One last holiday show for the year!

I have settled back in at home from the Déjà vu show in Columbus Indiana yesterday.  My drive out to Columbus through Brown County was beautiful.  I drove through the sunrise and into the pretty reds that were just coming into the sky.  A beautiful frost covering all the surfaces and brought a whiteness and crispness to the morning.  With very few cars on the road the atmosphere was peaceful and beautiful.  When I got to look around the show, I was incredibly impressed with the quality of the art on display this year.  Marilyn Brackney is just doing a fabulous job developing this into a quality show.  I found an appreciative audience and my sweater petals were a big hit.  It was also nice to be next to Cappi Phillips.  We got to do some catching up and chitty-chattying. 

 In quiet moments I worked on peppers for my latest commission piece.  I managed to finish one for the day.  Everyone at the show seemed to be looking for my roadies to be helping me, which they have every year I’ve done the show.  This year, though, I gave them a pass to do their Saturday activities while I handled the show.  It’s a lot of work, but the volunteers at the show were terrific and helped me move some of my materials in and out of the Commons.  I made it home around six-thirty to a roaring fire and a flatbread dinner with a bottle of wine.  That made the whole day worthwhile.

 

This week I shipped off my last commission piece, and the next day I received a call that the piece had arrived to an appreciative new home.  I’ll post a picture so you can see the final form—I’m delighted with how it turned out.  That freed up some of my work time to work on the next commission piece, based on ‘When Life Gives You Lemons’.  I managed to complete the background for the piece during the week. 

 Things are moving along as I completed my scarf-making efforts and I’m now gearing up to make some more Re-shirts for the upcoming UU (Unitarian Universalists) Holiday Art Fair and Bazaar. 

On the home front, when it didn’t seem as if I was going to get another pie, I decided to bake something for myself.  I came across a recipe for an apple-cranberry cobbler in one of the newspaper inserts last Sunday and decided to try it.  It came out really well, and the whole family loved it!  I did sneak in a few healthy things, such as some whole wheat flour, brown flax seed and raw wheat germ, but shhhh!  Of course I also cut the butter in half.  There’s still one small piece left for my breakfast tomorrow (with espresso and the newspaper), but it disappeared pretty quickly for desserts and into Tommie’s lunches.

My week ahead does include making some more Re-shirts, as mentioned above, so I pulled out the big sewing machine from Grandma.   At the last two art fairs I’ve worn a Re-shirt, and several people have asked if I would have them for the UU show.  I have converted the dining room into a sewing room, with all sorts of collected fabrics in stacks along the wall.  I’ve collected some really interesting fabric and used clothing that I’m looking forward to matching in the shirts.  I’ve also been thinking through how I’m going to make a piece that I’ve been imagining.  Anyway, the name of the new piece will be ‘Food for Thought’, and I’m imagining a ladle that will be spooning out letters falling into the soup.  A lot of my ideas start out this way, as half-baked creations whose composition starts to gel.  I’m looking forward to seeing how the piece evolves.  When I have something to show, you’ll be the first to see it!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Thanksgiving 2011

Before I tell you about my travels and discoveries from this past week, I wanted to share some more about the Déjà Vu show. It was held in the Columbus Commons two weekends ago, which is a wonderful venue for the show. This week Marilyn Brackney sent me a few pictures that show off the space and my booth and so here they are…

My last ‘new’ project was creating noodle scarves by cutting up felted wool sweaters and repurposing them. As I played with the process a little I realized I could take the process in new directions. I started creating wool flower petals and combined them with small felted balls I had in my collection and came up with a pattern I really liked. About then it was time to head for Michigan to see Grandma for Thanksgiving, so I packed up my felted materials in a bag with threads, scissors and my new thimble for the trip. During the drive I made a bag full of ‘sweater petals’ (thanks, Grandma!), my name for the new creations. They’re fun little bright spots to go on jackets, sweaters or hats. I just know that the gloomy weather is coming and a little bright spot can go a long way to brighten your day. I’ll display these at the Unitarian Universalist Church Holiday Art Fair and Bazaar this weekend (the UU show) if you’re interested in seeing them in person.

It was nice to travel to Michigan for the holiday to hang out with Jim’s mom, the Gibson’s next door and Aunt Lois. I got to just relax and spend time with everybody, although I did have to help with Thanksgiving dinner preparations. Jim made the crusts for the traditional pumpkin pies and prepared steelhead and salmon for one main course. These are the fish that he and Tommie caught in October so it was a real family effort. After Thanksgiving the whole crew spent a day at the King Tut exhibition in Midland, which I hadn’t seen since I was living in Toronto before moving to the states around thirteen years ago. Has it really been that long? I enjoyed seeing the Egyptian alabaster carvings and other art pieces, the gold work and liked the whole atmosphere. On Friday I helped Grandma transplant seven trees away from her barn, which made her happy and me sore. Jacob got into that project with me while Jim and Tommie were off fishing again. They did come home with a bucket full of perch from the pier at Tawas, so Saturday brought another nice fish fry. The whole family ate very well over the long weekend.

Now I’m back in Bloomington, back to Zumba to work off the holiday food, watching the first snow settling on the tree branches and gearing up for the UU show this Friday and Saturday. I’ll have all my new scarves—lattice, ruffled and noodles—along with my new sweater petals. Of course I’ll bring some art pieces for the display too, but I’ve been focusing on making scarves and commissions rather than new pieces to display. Stop in and say hello, see what’s new in my booth and don’t forget to pick up some cookies from the cookie walk!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Scarf season begins…

This week I was caught in a whirlwind of ruffled scarf creation. Last week I designed and wet felted a large collection of lattice scarves created from reclaimed and recycled materials. I combined novelty yarns, ribbons, and lace from my collections with ultrasoft merino wools to make my art scarves. I then decided I needed more ruffled scarves for the Fiber Arts show so I launched into creating black and red scarves from merino wool. I developed a strategy to make the outer scarf edge undulate, where the undulation is part of the actual scarf structure. I really liked how the red and black colors worked together, so after a few of those I made some of red, purple and black. That led me to two different shades of purple and black and then two tints of indigo and black, then on to scarves with tints of turquoise and black. By the end of the week I was looking for something different to do so I incorporated some shiny red Angelina fibers to give the scarves a little bling. I made so many that I was ironing scarves right up to the start of the Fiber Arts show. The good news is that the ruffled scarves were a big hit again this year. The bad news is that I don’t have many ruffed scarves left for shows later in the year! I guess that means I’ll be laying out more ruffled scarves before the December Unitarian Universalist Holiday Art Fair & Bazaar (Fee Lane & the bypass).

The Fiber Arts show itself was a huge success and a lot of fun for me personally. This year three local guilds put on their shows the same weekend, which was dubbed by the BEAD folks as the ‘Craft Crawl’. People could easily move between the local clay, glass and fiber guild shows at three nearby churches. Plus it was the weekend of the Handmade Market downtown. I think people enjoyed visiting all the venues—it was just a local art shopping weekend. For me, it was nice to see people I don’t get to chat with often enough. The Fourth Street Festival is always jam packed so I don’t get to visit with everyone. The Fiber Arts show is a little slower paced. I ran into my friend from Argentina, and I spent Friday and Saturday hugging people, laughing and catching up. I only stopped long enough to sell scarves, both ruffled and lattice, every so often. Now I’m looking forward to the Déjà Vu show this weekend in Columbus Indiana. I won’t bring my ruffled scarves, since they don’t have any reclaimed and recycled content, but I’ll bring a selection of my lattice scarves and my new upcycled sweater scarves. Even if I don’t sell a lot of art I’ll have a lot of fun with my art friends and show-neighbors Cappi Phillips and Pat Hecker. I’m sure that we’ll laugh the whole time. I went there with Cappi and Dawn Adams on a reconnaissance mission a few weeks ago to check out the space so I have an idea how the Commons will be laid out for the show. We had a great trip then, including lunch at Bistro 304—I’m looking forward to having a box lunch from there this weekend. Thanks to Marilyn Brackney for organizing the show, and I hope to see you there to show off my Re-shirts, scarves and a few weavings.

On the home front, when I have a successful art show my family makes me a celebratory dinner. This time things were a little hectic so I pulled some peppered salmon out of the freezer for dinner. Jim baked some bread and a boca negra (black mouth) cake, both out of the ‘Baking with Julia’ cookbook. It was sooo… good—Jim just nailed it. Just what I needed after a full weekend of chitty-chattying! I guess the last bit of news is that in the background of my life I’ve been working my new poppy piece, which is very labor intensive. For two months now I’ve been creating leaflets for the plant and I wanted to lay out what I had and see how many more I needed. I think it looks really good but I still have a lot of work ahead of me. I need more leaflets, plus poppy buds and flowers to finish the piece. I’m sure it will be ready for the first spring show! Oh, and if you’re in Bloomington and want to see some Scarf Art, I have several pieces hanging at the Bloomington Bagel Co. (on Dunn St). Stop in, have a bagel and enjoy the art (and the bagel).

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Holey Scary Scarves!

Halloween week started on a high note for me. I drove my mother-in-law to the airport on Monday morning after a wonderful visit. She headed back home to the pouting cats and falling leaves, both demanding her attention. There was still fresh apple pie for a few days, but now that’s just a fond memory. I threw myself into scarf-making one more time, bringing my inventory up to forty-two. That’s the good news. The less-good news is that I had to spend a little quality time with the iron to get them pressed into shape. I shipped the first of my babies off to the Holly Market in St. Joseph Michigan midweek. Then I had two patrons stop by, one intending to look at scarves and one just innocently coming by to pick up her son. Five scarves went out the door, so I was back designing and felting a few more this weekend. The sales would have called for a celebration dance all by itself, but I also sold two pieces from the Bloomington Playwright Project show. My ‘Transplant’ and ‘Among the Ferns’ are off to new homes! What a great week for business! There’s still time to see what’s left of the show until Thursday of this week. I’m also going to hang a show at the John Waldron Art Center tomorrow, which you’re welcome to come see. Even better, stop in at the reception this Friday, November 5, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. The show is titled: “Fiberology: a Study of Textures and Colors”, and I’d love to see you there. If you can’t make it Friday, I’ll be in Columbus Indiana on Saturday the sixth at the Déjà Vu show at the Yes Cinema on the corner of Fourth and Jackson.

In other art news, this week marked the beginning of the end of an era. The weather turned warm enough to allow urethane varnish to cure, so I finally got to seal the four giant BEAD panels. These are the pieces assembled by the fairgoers at last year’s Fourth Street Festival and have been sitting in my living room all winter, spring and summer. I’ll gave them one more coat of varnish yesterday and will send them off to their new home in City Hall. At least I hope so—I expect I might have to remind them that they agreed to hang the BEAD panels there. You might not be able to fight City Hall, but I think you can persuade them to display art.

I’ve got to run—it’s Halloween day, and there’s lots to sort out. I’ve got the candy hidden (I hope) for tonight and the kids have a friend over. The pumpkins are carved and the costumes are ready, but I need to press more a few more scarves and I hope to lay out a couple more. Can’t. Stop. Working! The boys have been off from school for four straight days thanks to fall break, which means the house is a disaster and I’m feeling the pressure to get everything re-set for a new week of school, meetings and adventures. I also hear it’s traditional to make pumpkin pie—I’ll have to be sure Jim knows!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Fall Fun with Fibers

I had some great treasure hunts this week that took me all over the county. I started out driving my son Jacob to his doctor in Bedford to get a flu shot, which took me through some beautiful fall foliage in southern Indiana. To be out in the warm fall weather early in the week after being cooped up last week was terrific. Closer to home, a little internet sleuthing turned up a clever artist with a proprietary process for creating felt balls without a lot of effort. This really appealed to me since I’ve been making small fiber balls by wrapping threads, which is pretty tedious. I spent the money to learn the secret—if you’re interested, check out her work here. Knowledge is power, and I set off to scour Bloomington for the secret ingredients I needed. After a little bit of experimenting I’ve learned to create wonderful felt balls in a range of sizes. The little ones are really cute, especially the red ones!

One of the joys of any treasure hunt is finding kindred spirits in secret places. They’re not always on the same quest, but the goal is the same. At Opportunity House I ran into Lisa, the owner of LolaRue and Company , a place to create crafts. She said she often stops in at Opp House to poke around a little before opening her shop in the morning. We both get inspiration there, and Lisa calls it her therapy before she starts work in the morning. I also had a nice stop at the Thrift Shop, a consignment shop run by the Zeta Chapter of Psi Iota Xi sorority. Part of the fun for me is interacting with the people who run the stores—I get to chitty chatty with them, and they always seem interested to know what I’m going to do with my basket of mismatched yarns and odd treasures. What I get isn’t always what I see, like the beige sweater I found that ended up converted to felt balls in a happy leaf green color. And of course once the dye pots came out, watch out yarns! I didn’t have much green boucle left, which I use to make crocheted leaf clumps. I had some textured turquoise, but the color was all done. When the fiber stopped flying I had 7 skeins of green yarn, plus the white wool I dyed to exhaust the dye pot. The exact final color isn’t too important to me, as long as it’s green.

The rest of my week was less of a treasure hunt, but I did some prospecting for treasure. I worked on the demographic analysis, show summaries and the final report for the Fourth Street Festival. I used some of that information to write a grant proposal to expand the advertising reach for the festival next year—I guess that’s treasure hunting too. I’m gearing up for the Déjà Vu art show coming up in Columbus, Indiana on Saturday, November 7. Keep your eyes open for the posters around town sporting my sunflowers and Cappi Phillip’s heavy metal chicken, which I think is a very cool piece. Then you can drive to Columbus for a great day of classic Indiana Architecture and modern Indiana art!

Until next week…