Shifting gears, again…

I’ll share the fabulous conclusion of this year’s Pippin saga below, but my mind is already re-focused on the first of the holiday shows.  The Artisan Guild show at the Convention Center sets up Friday morning.  The fiber, glass and clay guilds come together under one roof, and I’m very excited about participating.  I’ve been working feverishly at advancing two huge new bodies of work that I’ll show this season.  First, I’m pretty excited about the felted tiles I’ve been working on.  

The inspiration for the tiles really comes from visiting the Farmer’s Market on Saturdays.  In my family I’m the really big tomato fan, so fall is the conclusion to my season of my tomato sandwiches.  When I arrive at the farmer’s market I casually conduct a surveillance loop around the market to pick out my one perfect tomato for the week.  My selection has to big, red, ripe and juicy, but not especially pretty.  I love the idea of having one big fat slice of tomato in my sandwich - as thick as the bread slices.  The reality of my weekly search explains the inspiration for the new felted pieces.  I’m trying to capture the essence of that one, big special thing recognized as essential to your life.  For my family, the week the first ripe snap peas appear in boxes on tables is a good example.   

At the Farmer’s Market you suddenly see the rich, green color and the memory about how much you love them kicks in.  We buy a box and eat them raw at the market.  Then we usually buy a couple more boxes and put them in a big bowl at the center of the table to munch on.  Taking an important part of your life and framing it for the wall to help you remember it is important to me.  Of course as soon as I start making one type of vegetable I’m inspired to begin making another.  I have a few big pieces where comfortable combinations of vegetables come together to shape the whole.  I also love the idea of being able to piece together a favorite dish by combining tiles.  You might create a salsa art piece combining tomato, onion and jalapeno tiles.  Or you might think of borscht by mixing beets, onion slices and garlic.  The tiles are like a visual recipe.  Of course some of the tiles do speak volumes standing alone.  There is something seductive about a pile of cherries, which my brain would immediately commit to inclusion in a pie. 

My second new body of work is the collection of felted vessels I’ve been making.  The genesis of these vessels, along with pictures of my first attempts, are featured in earlier blogs.  I now have a collection of felted vessels that I have begun to package to display at the show.  It has been a lot of fun to explore how different materials behave and combine to create new surface textures.  Merino noils, the very short waste merino I picked up several years ago from Sheep Street felts incredibly quickly, but the short fibers result in a bumpy texture.  What I like about the merino is that the finished product is very rigid.  The merino top, which is the longest merino fibers, felts quickly but results in a softer vessel.  If the vessel were created on a larger scale I can imagine that it might collapse in on itself.  I also did some experimenting with some spun horsetail hair.  It has a fascinating texture that I incorporated into one of the vessels.  The contrast of the coarseness of horsetail hair with the soft, fine merino is striking in both texture and color.  I’ve done some additional embellishing on a few of the vessels, adding cute little felted balls to supply even more character and make them more whimsical. 

Another chapter of my life closed this week to make room for my holiday art fair season.  The final production of Pippin was presented on Saturday night and yesterday morning we did the set teardown.  The costumes were divvied up for washing and the parents hauled them away.  The armor and the props were collected, organized and put to bed for now.  Monday morning it all seemed like a dream.  For now, I’m delighted with the amazing number of parents and SOS kids that came together to deconstruct the show—the stage and costume studio were beehives of activity.  The entire set was broken down and put away within three hours.  Thank you again to Gwen, Chris and Nancy and all of the parents and students that made this an amazing experience.  I will forever cherish the memories.   

Right now, though, my calendar shows me that I have a workshop in Crawfordsville on Saturday, November 12 to teach about weaving with reclaimed and recycled materials--please do sign up!  You may contact Jessica Madsen for more details.  The workshops will be capped at 10 people, so signing up sooner is better.  At last check we were at five participants.

And finally, the last Pippin performance also coincided with the end of the first trimester of high school for Jacob, who came through stressed but successful.  Tommie is on autopilot, carving through his curriculum as junior.  Coming up sometime in the near future will be a second degree black belt test for the two boys, who have just about completed their weapons training for their cross-training requirement.  We’ve managed to stay on track with Taekwondo training, voice lessons and hip-hop dance training, but we’re now transitioning into the late fall schedule of boy activities.  This week Jacob and I are looking forward to seeing Sweeney Todd at Ivy Tech, while Tommie and I are excited to be at the home opener for IU men's basketball.  Basically, we just buckling our seat belts until Thanksgiving vacation, because it will be a crazy, busy ride with lots of laughs and pie along the way. Oh, and Jim tried to hide it between loaves of bread, but an apple pie emerged from the oven yesterday morning while I was away breaking down the show!  Best.dessert.this.week!!

Until next week

Martina Celerin

Making mini Martinas…

I’m wearing three hats this week!  The first is my needle felting hat.  I had so much fun last fall creating the needle felted vegetable and fruit collage pieces that I decided to scale down to make individual felted pieces.  Each fruit and vegetable really is its own mini artwork full of visual information, detail and interest.  Some are symmetrical, others are not, and often the subject brings vibrant colors.  I’m now thinking about my fruits and vegetables as small tiles that can be combined for display.   

The project fits with my fall life because Saturday mornings revolve around trips to the farmer’s market—yesterday was a three-bag haul, with lettuce, apples, garlic, peppers and more.  There is such a bounty of the harvest on display in rich, warm fall colors.  The vegetable haul mirrors the social experience, seeing lots of friends and regulars.  Marina at Le Petit Café becomes a regular fall connection with special hot chocolate and coffees for the family, and Maria from Piccoli Dolci often provides a special treat.  The man who sells us jam and jellies knows that our teenage boys eat through whatever we buy (and hence will be back).  The farmer who saved a huge bag of onion skins for me thought I was a little crazy, but they proved to be the perfect source for the dye to create an accurate onion skin color.  The whole Saturday morning adventure just fits so well with my art. 

My second hat is a wet felting hat. Not that I’m felting hats!  I had a fabulous experience a couple of weeks ago in Fredericksburg, starting with a workshop by Pamela MacGregor and continuing with Elizabeth Woodford, that started me thinking about wet felting vessels.  I’m now playing with different fibers and experimenting with new techniques.  I really want to be able to create textures and then embed objects into my vessels, much like my weavings where I create underground scenes. That way you’re encasing memories and stories in the vessels.  At this point, though, I need to sort out the techniques first.  That’s about the time when my science background kicks in.  I started by creating flat felt circles and embedded various yarns (synthetics, wools, sisal and felt balls).  I learned a lot from my first piece and launched into creating a few simple vessels.

My third hat is maintaining and tweaking costumes for Pippin costumes and props.  The big performance at Bloomington High School South starting October 15^th and running for two more weeks on Saturday nights.  You can order tickets here. The costumes themselves are finished, but those darn kids keep growing!  Final adjustments are in order so the costumes fit perfectly on the night of the performance.  Watching the rehearsals over the summer has been revealing, because socks slowly appear as legs grow longer while the pants do not.  Come see Tommie, who is Charlemagne in the first two performances (October 15 and 22), while Jacob is a magician in all of the shows.  I’m looking forward to seeing the visual spectacle as my art pieces dance around the stage!  Oh, and I’ve heard that the kids might sing too :)

The big news in my workshop world is that I'll be doing another workshop - next month - in Crawfordsville, IN.  If you are interested in participating, please contact the event organizer, Jessica Madsen at jdpmadsen@gmail.com  It will be a one day workshop on Saturday November 12, from 9:30am - 5:50pm.

 And on the family front, we’ve been taking in some theater of late. Last Friday we saw BPP’s ‘30 Days of Mourning’ that featured Steve Scott (aka the boy’s taekwondo instructor) Paul Kuhne (an amazing actor and friend) and Aubrey Seader (a fabulous actress and Sounds of South alumna).  It was amazing!  The interactions were believable, intense, and powerful.  The actors embraced the roles such that you were immersed in the situation and rooting for the characters.  On Friday night we saw Cardinal’s performance of Baskerville.  What a fun production!  The staging was phenomenal.  They brought the Hound to life, even if it didn’t end well for the sheep in the performance or the spectral hound who attacked the Baskerville clan.  The pacing was fast and the costume changes constant, which made for a very entertaining evening.  I love having two such strong theater companies in our town.  As I started to write this on Saturday, I wasn’t sure there was going to be a pie for the report.  Fortunately, Jim found some gold rush apples at the farmer’s market.  He got up early to make a pie this morning!  It looks great, but I won’t know for sure until dinner tonight.  I’ll provide a report when I can.

Until next week

Martina Celerin

Mother’s Day means pie!

This week I excitedly laid out all the vegetables for the ‘My Roots’ composition, thinking I had enough vegetables to fill the piece.  I was mentally ready to stitch it all together, but dang if it didn’t still have an empty spot!  That sent me back into my art studio with my fingers digging deep into my boxes of yarns and fleece.  I settled on making one more kind of root vegetable that speaks to my childhood—kohlrabi.  I remember finding peeled and chunked-up pieces in the fridge quite often and eating it after school like pieces of apple, although I don’t remember anyone ever cooking with it.   

To get started on making my own kohlrabi, I sorted through my big bin of green fleece and pulled out about six shades and tints of green that I thought looked as if they could come together to create the coloration of the skin.  I used my drum carder and blended my choices together into a green that I was happy with.  The kohlrabi bulb typically has a light green color with petioles that come straight up from the bulb.  I decided to do a little wet felting to create those structures.  I used my kohlrabi green fleece to needle felt everything together and viola—kohlrabi!  Now I think I need to make five more bulbs and I’ll have enough root vegetables for my piece. 

This week I also launched into my commission piece that will involve creating a trellis to stand in front of a garden fence.  I’m envisioning the fence to be made of weather-worn wood, much like the one that surrounds our back yard.  I went out and took a few pictures so I could capture all of the colors hidden in the aged wood and returned to my stash of yarns.  I dug through my gray and sand and light olive bins and pulled out everything that was even close to the colors I envisioned.  I warped a loom and now I’m looking forward to weaving this week. 

I haven’t completely abandoned my efforts for the Sounds of South production of Pippin this fall.  One side project that I did was playing with graphics that we might use to support the production as T-shirts and posters.  In designing the imagery, I thought a lot about the story line.  It’s basically a coming of age story where the principal character is guided by the lead player who wears a black top hat.  

 Our setting will be a vintage circus decked out in royal colors that represent precious stones.  I’m using sapphire blue, emerald green and amethyst purple for the chorus costumes.  Pippin is the son of the king who rebels against his tyrant father and ultimately chooses his love interest to be Catherine, a member of the circus troupe.  He decides that a simpler life with her and her son is closest to his heart.  Some how that seems appropriate on this Mother’s Day.

Speaking of that, I’d like to wish a happy Mother’s Day to all today!  I got a beautiful bouquet of flowers yesterday from my boys, and I woke up to the smell of pie baking in the oven.  It turned out to be a mutsu pie from last summer’s fruit.  It made a fine breakfast as a fresh-from-the oven warm treat.   

Last week I delighted in a strawberry-rhubarb pie made from Nancy Riggert’s rhubarb and farmer’s market strawberries.  That was nice, but only lasted until about Wednesday, since the boys seemed to like it a lot too.  For me, life is good when you get two different fresh pies in one week!  I hope you find whatever makes your life special on Mother’s day today.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

My BRAIN is done—it’s time to weave!

I’m done! I’m done! The BRAIN is finally finished! By Friday afternoon there was nothing left to do but pack up my art toys and go home. I glued, attached, tweaked and finally vacuumed, but only on the euphoric side. I intentionally left all the dust, glue strings and webbiness on the depressive side. I think of it as artistic patina. The emotions associated with completion are truly mixed. Packed in with all my other responsibilities, the brain project made for an intense and enjoyable few months. I feel like I’ve made some new friends and spent quality time with old ones. The most important thing for me was the experience itself, which changed my perspective on life. You become a product of your sum total of experiences, whatever they are, and I plan to translate some of the ideas that grew out of the conversations into new art pieces.

At the end of the project I cleaned up my bench and brought my toys home. I was very pleased with how the brain turned out, but cleaning up for me is always connected with starting something new. I guess that’s just part of my upbringing. Friday night I disappeared into my art studio, warped a loom and started a new weaving. That felt great after months away from my art studio. Part of my enthusiasm came from the good news that I had been accepted into two big summer art fairs: The Art Fair on the Square in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Loring Park show in Minneapolis Minnesota. The Madison show is truly one of my favorites, right up there with Fourth Street. I have a fantastic time in Madison, where the patrons are wonderful and enthusiastic. We even get to stay with our friends Wendy and Duane in their remote country retreat near Hollandale. After a long day at the fair Jim whisks me away to their house, past the two ferocious guard dogs. They take great care of me with nice dinners at the end of the day and coffee in the morning, but I suspect they might be playing during the day while I’m working. Loring Park will be new for me this year. It will be a little farther than we’ve traveled for a show, but the whole family stays together and we have a good time.

Every big celebration needs a pie.

On Saturday morning, Jim put together a pie from the last frozen apples from the fall season. Yum! The pie is great (it’s my breakfast, with espresso, for a few days), but the best news is that we’re eating the last freezer fruit means we’re ready to enter the spring rhubarb and berry season. More pies are in my future!

All is well.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Pie, brains and Shakespeare

My week started out on a high note—Jim baked me an apple pie! Who knew! It was really good, too. There’s nothing better than a fresh slice of pie to go with my morning espresso after an hour of Zumba in the morning. The Mutsu apples freeze nicely, so it’s on my summer list to make sure Jim freezes lots of them when he’s done with peaches. The even better news is that I’ll probably get another pie next week when we see Jim’s mom. We bought her a beautiful red deep-dish pie plate for Christmas and she’s planning on a rhubarb pie.

Most of my art week efforts were focused on my brain project. I’ve been gluing lots of dark objects on the depressive side of my brain to showcase facets of the disease. I’ve got clocks that stand still while you’re depressed, black roses and birds, and black pill bottles, all spray-painted black on the veranda. I made a trip to the Recycle Center to pick up black wine corks and beer caps to connect the abuse of alcohol with depression. To balance my efforts on the dark side I’ve been needle felting giant butterflies to float over my flowers on the euphoric side. I also began creating the giant vines that will be growing from the euphoric side to the depressive side by wrapping bailing wire with green yarn that will eventually transition to black. The giant green tendrils have engulfed my art studio and me—it’s a little out of control. The last major project has been to assemble the superstructures that will elevate the butterflies and other objects above the brain surface. I’ve been drilling holes in the brain to embed steel rods that are secured by bolting them at the inner and outer surfaces. I managed to secure some spring steel rods, thanks to Poynter Sheet Metal, to attach the butterflies. I’m excited about using the rods because it will give them a little bounce and movement.

I’ve also had a busy family and social calendar this weekend. Friday night we went to watch a black belt test at Monroe County Martial Arts. The boys have trained with Phoebe, the youngest girl ever to receive a black belt there, for as long as they have trained. She did an awesome job with all her kicks and techniques, and when it came to the grueling sparring rounds at the end, she still had enough left over to get in some kicks to the head of her black belt sparring partners. After a busy Saturday we went to see a production of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, put on by the IU theater department. I’ve seen the conventional version so many times, but this version promised to be lighter and more accessible. I persuaded my family that it would be fun, so off we all went. Puck was played by a woman, which was something new for me. She did such a fabulous job that it quickly erased my stereotype for the role and gave a whole new flavor to the performance. All of the characters were so vibrant and well developed that the story just came to life. I just love the Shakespearian English. The dialogue is at once powerful, colorful and poetic, evoking such vivid images. It was just an amazing performance, and everyone enjoyed the night out.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Seems like déjà vu…

This week marked the arrival of my brand new deep dish pie plate! My friend Jan Arbogast, a local clay artist, made us a beautiful replacement for our broken pan. To my great delight, it’s bigger than the last one - I’m telling Jim that means we can have healthier pies—they’ll have more fruit! Jim got right to work and made a mixed apple pie Thursday morning. It was yummy! Everybody got two pieces, and I have enjoyed pie and coffee for breakfast since Thursday. I’m guarding the last slice for tomorrow morning after Zumba.

In the art world, I spent the week preparing for the Déjà Vu art fair. Because the show features art created from reclaimed and recycled materials I decided I couldn’t show my ruffled scarves. They’re made from new merino wool and have no recycled content—unless you consider the sheep are recycling material for their coats. To fill in I launched into another new project that involves up-cycling old sweaters. The project came upon me when Cappi Phillip’s husband Bud had the vision to wash and dry her beautiful alpaca sweater she got on her trip to Peru. Cappi was very sad, but knowing that I could do something nice with it helped ease the pain. At least that’s what she said. I played around a bit cutting up felted sweaters and sewing them on to strips of felt. That wasn’t quite what I wanted, so I came up with the idea of making crocheted noodle scarves. I begin with a sweater, felt it, and then cut it into a continuous strip that I crochet to form the spine. Then I attach strips of felted sweaters onto the crocheted spine and felted the whole thing again. I think the resulting texture is really interesting. It’s a bold statement scarf and I really like them! I made some with black noodles and red spine, then red noodles with black spines before I went off playing with new color combinations. I’m basically riffing on what I learned when I made the ruffled scarves. In some strange way I see them as similar. The only major crash I had came when I tried to felt in the washing machine and the whole project fell apart. By the time I scooped all the tangled fibers out of the machine and onto the basement floor it looked like a giant eagle had swooped in and eaten a huge black sheep, leaving only the scattered coat remnants. That’s probably why we haven’t had mice in the basement this fall.

Saturday morning I packed up all of my latest creations and headed off to the Déjà vu show in Columbus Indiana. It was great fun. The Commons is absolutely the right place to hold the show—it’s airy, spacious and the layout supports a good traffic flow of fairgoers. Plus there’s a huge play space for kids next door, separated by a big, glass. sound-proofing wall. Thanks to Marilyn Brackney who did an amazing job of organizing the event and making it happen. I got to see people in Columbus that don’t make it to the Bloomington shows, including some of my friends from the Cincinnati workshop who made a long drive. Everything new was well received, including the noodle scarves and my line of Re-shirts I’ve been showing at the Discardia events. Next up is the UU show (the Unitarian Universalist Holiday Art Fair and Bazaar) in two weeks where I’ll show all my scarves, shirts, cards and wall art. Stop by(Fee Lane and the bypass) to see what’s new and buy some cookies from the cookie walk! Everyone goes home happy, guaranteed.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Two day school weeks

Help! The boys spent more time at home this week than they did in school. Monday brought the Martin Luther King Jr. day holiday and Tuesday was an in-service day. That brought on the usual parade of breadsticks, pizza and popcorn-snurfing kids over for play dates to fill the hours. That made me a little less productive, but I was able to keep my art projects moving forward. Luckily, in my house MLK day is also a pie holiday. The boys and I bought nine big apples, three each of ambrosia, pink lady and Sonias. I gave Jim my best ‘I need a pie very badly’ look. It worked! I had a nice week of pie and espresso for breakfast after a week of intense 6:30 am Zumba classes (thanks Liz and Cera!).

In art news, my big commission piece took a few steps forward as I worked on weaving the sky. I also started cranking on the carrots and beets during the week, which I can work on just about anywhere. The four carrots are done, and I must say that they look delightful. My completed beets needed leaves, which was an evening job this week. It was very cold several nights, and that meant fires in the fireplace. I sat in front of the flames and embers to keep my fingers warm as I worked. When the fire started to die down I called out ‘krb!’, which translates into fireplace in Czech. That brought a well-trained Jim in the living room to poke at the wood and get the fire stoked up again so I could focus. To make the leaf veins for each leaf I use somewhere between six and twelve cut remnant copper wires. Beet leaf veins require a lovely deep purple yarn, which I was lucky enough to have through a typically unusual twist of fate. When the boys were very small I ordered a few toys from an educational catalog. It also offered remnant yarn lots for sale and I bought a bunch. One of the first yarns I received was, I thought, a really awful color that I would never be able to use. Of course I didn’t know I’d have beet veins in my future. I wrapped my copper wires to create the veins, attached them to last week’s leaves and connected the leaves to the beets. Another vegetable done! Next it’s on to the onions.

Another big milestone this week for the giant veggie piece was receiving the frame. My friend and woodworker Tom Bertolacini made and delivered one of the oak frames and it looks great! My greatest concern was that it needed to be sturdy enough to support the large weaving. I’ve had problems in the past with frame-members bowing under the strain of the horizontal pieces. But Tom’s frame is made of thick oak with three central support bars. I have great confidence that it’s going to support the piece with ease.

The boys did manage to get back to school on Wednesday, even though a big storm was looming on the Wundermap. That gave me some time to have a delightful chat with my aunt and uncle, Maruska and Martin, in Pisek (in the Czech Republic). I haven’t spoken with Martin in over three years, and then the hour-long call cost me a lot of money. This time we talked using Skype and I took advantage of the internet. It’s great to be able to see each other as you speak and really connect with them. After this talk, and my Skype conversations with my aunt and uncle Mila and Pepik, and my cousins Renata and Milan in Prague over the holidays, I really have a warm and fuzzy feeling to be part of my bigger Czech family.

On Thursday the big snow hit. Of course school was called off and the boys were excited to have yet another day at home. Friday was back to school, and Saturday meant getting back into our routine with Taekwondo in the morning, a play date in the afternoon, and kluski for dinner. And next week my life gets even busier. Monday are more arts organization meetings, Tuesday at 5:30pm I’ll give a presentation at City Hall in the ArtsWorks series entitled, “Transitioning into an Art Career” and the big story about me in the Home and Lifestyles magazine should appear at the end of this week. And there are still giant onions to create!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin