One week to go!

The Fourth Street Festival is right around the corner.  Come and see all the art from the 120 participating artists this Labor Day weekend.  The show is open on Saturday from 10-6 and Sunday from 10-5 on Fourth Street between Grant and Indiana.  If you’re a local, that’s about from the fire station to the campus.  After a few years of too-hot or too-rainy days, I put in a special request for lovely weather and the long range forecast looks wonderful!  To prepare for the show, in the days to come I will transition away from Sounds of South costume production and toward finishing a couple of weavings in progress.  

 I have been wrapping strands of wire with brown yarns to create tree branches for one of my new tree pieces.  I created leaf clumps by crocheting strands of green yarn into blobs that will look like bunches of leaves once attached.  I think the completed pieces will be ready for display this weekend, so stop by and say hello!

Looking back over the past week, I spent most of my time at South along with my costume co-conspirators Nancy Riggert, Daphne Richards and Misti Hayes.  We’ve been cranking along on creating realistic swords and have more than half of the seventy finished.  I have been custom fitting armor chest plates to individual students, but with an eye toward final alterations to make the armor more resilient before handing it to students for dress rehearsals.  Fingers crossed that the armor survives until the performance!  Marauding medieval armies had no power to destroy swords and armor as powerful as cosplaying teenagers.

Last week I turned my attention to making hats to augment the already funky costumes.  I’m calling my style vintage circus with a touch of steampunk and Alexander McQueen.  I’m thrilled with the costumes, but the hats need to funk-ify them and push them over top.  The first one I created was an oversized steampunk influenced top hat.  The very top circle of the hat is cut from corrugated plastic recycled from a Cardinal Stage Company yard sign for Les Mis.  

 The hatband is cut from an old High School South Panther’s scarf, which luckily works well in my color palette.  The stack and the brim I made from thick card stock that I covered with a satin scrap I discovered at the recycle center/Materials for the Arts program.  The final touches include a feather I plucked from the prop room at South and a jewel from an earring that was half of a broken set that was donated by My Sister’s Closet.  A big shout out to them for being so supportive of the Pippin project! 

A couple of other hats that I created were much simpler.  The “amaryllis” hat was built from a toy and a dog bowl rescued from the recycle center.  I embellished it with a Styrofoam ball and purple jewels that are part of the collection we started when we began preparing for the project last year.   

I attached the whole thing to a white baseball cap that one of the parents donated.  Baseball caps make perfect bases to build form for stage hats.  They let me build freely and still be sure that the hat fits the specific actor.  The last hat was an Octoberfest headpiece from which I removed all the decoration and re-embellished the base to look more like a vintage clown hat using pom poms and a colorful bow from a hair barrette. 

At home it was an exciting week—there was pie!  Last Sunday a fresh peach pie appeared and carried me through about mid-week.  Normally I would be starting the drumbeat for the next pie by now, but fortunately Tommie’s 16^th birthday fell on Friday, so it was a double treat week.   

Jim baked a Mary Ann cake and I made lemon curd cream to fill in the reservoir.  Topped with fresh peaches from the farmer’s market made for an excellent dessert and breakfast treat.  I love peach season!  I wonder if we’re still in it, and I wonder how I’ll find out? 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Weaving blue skies…

This week I spent time in my studio working on my next commissioned piece.  After the long, wonderfully busy summer, I needed to take myself back to the beginning of the summer.  We spent two weeks on the beach in North Carolina looking at water and blue skies, and I’m delighted to report that the background of my commission captures those elements.  The foreground will feature a willow with its long branches swaying over the water.  I have started working on the tree as a traveling project to poke at while I wait for the boys at their activities.  I have been using army blankets to create the inside of the tree trunk and I still have one more blanket piece left.  Those of you who are regular blog readers will recall that I began using army blankets when Grandma gave me Grandpa’s old army blanket.   

She didn’t know what to do with it and didn’t want to throw it away.  I discovered that it was perfect for the core of trees I make.  It’s basically a felted, solid wool base that I can build on to form the trunk.  Over the surface I needle felted fleece that came to me by chance from a young woman raising Shetland sheep.  She approached me at Fourth Street a few years ago and I bought some fleece from her and I’m just now using up the last of it.  It’s the perfect color for willow bark. 

The Fourth Street Festival, my next big event, is rapidly approaching.  The image that I've posted is of this year's T-shirt design - a tribute to Jerry Farnsworth and his amazing kaleidoscopes.  Coordinating all the small tasks and making sure they’re completed commands a lot of my attention these days, but only for another month.  I made the difficult decision in late spring to step down as president of the Fourth Street festival committee.  I’ve been with the group for over twelve years, and I’ve learned an enormous amount from them.  

 I’m grateful for the experience and the friendships I’ve made.  Still, it’s time to move on after this fortieth anniversary art fair.  I’m excited about all of the artists that will participate this year—120 come from all over the U.S. to descend on the art-loving community of Bloomington.  I’m very proud to be associated with the event that is such an integral part of the Bloomington arts scene.  I do need to keep my nose to the grindstone and create a few new pieces for the Labor Day event.  I have had a very successful summer art fair season already, which means that I will need more work to fill my booth with a fresh display of my pieces. 

On the family front we are approaching the beginning of the school year.  Wednesday will find both of my boys in high school!  Amazing!  I will have to split my time between my studio and the costume studio at Bloomington High School South to complete thecostumes for Pippin.  One of the last elements of costume design that I’m contemplating is providing headdresses for circus performers.  I found a used copy of the “The American Circus:  An Illustrated History” online and it has plenty of inspiration. 

Yesterday morning Jim and Tommie went off fishing and Jacob and I headed for the farmer’s market.  We slept in a little longer than the fishermen and we found the market packed and rocking—it was full of people!  We scampered around to get the produce we wanted.  We got watermelon, corn, cucumbers, basil, plums and peaches.  We dropped our treasures off at the car and sauntered back to get delightful dainties from Maria at Piccoli Dolci.  Jacob and I relaxed on the grass and watched the world go by on a pleasant Saturday morning.   

Oh, and the best news of the week!  All is right with the world.  I found a warm peach pie after the last market that went delightfully well with decaf espresso in the morning for breakfast.  If that weren’t enough, Gwen Witten dropped off a warm Derby Pie yesterday evening for dessert! It was AMAZING!!  Life is very good.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

My world of water comes back into focus!

I was awake at 3:30 yesterday morning, unable to sleep as I mentally went over my inventory for my upcoming ‘Looking at Water’ exhibition at the Convention Center in October.  I spent a big chunk of my day locked in my art studio weaving water and creating cattails.  The only thing that brought me back to the computer to produce a long overdue blog post was the dire threat made by Jim that I couldn’t have more than one pie per post.  I enjoyed the first peach pie of the season two weeks ago, so I knew I better start writing!  Now I'm getting way ahead of myself.  I’ll try to catch you up on what’s been happening. 

My ants are finally done!  I delivered the colony to Wonderlab this past Thursday.  We’ll have a meeting this week to discuss the display, which might involve making one more ant.  Along the way, I feel like I learned a lot about the anatomy of ants, what distinguishes the species and which morphologies are shared.   

I came to love my ants, but I’m glad they’re out of the studio.  At Wonderlab they’re talking about painting or stenciling ants along the wall that leads to the exhibition, which sounds fun.  If they do that, I really think the last stenciled ant should be an intermediate between the stenciled ants and the first three-dimensional creation.  That would make it look like the last ant was crawling out of the wall.  I think that would be interesting, but it would mean making one more half-ant.  I invite everyone to the opening reception on the first Friday in November.  There will be a fun kids project to create ant parts by wet felting fleece into balls to produce the body segments.  These will be connected with pipe cleaners.  I have just the most perfect brown noils from Sheep Street that I will donate to the project.  This is just the ideal material to learn how to felt color-appropriate ant body parts.  Come and see!

Of course Labor Day means the Fourth Street Festival.  It was a very successful show from my perspective, with no major incidents.  The weather wasn’t ideal when the show opened Saturday in steady rain, but Sunday turned into an absolutely beautiful sunny day.  The humidity was low with some clouds, and over 33 thousand fair attendees came out for the two-day event.  Happily/sadly I sold one of my water-themed pieces I intended to show at my upcoming Convention center exhibition that I described above.  I think I’ll be able to replace the piece and come up with a full complement of sixteen pieces for the exhibition by the end of this month.  

 The ‘Looking at Water’ concept means that you’ll see any and all forms of water, from a drop falling from a faucet to small ponds with aquatic life and on to vast lakes.  So much of our lives revolves around water that I just had to think about water and express it in my art.  I’ll hang the show in late September and the opening reception will coincide with the first Friday’s gallery walk from 5-8 p.m.  Please stop by and say hello at that reception too!

My life is never so simple as to allow me to focus solely on my own art.  I’ve been dividing my time to help with the Sounds of South group’s ginormous production of Phantom of the Opera in late October and early November.  I have always possessed a passion for the theater, having regularly attended theatrical productions, opera and plays with my father.  I fondly remember having season tickets to the Stratford Festival performances in Stratford, Ontario.  When Tommie auditioned into Sounds of South it opened the door a crack for me to get involved.   

Earlier this summer I made a set ofskirts for the performance, and last month I finished repurposing an evil monkey on an ornate music box that is central to the performance.  I made an ornate hat for the diva in the performance, Carlotta, and it matches her extravagant gown and personality.  I added a reticule to her outfit, which is now also a new word in my vocabulary (thanks David Wade!).  I was also charged with making the body of Buquet that is hung from the rafters by the phantom.  I’ve never made a dead body before.  Heck, I’ve never made an alive body – well, except for my sons! 

My life was also filled with big personal events.  Jim and the boys tested for their black belts in Taekwondo on the 16^th of August.  His brother Tim was the ‘bad guy’ for self-defense and got thrown around a bit, and Grandma came down to see the performance too.  It was a very emotional test all around.  Jacob was praised for his power and precision in his forms, Tommie for his flexibility and graceful high kicks, and Jim for just making it through the whole process.  We had a big reception at our house after the party where it was nice to just sit and relax in peace and quiet with food from the Owlery, cakes and cupcakes from Blu Boy, and a beautiful personalized cake from Esperanza Hogan.  

 Oh, and I did get a peach pie, a rare treat this summer with so few peaches, as a reward for finished my ants.  I know as soon as I get this posted I’ll get another pie.  Type, type, type!  Start rolling the crust, Jim!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

I’m Back in the Studio Weaving!

Life has settled down a little bit.  I’ve been able to carve out chunks of time to weave in the art studio.  I decided to launch into a piece for my upcoming “Looking at Water” exhibition as I’ve maintained progress on the rest of my projects.  It seems that every time the weather gets hot and humid I start thinking about cool Canadian lakes and birches.  It’s a source of comfort, thinking of my Canadian roots and travels north.  Looking at birches is meditative for me, in part because it brings back memories of my Grandmother.  In Pinery Provincial Park on Lake Huron I would collect pieces of driftwood, freshwater clam shells, pieces of birch bark paper and polished great lakes beach stones. I used these to make her little collages to use as ashtrays.  On the birch tree piece I’m making, I still have to create the birch tree trunks and leaf clumps but I’m really pleased with the woven canvas that I’ve created.  

 I also spent a little time this week dyeing yarn.  That’s less meditative, but it’s part of the art to produce the colors I need.  I currently have two ongoing commissions that require yellow yarn for different reasons.  The first includes a path that will require bright yellow and purple flowers.  The second is a commission that will feature autumn aspens.  The yellow yarns will go into the leaf clumps that I will crochet.  Having several different colors and texture of yellow yarns adds depth and structure.   

My commissions are pretty diverse, so while I’m working on birch trees I’ve also been advancing my big-headed ant commission for Wonderlab.  Right now I’m working on the super major.  I have completed the head and abdomen, and now I need to flesh out the structure that joins the two.  The queen will be the final piece for that insect collection.  As I move all my projects forward, I keep reminding myself that I need to focus on the ‘Looking at Water’ exhibition I’m scheduled to display in October.  I’m feeling some added pressure because I sold five pieces in Des Moines that I would have used in that collection.  Between travel, commissions, and readying the house for an Open House in mid August to celebrate the boy’s advancement to black belt, a lot has to happen in the next few months!  

 Also on the horizon is the Fourth Street Festival on Labor Day weekend.  We have monthly meetings to orchestrate the show and everything is coming together.  This year’s T-shirt design, a tribute to the late Jim Kemp, looks amazing.  Kyle Spears did a great job creating a layout for the art and bringing the project together.  On the family front, we celebrated Jacob’s twelfth birthday.  

 Tommie baked him a peanut butter cup pie, which was wonderful.   

Ever since we started grilling fish in North Carolina, Jacob has taken a real shining to grilling.  We’ve managed to outfit him with a new grill, chef’s hat, and an apron with grilling tools.  The weather has been pleasantly cool so we’ve been able to have many meals out on the veranda.  I’m hoping that Jim and Tommie can keep him supplied with fish!  

 The only bad news to report is that I didn’t get another pie after Des Moines.  I know we bought lots of tart cherries at the farmer’s market, but now I see that they’re in the freezer!  Jim seems to think that just because I finished one pie (raspberry) on Thursday I don’t need a fresh pie on Saturday!   Sometimes I just don’t know what he’s thinking. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Another Successful Fourth Street!

It has been an extremely busy two weeks, but Fourth Street Festival 2013 is in the rear view mirror.  Life is slowly returning to normal.  I have learned not to try to make any new art pieces the week before the festival, keeping my week open to deal with the last-minute craziness that always seems to happen for which nobody plans.  I keep busy with some puttery things, like painting frames and updating my bookkeeping.  Then the strangest things come up.  

 This year I needed to find a bullhorn at the last minute, because it was part of the emergency plan to notify artists in case something big and unexpected happened.  After a lot of looking I found one at the IU surplus stores, but it turned out to be a piece of junk.  Even though they explicitly say they won’t take refunds, I’m the person who put the ‘fun’ back in refund.  I ended up with an awesome replacement (actually, big thanks to the IU surplus store fellow who gave me his to replace the battery holder shaped like a dented horn). 

My security police friend said it was even better than his!  With the weather extremes of the past two years, I tended to check in to see the forecast every fifteen minutes or so.  Boy, did that ever drive Jim crazy!  He says I shouldn’t worry about weather that’s days away, but I checked anyway.  The first day turned out to be very hot and sticky, but the accompanying thunderstorms held off until after the show and the banquet dinner.  By morning the storms were gone and neither the art nor the artists were any worse for the weather.  Sunday was considerably cooler and a better sales day. 

All tolled, 36,000 people came to the event this year.   Despite running all over Fourth Street (and beyond), the show treated me very well.  I sold several pieces and had a few commissions.  I was also honored with the Best in Show award this year!  For as good as it was, I’m relieved and happy to have it all behind me for another year.  Now I’m working on commissions and taking care of the little business things that come up, like re-stocking my cards and T-shirts around town.  I’ve been making more sweater petals to sell at Bloomingfoods this year, which were very popular in the fall and winter months last season. 

In other fair news, Jacob and Tommie spent a lot of time caring for my booth and talking to patrons when I was off stomping out fires.  When I asked Jacob what his favorite part of the show was, he said it was using the credit card reader!  Many people told me what a wonderful salesman he was for my work, and some of my artist friends want me to rent him out to sell for them.  He does tell good stories about the work and makes a very personal connection to the art, so it’s good to have him in the booth.  I wanted to mention that the first piece to sell this year was my new willow piece called Sitting with Grandpa.  It was kind of hard to part with because I was still pretty emotionally attached to it.  The piece had some of Grandpa’s old army blankets in it, so there was a real connection to him.  In Czech, when you have problems you go and talk to the old willow.  I think Grandpa did that too, since he grew up around some giant willows in his backyard that were a big part of his life.  They were great climbing trees and just good places to hang out.  He liked to be near water, which is where the willows lived. 

When the show was over, I was treated to a delightful celebratory dinner.  After takedown we had Jim’s orange glazed salmon, rice, peaches and a bottle of wine.  For dessert, Jim baked a fresh apple pie using transparent apples from Grandma.  Boy, were they ever flavorful!  Jim, you can make another one any time now!  I know you have more in the freezer!  Which reminds me that I also started back on my Zumba routine.  I’m pretty achy and a little sore, but it feels good to be active again.  Oh, and I also went out on closing night to see “Urinetown” at the Bloomington Playwright’s Project theatre, a play directed by Eric Anderson.  After a delightful dinner at Samira with the boys home playing Minecraft, it turned into a fine evening.  What more could I ask for?

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Fourth street in the rear view mirror

Wow, what an incredibly intense week!  The annual Fourth Street Art Festival was scheduled for last week, but the remnants of Hurricane Isaac threatened the show.  The early weather predictions not only put us in its path, they predicted from 5 to 10 inches of rain for the weekend.  They even called the chance of rain both days around 100%.  As I watched the radar, though, it wasn’t as clear that it was going to hit us.  The system was moving more slowly and more to the west than the predicted path.  Whether or not we should even hold the show became a tough call, with the thoughts of possibly moving it indoors.  If we were clearly going to get hit it would have been an easy call.  The phone was ringing off the hook with calls from people who wanted to know our plans, including area newspapers.  

 My stress level went through the roof!  To make a long story short, we made our best judgment on the storm’s path and decided to hold the show outdoors in its usual place.  The Friday evening set-up went just fine, although you could tell that the weather was unstable with a threat in the air.  The streets were marked in record time as we all raced to get the booths set up and filled with art while it was dry.  When Saturday dawned the rain was still a state away to the east and moving North, not west toward us.  Hooray!  We had an absolutely beautiful Saturday, with just a couple of light sprinkles.  There were even patches of sun!  I couldn’t have asked for a better day.  People came out and bought art and everyone was in a great mood.  The forecast for Sunday was still pretty ominous.  I was still on high alert, but the day turned out to feature light rain, but no real threats.  No tornadoes, no lightning and no flooding came our way.   

In fact, the rain stopped about two hours before the end of the show!  That gave everyone a dry pack-up, which in "artspeak" meant the show was perfect.  I was positively giddy when I got home and had a nice dinner with wine.  Fortunately, Jim kept me from posting all the thoughts that ran through my head on Facebook.  In hindsight, that was probably a good thing.  Oh, and a little known secret—when I got home Saturday night, after handing out all the official awards to participating artists at the ‘official’ dinner, I came home to find that I had won the ‘Best in Show’ award!  There was a freshly-baked raspberry pie with a little ribbon on it for me.  The berries came from the Farmer’s market and the kitchen still smelled like baked pie.  I’m so glad my family thinks I always win the best in show!

Over the past week I’ve been catching up on all the projects I put on hold.  I first had to recover some sense of serenity after dealing with the show.  On top of that, a bad cold had settled into my family (but luckily, not me).  Nobody has slept very well over the past several days.  

 In the art world, I got more serious about my large landscape commission piece targeted for completion by month’s end.  That meant dyeing a bunch of yarn to get the colors I needed.  Fortunately, I just love dyeing yarn! 

 It’s very rewarding, just like picking fungal spores.  At the end of the day you have a whole pile of stuff to show for your work, and you get to build on all your hard work later on.  The spores yield Petri plates with germinated fungal mycelia to do more experiments, while the yarn goes into all sorts of projects, not all of which have even been imagined yet.  Now my yarns are drying on the veranda.  The humidity finally dropped on Saturday so I’m in pretty good 

shape.  I pulled out my enormous loom and I’m about to clamp it onto an easel to warp it.  I can’t tell you how glorious it sounds to have a day when all I have to do is weave, something else I love to do!  And you’re not going to believe this, but after another trip to the Farmer’s market, Jim baked me another raspberry pie!  It was so popular the first time that I didn’t get to enjoy much of it with coffee for breakfast.  And now I have another one!  Oh. My. Gosh.  Can life get any better?

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Fourth Street Festival is on the horizon…

I did a lot of driving to art fairs this summer.  During my most recent trip to Minneapolis I had some fond memories of the geology I grew up with in northern Ontario.  We drove through some beautiful granite formations, and I even got to see some cool hoodoos.  If you don’t know, these are striking rock spires that improbably narrow and widen as they rise.  Usually the top part is made of more durable rock, standing on a softer rock layers that were eroded.  I had gotten so used to southern Indiana’s limestone structures that it was striking to see the scraped granite outcroppings I remember from northern Ontario, especially on the Bruce Peninsula.  

 I also saw the familiar sycamores of Indiana replaced by the birches of the north.  I found myself missing the birch trees of my youth.  Of course I had to make more birch pieces!  This decision was reinforced by the fact that these pieces have been popular at art fairs this summer.  I have now finished two of these pieces, which will be on display at the Fourth Street Festival.

Another art project that I’m looking forward to seeing in action is the yarn bombing of some local trees.  This is a fundraising project for Middleway House, organized by Mary Ann Gingels of Yarns Unlimited.  There’s a nice story describing the project in Bloom Magazine  if you’d like to read more about it.  I’m sorry I couldn’t be part of it, but my plate is overflowing with preparations for the Fourth Street Festival.  Somewhere in Bloomington there’s probably a tree that’s grateful.  I did donate a bunch of yarn from my stock for the project, so I feel like I’ll be there in spirit. 

When it rains it pours, and this week was the start of school for my boys.  Tommie is starting middle school at Jackson Creek, so he has to be up at 6:30 to get ready and catch the bus.  He comes home exhausted every day.  Jacob is still cruising at Binford.  He’s Mr. Confident and is mature beyond his ten years.  And for those of you keeping track, yes, hubby Jim did make me a peach pie this week. Mmmmm. 

Close to the front door, my squash is thriving.  It has three babies, which I’m starting to suspect are either acorn squash or pumpkins, based on the shape.  I’m still watering the plant regularly with my dehumidifier water.  As it grew, it decided to crawl over the sidewalk, so I had to redirect it.  I love all my boys, but it takes a constant effort to keep them all in line! 

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Home from Minnesota…

Today I’m happy to be home from all of my summer travels.  This past week I was hurriedly weaving new pieces featuring birches and water, a genre that has been well received.  I’ve been improving my technique for making the water more realistic and the foreground elements more elaborate and dimensional.  I’m really pleased with all my latest pieces.  I also completed my ‘Eat Your Veggies’ composition.  This is the one that features tomato slices, onions, peas and other vegetables.  The components have been my travel companions as I completed each of the foreground vegetables on my summer travels.  The good news is that all my most recent pieces sold at the Loring Park Art Festival in Minneapolis over the weekend.  The even better news is that I’m safely back home with my family after a very long drive. 

The Loring Park fair itself was a lot of fun to do.  The fair itself is organized around a very pretty lake.  Nearby are fountains, trails, a pool, flower gardens, basketball hoops and more attractions that help bring in people.  From the moment I got there the organizers impressed me as welcoming and efficient.  I (OK, Jim) was able to drive the car and trailer around the pond right to my spot Friday afternoon.  We set up on a beautiful summer afternoon and prepared for the show over the weekend.  A weather front that produced heavy rains and winds moved through the area Friday night, but fortunately my booth and art survived the storm without any problems.  Saturday and Sunday morning the organizers drove around with juice, water, fruit and treats.  

 I liked the fact that they came to me to check in and see how things were going.  I had two beautiful days with sunny skies in the upper seventies, which brought out the friendly art appreciators of Minneapolis.  Takedown was just as easy, and within an hour and a half we were on the road out of town toward Tomah Wisconsin, our waypoint on the long drive home. 

When I got home I stepped back into the home stretch of the Fourth Street Festival here in Bloomington.  A lot still has to happen for the show to come together, but I feel good about the efforts of the organizing committee.  It’s going to be another good year.  This year we’re going to have something new on Dunn Street.  We’re hosting Art Cars, which is really Dawn Adam’s brainchild.  Laura Lane, a writer for the Herald Times, put out the call for the cars.  I don’t know exactly what to expect, but there are likely to be mosaics, painted cars, and other embellishments on vehicles.  I’m looking forward to seeing some fun and funky cars.  These aren’t cars you’ll see at the dealership or the NASCAR track, so plan to be in town Labor Day weekend. 

Did I say I was glad to be home?  I sure am!  I spent the drive crocheting leaf clumps, so I know there’ll be a bunch of trees in my future.  I’m still channeling more birches and lakes, thinking about how we need more rain.  The corn was really painful to see along the expressway all the way to Minnesota.  I do have my own little bright spot in the gardening world, though, which features a volunteer squash in the garden by the front door.   

This is where the hamster bedding and uneaten seeds were used as mulch over the winter, and one little squash plant germinated this summer.  I run a dehumidifier in my art studio, and that leaves me a bucket of water to empty every morning.  My little squash gets all she needs.  I don’t know what kind of a squash it will yield, but I do know I’m planning on eating them!  Maybe if I get a lot I can make a squash pie.  Hmmm, that just gave me an idea, now that peach season is in full swing!  And we’ll get to the farmer’s market on Saturday!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Fourth Street Festival 2011!

The story of my week centered around the Fourth Street Art Fair. During the week leading up to the fair I was racing to get things done to make the show run smoothly. I finished one last weaving that I called ‘Letters from Home’. The story behind the piece comes from the visits of my Grandmother from Czechoslovakia to my childhood home in Canada. She would fly to Ontario every few years and stay three to six months and then fly back. In between she would write long letters on onionskin paper that had a blue tint. In those days you paid for every ounce of weight in airmail letters so the incredibly thin paper was important to save money. Those letters made a strong impression on me. I remember a conversation at last year’s Spinner’s and Weaver’s Guild show discussing the lost art of writing letters. Everything today seems busier and faster; now we communicate more electronically. All my memories of my Grandmother, including the late nights playing canasta late into the evening and exchanging letters on the thin blue paper came flooding back to me last week. I transformed the emotion into a weaving with a blue background to represent the airmail paper and letters pouring out that spelled a memory. On the piece I wrote about remembering the time we danced, but the concept was all about celebrating and exchanging life in an earlier time. I told the story to an IDS (Indiana Daily Student) reporter at the art fair and I was surprised to find the story in the paper and on-line! In a strange twist of fate my Czech relatives today can read and share the story faster than I could ever mail it to them in a letter.

The reality of the approaching show was a little less personal and warm, however. Electronic communications were flying among the show organizers. I checked my e-mail ever few hours to read about the latest complication or fire to stomp out. There are always a few holes in the show layout to fill as late cancellations come in. Friday finally came and the committee assembled to mark the streets and get the show started. After all the illegally parked cars were towed and the streets marked we invited the artist to set up their booths in 95-degree heat. Everything went smoothly, but Saturday turned into another scorcher. We reached a local record with a 102 degree first day of the show and I was worried about the turnout and the patrons. This year we set up free water carboys around the show to make sure everyone stayed hydrated and that was a hit. The crowds came out early, and within the first hour I sold all of my new bicycle pieces. Fortunately, the patrons allowed me to keep the pieces on the walls throughout the first day so I could share my new work with all my local friends. By late in the afternoon the weatherman tripped up and the zero percent chance of rain turned into a brief thunderstorm that cooled off the show around five. The last hour of the show was still quite pleasant, as was the celebratory dinner held this year at the First United Methodist Church on Fourth Street. It was a wonderful setting for the reception. The food was incredibly good this year and the ceremony came off without a hitch. I’m so pleased—and relieved!

On Sunday morning I arrived at the show early with a sense of impending doom, since the weatherman called for a 70 percent chance of thunderstorms throughout the day. When Jim came I asked what the weather map looked like, and he told me I didn’t want to know. It turns out there were bands of rain all around us and for hundreds of miles to the south, all heading our way. In a welcome twist of fate, however, all the rain skirted Bloomington and we had a cool, pleasant, and even awesome day for the fair! People were happy, joking and buying art like the old days. From a sales perspective it turned out to be my best show ever, with nine pieces finding new homes and two more commissions put into motion. I’m so fortunate to be in this business and in this town! We tore down the booth and packed our neighbor Emily’s van, borrowed for the show, in record time. I drove it all home, had a nice chat with Grandma (Jim’s mom) about the show, then headed back to make sure that everything was cleared away and the artists were all safely headed home. I’m sure glad I’m not doing the Penrod show next weekend! When I got home Jim had a nice Kluski dinner with an Amarone opened to celebrate. I feel great about the show and all the hard work of the committee. I’m really proud of us for pulling off such a good show this year despite all the weather surprises. Of course now the planning starts again for next year! Oh and if you are interested, there's a great video of 2011 Fourth Street Festival that an IDS reporter, Margaret Ely has posted.

One last note that needs a mention is that I launched into another new venture last week. With the opening of the B-line trail in town I decided to create T-shirts using my weaving dedicated to the trail. The shirts were well received at the show, and now I’m working hard to market them locally for the opening of the biking and hiking trail. It’s a new venture for me, but I love a new challenge! Who knows what will be next!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin