Less than a week left till Fourth Street!

As the Fourth Street Festival on Labor Day approaches my days are jam packed. I’m moving art pieces toward completion and stomping out the organizational fires that inevitably arise as the show nears. In the world of art composition, I still have bikes on my mind. Last week it was the “Meet me by the Willow” piece, and that got me thinking about bicycle wheels. I needed some materials, so I took my family to the ‘Junk in the Trunk' community yard sale at Bryan Park. There I found some useful bangles that immediately became bicycle rims. To make wheels of different sizes I used wire I brought home from Grandpa’s pole barn (thanks again, Grandpa!). Wheels of all sizes ended up floating over the B-line trail in my mind, so the background of my latest weaving ended up forming a meandering trail using recycled yarns. I like the idea of the wheels of bikes, unlike cars, treading lightly over the path without leaving a strong impact on the world. All the elements came together in a piece I’m calling “Biking the B-line.” As I finished the piece I couldn’t help thinking that the design would make a really cool T-shirt. That got the ball rolling on a whole new project that I really don’t have the time for right now - but of course I started anyway! I asked my photographer Tom Bertolacini take pictures of all my latest weavings, including the B-line piece. I dropped the image file into Photoshop, played with the filters a little and added some graphics, and out popped a nice T-shirt design. I contacted my friend Janis, a freelancer for a local printing company, X-Printware, who is my contact for printing the T-shirts for the Fourth Street Festival. To make a long story short, I’m on track to make a first run of kiwi-colored T-shirts that I think will appeal to the Bloomington audience on many levels. It’s got art, biking, local design and printing, and it commemorates the opening of the B-line trail. Because the T-shirt is a reproduction of my art I feel justified in selling them at my booth, plus I’ll try to stock them at a few stores in town. I’m really excited about this new art and business venture.

The whole concept of the importance of bikes as a viable transportation alternative in town is big on my brain too. Of course that means I want to make another bike piece. This time I’ll make a bike floating on top of rusted car parts in the soil. I already have a good collection of rusty car scraps from my family trip to Michigan, as well as from a trip with the boys to the local junkyard and of course, I have PLENTY of rust coloured yarn! I’m really hoping the piece comes together by Fourth Street. I’m well on my way, so as long as nothing dramatic pops up that concerns running the show I think I’ll make it. You’ll just have to stop by my booth to see all my latest art - and pick up a T-shirt!

In between art there’s still a ton going on. I put down my needle felting long enough to watch my boys test for their brown belts in Taekwondo on Friday evening. They had a great test along with a bunch of excellent, more senior students. Friday was Tommie’s birthday, too, although we couldn’t celebrate much beyond ice cream after the test. We had flatbread for a birthday dinner Saturday, which followed an absolutely glorious afternoon at the Binford school field. The boys, along with friends Claire and Lara, spent several hours chasing, catching and ultimately releasing butterflies. They caught all the buckeyes they could ever want, plus a few monarchs, swallowtails and a few other species. I needle felted and supplied the water and snacks in between screeches and sprints after butterflies. I also was the beast of burden for the nets and soft cloth containment devices. We passed an older gentleman on the way home who smiled knowingly at me. I told him the pack mule always travels in the back of the caravan. I came home to a delightful dinner with a nice bottle of wine—how could I better spend a Saturday afternoon. Today, both boys team-celebrated summer birthdays by having friends for a movie with kettle corn from the farmer’s market. I had a couple of quiet hours while they watched Pirates of the Caribbean, then I dished out cake and ice cream to wind them back up. They were too full for dinner so they traveled to Bryan Park to play some soccer. That meant a little more evening weaving time for me. I’m telling you, my days are just packed!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Thunderstorm, thunderstorm, go away

My week started off with a few bangs. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all in the art world. A thunderstorm moved through the area and the winds knocked off a large, high branch across the road. Luckily, it fell mostly on the power line and less on the house, but of course that meant we lost power. Sunday night the same thing happened: a new branch but the same house. I also saw lightning strike the transformer, and wow! What a show! It looked like a fourth of July firework with sparks flying all over the neighborhood. This time the power was out all night, and we had to listen to the crews doing the repairs and cutting up the trees all night through the open windows. The bright spot was the fact that the back-up, battery powered sump pump came through and sent the flash flood streaming back out of the house. I took the precaution of lifting all of my loose yarn and works-in-progress up off of the carpet in my art studio, but happily, all stayed snug and dry. The whole experience inspired me to invest in a hand-crank radio for just such emergencies—now I need a hand-crank computer!

By candlelight, I managed to finish another felted tile piece. I really like how it turned out, and it’s hanging in the kitchen to get some exposure before it meets its public at my next art fair in Madison, Wisconsin. The bad news is that I managed to poke myself with my multi-pronged felting needle pretty badly, which I washed and treated with antibiotics as well as I could. I’d like to avoid doing that again! At least I got to release a little of the Czech vocabulary I don’t get to use much.

If it wasn’t injuries, it was art back pedaling. I went to Wonderlab to finish off the butterfly piece, which was a community art piece I helped organize over the winter. The Wonderlab volunteers painted over three thousand wine corks collected from around town; thank you, Bloomington oenophiles! One Saturday afternoon the museum attendees glued the blue yellow, and black colored corks onto the design I created of an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. This week I tried to paint on some details, but that turned out to be a terrible idea. I ended up painting over all of my efforts and declaring it complete, which is one of the great things about being an artist—you decide when the piece is done! Now the ever helpful, resourceful and cheerful Andrea is sealing it with urethane, and soon it should be hanging on the bee-line trail (I’m sure they misnamed it).

There are some new things to look for in the local art scene. I went to the library last week and yet another person asked me to do an ornament workshop, so I’ll be organizing something in the Bloomington area in October—drop me an e-mail if you want to be put on a notification list when the planning does come together. I also finalized plans for an exhibit in Valparaiso, Indiana this summer and fall. The opening of the new galley art center on the Fourth of July will include some of my ‘Shhh… the trees are sleeping’ pieces, and I’ll have blank notecards there as well. Then there will be a larger exhibit of my work for their full opening in mid-September. I’m looking forward to heading up there in the middle of August to see the new gallery space and give a talk. I’ll post the details when I have everything settled.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin