Back to the studio…

I spent a feverishly productive month in January costuming for the fall production of Hello Dolly put on by Sounds of South.  I’ll share some images later, but I want to begin with my February efforts in the art studio.  The reality of all my commitments is settling in with a couple of deadlines looming.  One big project is to assemble pieces for an exhibit called “Feast your Eyes” at the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  I will be shipping several pieces, including a collection of six felted tiles featuring southern fruits.  I have some citrus pieces that I made before, but I challenged myself to create a peach.  The flesh and skin of the peach is much like that of an apple, but the colors are very different.  I blended deep yellows with almost maroon fleece to develop the mottled streaky texture of a peach skin.  The real challenge, though, was making the pit. 

The texture is so obviously distinctive and interesting.  I used fleece that I dyed intensely with onion skins where the color came out so dark that seemed perfect for a peach pit.  Different fleeces take up different amounts of the dye, and I find that the lighter materials are actually perfect for creating felted onion skins.  The pit features concavities in the surface, but I then forced the shadowing by using a natural very dark brown, almost black fleece.  I’m really pleased with how it all came out! 

After the peach construction, I still needed one final traditional fruit for South Carolina.  I chose figs because my cousin in Mississippi, Martha, always talked about making fig preserves.  Several years ago I finally had a chance to try some real southern preserves when she brought some to Michigan and they were amazing.  Of course we needed our own.  We were inspired to plant a Midwest-hardy fig tree and each year we get a few more figs but still not enough for a preserves.  Clearly figs are a more southern thing and are plentiful there, although evidently they are becoming harder to find, even in the south.  The commercial jams that we can buy here are OK, but they are nothing like the preserves that Martha brought.  Anyway, my experiences led me to felt some figs for the project.  I will also ship “My Roots” to fill out the exhibit, which opens June 10 and runs until September 17th. 

In other fun news, I received an unexpected call from the editor of Bloom Magazine.  It seems that the editor, Malcolm Abrams, found my exhibit (Nature to Nurture) at the Bloomington Bagel Company on the east side of town.  He offered to write a story about my art and the exhibit for the April/May issue of Bloom.  I stopped in to the Bloom offices for a photo shoot the next day and I anticipate that it will turn it into a nice story—I’ll let you know when it’s out!  

With the teasingly warm weather I’m of course starting to think of the glorious days of summer and hanging out by the water.  That inspired me to complete a couple of water pieces that I started late last year.  I’m channeling the inner birches of my childhood, and I have woven some grasses for the background and should be attaching birches later this week.  For now, I’ve hung the unfinished piece at a prominent spot in my studio so I can stare at the water and enjoy the calming waves as I collect my thoughts for future pieces. 

Just to tease you with an update and a few pictures from the Hello Dolly costuming, I have all of the current member girls Sunday best costumes designed.  Many moms have spent lots of time attaching all of the bits and pieces that I have pinned together on the mannequins to create each costume.  I usually have about five mannequins in progress and I just move from one to the next while my sewing and gluing faeries capably bring the costumes to life. 

In family news we are screaming up to the boy’s second degree black belt test.  It will take place on March 4 at 2:30 pm at Monroe County Martial Arts.  If you’re in the area, please stop by to cheer them on!  We’ll have a reception afterwards catered by the Owlery.  I’m expecting lots of whooping and hollering and hugs all around when the kicking stops and the sweat settles into the carpet.  Also looking forward, tonight Jacob and I have tickets to Georgia McBride, put on by the Cardinal stage company.  I’m told it’s the story of an Elvis impersonator that reinvents himself as a drag queen.  And I’m told that the costumes are amazing!  I can’t wait.  

 I think we’ll combine the show with a fancy schmancy dinner and call it a night on the town. 
On the pie front I am barely surviving.  I can’t even remember the last pie.  I’ll have to check my phone for the last pie pictures to see how long the drought has been!  Oh wait, I guess I did have a very nice tart cherry pie the last time I was in a pie drought.  Oh, and I guess there was a very nice peach pie a couple less than two weeks later.  It just feels like its been months!  That’s good enough for me—I need another pie!  We haven’t had blueberry or apple yet this year.  Just sayin’.    

Until next week

Martina Celerin

Seventy Degrees and Summer Beckons!

After a heavy focus on making costumes, this week I launched back into making pieces for the summer art fair circuit.  Yesterday the thermometer reached seventy and the day was sunny.  Eranthis, snowdrops and crocuses started flowering across the yard, filling it up with fresh colors.  The weather seduced my mind with thoughts of summer, so off I went to make some summer birches by a stony lake shore.  I picked up some florist wire remnants and have been wrapping them with yarn from alpacas that I buy at the summer farmer’s market.   

My friend Cathy Crosson of RedRosa farm raises alpacas and sells a yarn, spun from a particular color of charcoal grey alpaca that work well for me.  The wrapped wires contribute the narrow diameter branches of the birches, and I can bend them as I like to make natural tree pieces that hold their shape.  I wove the background for the piece about a month ago, but other responsibilities prevented me from advancing the piece.  I stretched out the weaving in one of the oak frames that Thom Bertolacini builds for me, so now I’m ready to build forward the background using a dimensional crochet technique.  When everything is in place I’ll attach the birch trees and start listening for the waves splashing up on the rocky shore. 

Friday marked a milestone in my other major focus, making circus costumes for the current Sounds of South members in the upcoming production of ‘Pippin’.  I’ll share a few individual pictures, but I think the image I like best shows the two racks jam packed and bursting with purples, blues and greens.  I even threw in some black, silver and white for good measure.  That was a good stopping point for my costuming, which allowed me to go back to creating weavings.  I’ll use the next month to focus on making art to travel to summer fairs.  

 I also need to develop pieces for a fall exhibit I’m working on titled ‘Treasures from the Earth’.  In April I’ll go back to Bloomington South and making circus costumes after the freshmen class has been selected and measured.  I’ll continue collecting used clothing in the color palette for the show until then to draw on for the new costumes. 

Speaking of costumes, yesterday I delivered twelve mannequins (a big thank you to Deb Christiansen from IU!) to the Blue LineGallery.  These will support my costumes from last fall’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ production.  

 The gallery will host a joint exhibit with a fashion designer that will take you behind the scenes a little bit.  I’ll share my rough sketches for the costumes so people can see the thought process that connects the conception with costume building and leads to the final, wearable product.  Jim Andrews is curating the exhibit so I’m looking forward to getting a list from him describing which characters he would like to include.  I know he’s partial to the grater, the whisk and the potato mashers.  Mark your calendars and come out on March 4^th for the opening reception, although the show will be up for a couple of months. 

In travel news, I’m packing for a workshop in Memphis,Tennessee next weekend.  I do know that my three big boxes with fifteen looms and mountains of colorful yarn have arrived.  That helps give me confidence that everything will go smoothly when I get there.  I’m looking forward to the explosion of color when they come out.  I just need to remember to pack my Swiss army knife in my suitcase and not my carry on when I travel!  

 I probably won’t be able to write a blog next weekend, but I should have lots of news and pictures when I write again on March 5^th.   On the home front, Jim surprised me with a cherry pie on Saturday morning.  Hooray, my favorite!  I think he knew that.  We definitely need to pack more fresh farmer’s market cherries into the freezer for the cold months.  I’m going to have to muddle through on blueberry and raspberry pies until May.  

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Portraits of Trees are on my mind

I’ve been weaving feverishly in my art studio of late.  Looming hard deadlines to hang a show are always a great motivator!  I’ll be exhibiting a show called ‘Portraits of Trees’ in the City Hall atrium in the Showers building starting March 4^th, but I started the new year with only two pieces appropriate for the show.  I was envisioning a collection of pieces that resembled photographic portrait stills.  The subjects are trees of varying species set in different contexts, but always capturing a family connection or relationship to the people in their lives.  Given the space, I think I’ll need at least a dozen new pieces with this theme.  Now I’m up to seven, after many hours in my art studio.  In my last blog I featured a piece I called ‘Tethered Memories’, which featured a balloon tethered to a park bench.  I love that piece, and it set me to imagining a baby in a stroller with a balloon tied to the handle. 

The completed piece spawned the idea for a triptych entitled ‘Trips to Bryan Park.’  The second piece in the series features a tree and a little red wagon, imagining a child old enough to pull a wagon full of essential toys to the park.  These are both pieces that resonate with my trips to Bryan Park with my boys as they grew up.  The current phase of their life will be titled something like ‘Emerging Independence’ and features a bicycle leaning up against a tree.  Now both boys ride to the park by themselves, armed with a cell phone and instructions to call when they arrive and when they set out for home.  They take their tennis rackets or a basketball when the weather allows and meet their friends in the park.  The last piece I just completed for the show is called ‘Family Portrait’ and features a large paper birch stand in a landscape format, shown in the summertime. 

Both Jim and I grew up in northern climes surrounded by lots of birches, so the piece feels like an extended family portrait.  I had some help from Noah Blumenthal wrapping birches at the end of last year after he graduated from IU.  Some kids end up flipping burgers, but Noah decided he wanted to wrap birches to show his parents that their money supporting his college education was worthwhile!  It was good to have someone in the art studio to chat with, but it is also good that he’s a quiet person so I was able to focus on my own work.  Anyway, now I have a month and a few days to come up with five more tree pieces!  I really have to stay focused.

After some brutally cold weather, January has begun to look up.  Well, at least the days are getting longer...  Jim finally got the hint that it was time to make another pie.  A beautiful cherry pie appeared Sunday morning while I worked in the art studio.  I didn’t even notice it until later in the day when I spotted it on a swing through the kitchen.  My birthday celebration is also coming up this week, which we moved from late in December.  There are just too many good things to eat around the holidays, so making another chocolate cake didn’t seem like the right thing to do.  I’m hoping for a nice dinner and a Sacher or Linzer Torte.   

And maybe even a present!  I won’t get my hopes up too high just yet, though.  With all the goodies coming my way, it felt great to get back into a fitness routine of late.  I seem to have gotten into more classes than I was doing before, but I love it.  There’s a new Dancefit class at Windfall in the mornings, and Hayley, the instructor, is an amazing ball of energy.  She’s incredibly positive and enthusiastic, so much so that it’s fun to get up in the morning.  I’m still doing Bollywood on Saturday mornings at Panache, and this past Saturday the class was packed.  A lot of my favorite people were together having a rocking good time.  I even get some afternoon exercise time with Jenny (sweaty Mondays) or Walter (wicked Wednesdays).  After a full day of making art I really appreciate the chance to just go dance and throw my body around.  I get a reminder with my morning espresso and cherry pie that I need to get up and exercise!  Life is good.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Red and blue with a white stripe

It was a busy week of good things in Bloomington. First, I received the good news that my t-shirt design for the 35^th annual Fourth Street Festival was selected by a close vote of the Fourth Street committee. The image is one of the abstract designs in the series that came from my vacation sketches last May on the Outer Banks. Along with the selection comes some responsibilities, and I have to choose the background color that best suits the design. I’m considering brick, soft yellow or a sky blue. If you like the image, pick up a t-shirt this Labor Day weekend!

Then, my Valentine pie wish came true—a warm cherry pie greeted me when I came back from Zumba on Monday morning. I didn’t even know we had cherries! I’ve had some delightful espresso and pie breakfasts this week. And for Valentine's dinner I baked two heart-shaped pizzas that were demolished in record time.

In the art studio I’ve been on fire. I completed the background for my Ratatouille piece. I posted an image of the piece in progress on Facebook and received a number of comments, including one from my friend Sonia. She thinks it looks rich and red, warm and inviting—and it reminds her of a womb. I even managed to stitch the background onto the second large frame from my personal frame builder and organic egg supplier, Tom Bertolacini. He nailed it again for me and I’m grateful for it. At the same time as I’ve been working on the background I managed to make progress on the foreground. I’ve come up with a way to create the vegetable slices that gives them crisp edges. For a fiber artist, that can be a challenge. I zipped all over town to consignment shops and resale stores picked up all the well-worn wool sweaters I could find. I felted them, then cut and stacked the pieces into multiple layers to make the zucchini and tomato slices and eggplant cubes needed for the design of the piece. I pulled out my long needles and stitched them all together, and I’ll complete them by felting the colors and veggie patterns on the surface. I’m excited because I have the proof-of-concept that my vegetable design will come together for the piece. I’m adding the skin to the first zucchini pieces and I’m pleased with the recycled-sweaters-as-veggie-art concept.

Friday turned out to be the day of six tests for my son Tommie. He and Jacob shared the last one, as they tested for their blue-with-a-white-stripe belts in Taekwondo. It’s the first step on the way to their brown belt, and they’re both doing very well at it. Their friend Jonathan came with us to the test and came out to Bucchetos for pizza with us afterward. That wasn’t the end to the week, though, as Saturday we got up and headed out for a combination bike ride (Tommie) skateboard ride (Jacob) and walk (Jim and I). We spent an hour and a half on the Clear Creek trail seeing the birds and horses along the trail. It was a winner of a trip, as judged by the fact that there were no injuries and Jim remembered to bring a snack for the halfway point.

The conclusion to the week came Saturday evening when we attended the ‘Day of Writing and Art’ at the Lodge downtown. I didn’t really know what it was about, but I was asked to contribute a piece for the show; I chose “Fruit Salad.” A group of local girls were participating in an ArtsWeek program called ‘Women Writing for a Change.’ A group of local artists contributed perhaps 25 art pieces to hang on the wall. As part of a much longer day of activities, a group of girls carefully viewed the pieces and wrote out what the pieces communicated to them. The process is called Ekphrasis, which roughly translates to ‘speak out’, or call an inanimate object by it’s name. We saw a parade of talented girls reading aloud their imagining of what the pieces might mean. The beautiful coda to the event was when the audience members took turns speaking out loud phrases or sentences from the poetry that touched them. It’s just like having a nice dessert after an elegant meal. It’s another reason that Bloomington is so great—I was again exposed to some unexpectedly wonderful art.

And the week finally ended with my sweet husband making a giant bowl of kluski for dinner Saturday night...yum!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin