion of depth. With plenty of meeting this week I had ample time multitask and crochet leaf clumps using my suite of freshly dyed green yarns from last week. The piece construction has been moving right along in hopes of having it ready to hang at the BBC location on October 1st. I finished the woven background a few weeks ago and the piece has hung on my art studio wall in a place where I could see it every day. Sometimes the composition takes a while to develop, and seeing the unfinished background stimulates my ideas about which direction to take the piece.

We had a noticeable weather change this week with summer temperatures in the mid nineties giving way to the first hints of cooler fall weather. That got me into a baking mood; today I whipped out fresh bread, peanut butter cookies, and a big batch of peppered salmon using loads of peppers from the morning’s Farmer’s Market adventure. A lot of that will go into the freezer. I even planned out a recipe for pumpkin and red pepper fall soup to make soon. And so the choice becomes cook, felt, or weave, which should I do first!?

Until next week…

Martina Celerin