The last enchanted rose petal fell…

I am settling back into my writer’s chair, having just rediscovered my art studio and finding just enough time to write about my life again.  I delighted in an extraordinarily packed summer wherein I traveled to art fairs, fulfilled commissions, and created the costumes for Sounds of South’s Beauty and theBeast.  I had a wonderfully successful art fair season, including winning a ‘Best in Show’ award in Madison, Wisconsin’s Art Fair on the Square.  It’s a huge honor, and it includes an automatic invitation to participate in the 2016 event.  I’m already looking forward to traveling back to Madison!  The real elephant in the room, though, which kept me away from blogging, was my role in creating costumes for Beauty and the Beast.  The whole project came together wonderfully as the summer wound down.  The culmination of the process was opening night, October 17^th, when I got to sit in the audience with my hubby and watch the spectacle unfold.  The extraordinarily talented kids, including my son Tommie, really brought the costumes to life and the performance was simply amazing.  I couldn’t help but cry as the story unfolded.  All through the show’s run and beyond the response of the audience has been beyond words.  The entire process, from conceptual design of the costumes to putting the costumes into storage has been incredibly gratifying and unforgettable. 

The end of the run of Beauty and the Beast coincided with the beginning of my fall holiday show season.  That meant that there was little time to regroup before showing my art at the Convention Center.  Now I’m done with shows for the season and I can focus my December on my family and new art creation.  I can re-enter my own little nest, surrounded by boxes and boxes of yarns and collected materials.  I see myself as ‘not too busy’, but my loving spouse might disagree.  I currently have two exhibits hanging and I’m delivering pieces for the third on Monday.  The Bloomington Bagel Company in the Shoppes has ‘Changing Seasons’ and the Convention Center has the group exhibit ‘A Celebration of the Arts’.  The new exhibit will be the Member’s Exhibit of the SDA, the Surface Design Association, at the Blue Line Gallery.  Finally, in mid-December I’ll be sharing my adventures into a different medium by hanging a series of my colored pencil sketches at the Bagel Company on Dunn Street.  The series is called ‘My Summer Vacation’ and features drawings from a trip to Topsail Island in North Carolina this past May.  There will be opening receptions on December 4th for two of the exhibits, so it’s party time!  I’ll give more information in the next blog if you’re interested in attending. 

My major project for November and December is to catch up on all of my business accounting and apply for the next round of summer art fairs.  It’s not very glamorous work, but it’s a necessary task if I want to travel next summer.  I’ll also keep busy doing art during my waiting times when the boys are doing Taekwondo, Brazilian Jiu jitsu, Hip Hop and voice lessons.  I have to keep my hands occupied, so I’ve been needle felting small fruit slices for a new composition.  This past summer I created a piece, ‘Fruit Platter’, that I completed the day before we left for Madison Wisconsin.  We set up the booth and hung the piece, and the very first piece that sold was Fruit Platter.  I feel like I never got to enjoy it, and I never got a quality image of the piece.  I’ve been working on Fruit Platter II, which is now finished and I love this one too!  It is appearing in the Convention Center exhibit and in my application portfolio for summer art fairs. 

The arrival of cooler weather means its time to hunker down and cook chili, soup and lasagna for the freezer.  Everything I do, though, takes me back to art.  I began to recall years passed when we made ‘Fall Stew’ every year by collecting roots from the farmer’s market and cooking them into family dinners.  It sounds very romantic and fulfilling, and it was for a few years.  We made so much of it that it became a bit of a family joke that no one looked forward to.  I missed the nostalgia of it, so to celebrate the memory I’m creating a weaving called ‘Fall Stew’.  It will feature sliced tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, carrots, onions and other roots.  The vegetables will undoubtedly be my handwork project to pass the time during boy activities over the next month or so. 

For those of you who might be concerned that I didn’t get enough pies over the summer break in the blog, rest assured.  I paused during cherry pie season, about the time that Jim put a special pie filling in the freezer for our Mississippi relatives when they came for the Beauty and the Beast performance.  Since then we’ve had tart and sweet cherry, blueberry, peach, rhubarb, rhubarb blueberry, and persimmon pies.  The persimmon version was just a little too intense gastrically, so we won’t be making it again.  My last pie, sadly, was October 24^th when we pulled the tart cherry pie filling from the freezer for our guests.  Martha had never had a real cherry pie—I’m sorry, the canned stuff just doesn’t count.  The pie was awesome, but now it’s time for more!  I’m just going to have to suffer through pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving until I can get back on track with the freezer full of fruit pie filling, just waiting to have their pie dreams fulfilled!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Back to the Studio!

I’m back in my art studio working on several projects.  I have several commissioned pieces in various stages of completion, due early this spring, and I’m trying to keep them moving along.  The first features a bicycle propped up against a fence.  I wove the background and stretched it out in its frame.  I’m now building forward the flower garden and path area that projects into the viewer’s space.  I am also in the early stages of a second commission that is still mostly a vision in my head.  I know it will require tree trunks, so those are underway.  I suspect the composition will feature a forest path with two dogs sitting patiently, waiting for their owners to catch up.  

 I completed some sketches to share my vision, but I need to have the layout approved by the commissioner.  Now that I’m weaving and creating again, it feels great to be back working with my hands using materials that are familiar.  It was a lot of fun playing with new materials in the Bahamas, but fiber art is my life and livelihood. 

I have also made some major strides forward on my other big project.  I’m working on sculptural costume design for the Sounds of South production of Beauty and the Beast, to be performed this October.  My first completed piece is ‘Chip’, a sweet little cup with a small crack and the son of Mrs. Potts.   

She’s always ready with a cup of tea for anyone willing to brave the castle grounds.  Mrs. Potts is next on my plate (actually, I have to make the plates too!).  I have a delightful sketch for her and I have assembled her skeleton from donated, water sport hula hoops (I found that out directly!) and plastic tubing recycled from the former home of World Wide Automotive.  I will coat the hoop skeleton with ½” thick soft foam, then used and washed white felt (retired from Twisted Limb Paperworks) and then yellow fabric (scrounged from a thrift shop), green stripes and purple flowers that match Chip.   

The stripes will be easy because years ago I ordered ribbon that I thought would be perfect for an unrelated project.  It wasn’t.  On the bright side, I got a great deal for the ribbon on e-bay.  After eight years of storage I have finally found the right application for the green ribbon.  The flowers on both Chip and Mrs. Potts are made of the same purple felt (from the Materials for the Arts at the Recycle Center) so they match each other.  I made a pattern for the flowers and handed it off to one of the Moms of the SOS group and she cut out all sixty-four flowers I needed!  I love having the support to bring my visions to life! 

As soon as Mrs. Potts is assembled I’ll be ready add her final touches.  Her spout is in progress—I have now fitted the prototype onto the girls who will portray her.  The base is made of one inch thick couch cushion foam which I will up holster with yellow fabric.  It will be removable and attachable to the body of the teapot via Velcro.  Overall, I’m having a lot of fun with the design elements here—Chip is built from a laundry basket and a pool noodle, but you’d never know from the costume.  My younger son Jacob is modeling the costume in the picture above. 

I also had a wonderful adventure to West Lafayette Indiana with three other SOS moms this week.  The costume creating committee embarked on a hilarious adventure to see the Disney stage version of Beauty and the Beast to get ideas.  On the drive up we stopped at several thrift shops and scrounged for costume and prop parts.  We started off early in the morning, stopped anyplace along the way that might have clothing or prop treasures, and attended the evening production.  It turned out to be very educational for our planning.  I got a great hint for creating Lumiere’s torches without using an actual flame and an idea for the beast’s jacket and cloak.  

 I was less keen on the napkins and utensils that were part of the big dance number.  It reinforced for me how happy I am with my designs.  There are a large number of costumes to create for all the villagers, utensils and characters, but they are also coming along swimmingly.  I’ve completed the sketches and a prototype for the top half of the napkins and passed along a takeaway project to another mom to sew both top and bottom pleated napkin parts.  That’s basically how I’m hoping this will work—if I create the design and bring the materials and instructions together, one of the SOS parents can take over finalizing the actual costume completion.   

I have to give a big thanks to Nancy Riggert in this process, who has been an enthusiastic partner and a fountain of knowledge about how to get things done.  Her energy and effectiveness give me confidence that this whole project will actually come together on schedule. 

Good news!  There was a pie last weekend.  Jim made a beautiful blueberry pie from farmer’s market berries.  There was something subtle and special about the fruit in this one—it had a hint of black current flavor in the filling of summer blueberries.  

 I even think it was his best blueberry pie yet.  And I’m not just saying that because I know there are two more bags of blueberries in the freezer!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin