Yellow

If you’ve ever driven through a neighborhood where the lawn was a solid, lush monoculture of well-bred grass seeds, well, that wasn’t our neighborhood, and it certainly wasn’t our lawn. I sometimes wonder if the lush lawn society harbors a certain paranoia that the weeds are watching them. The dandelions would take the lead in filling yards with yellow monitoring devices. After a while they turn into communications devices, spreading seeds to all the neighbor yards. It’s especially hard to infiltrate lawns laced with pesticides and patrolled by curmudgeons with bludgeons, but dandelions are fearless. I’ll admit it—they’ve won me over. I love to see them in lawns. They’re such a pretty yellow, and spring is such a yellow flower season. And they really are determined and fearless, ready to establish and prosper anywhere. Those are admirable qualities in anyone. I took a few pictures this week to show some of my favorite yellow friends to show what I mean.

Of course if you know me at all, you know that what captures my imagination in life ends up in my work. I decided this week to work on a piece called ‘Lawn Flowers’. I’ve done a similar piece that was popular and the composition made me happy, so I decided it was time to re-imagine the dandelion as beauty in the lawn. I pulled out my wonderful crunchy spring green yarns to start. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I should weave or make a salad. I’m envisioning a thick green base, as if you’re looking at the lawn from an angle, with three clumps of dandelions flowering. In a perfect coincidence, I ran into my friend Bonnie Gordon-Lucas at Bloomingfoods this week and had a spontaneous lunch date. The lunch was good, but she was concerned that I should be incorporating some reds and yellows into my green grass. We also bonded on the wonderful spring green colors that you can only see this time of year. If you look closely at the emerging foliage you can see the rich, iridescent greens that seem to darken as the summer goes on. We science geeks know that the leaves start to produce anthocyanin pigments to absorb the intense sunlight of summer, and those “non-green” pigments mask the spring beauty. Enjoy it while you can!

Speaking of yellow, I’ve been working on the fourth salamander for my ‘Salamander Salsa’ piece. Perhaps it’s subconscious, but I decided to make a Barred Tiger Salamander. He’s bright yellow with a black barring pattern, kind of like a tiger, only less orange and feline and more yellow and amphibian. So far I’ve only made the body, so he isn’t much of a threat to run away until I can add his legs. The ones I’ve made are more mobile, so I have to keep a closer eye on them. I don’t dare take them anywhere any more. So now I’m sitting at four-salamander salsa and waiting for two more guests.

The last big news is that this week was the Fiber Event in Greencastle. I carpooled there with Ruth Rives, a sweet friend with firm opinions. She recently started weaving and is really enjoying it. Overall, we had a delightful drive through the country on a warm and sunny spring day. We ended up spending several hours at the fair, longer than we expected, poking around in all the piles of fleece and yarns. I couldn’t wait to get home to start mixing green fleece with the drum carder I borrowed from the Spinners and Weaver’s guild. I’m trying to get just the right dark green for the dandelion foliage. And speaking of pleasant drives through the country, I also went to a reception for the recycled art show hanging the new Hotel Indigo in Columbus Indiana. The show looks great (stop by if your in the neighborhood!) and the reception was nice…thanks, Marilyn. It was followed by a fun visit to the recently re-opened ice cream parlor, Zaharakos. I got to see the massive musical instrument, the Welte orchestrion and sit at the marble bar. It felt like you were in a 1950s movie to see all the little spigots for soda. I had some nice conversations over a grilled cheese sandwich and a fruit cup. I forced myself to try and ignore the most amazing banana split walking past me, as well as all the other old fashioned ice cream treats. The good news is that I have two boys who will accompany me there in the summer to help me decide which to try first.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Yellow, yellow, everywhere...

This week I’m thinking about the bright yellows of spring. Our garden has a glorious show of yellow eranthus (winter aconite) on display. The blooms spill over into the lawn but we don’t mind. The first daffodil shoots are finally poking up in our garden and that means the whole town is about to burst into yellow and white. When that show is over and the lawns become lush and green, up will pop a sea of yellow dandelions. Many fail to appreciate these resilient bloomers, but not me—I’m ready to pop off their little heads and use them for dyeing projects. Last year we cleared our yard of blooms and supplemented with a few more from Bryan Park down the road. This yielded a beautiful soft yellow that went into the ornament project, bringing back little yellow puffs of summer well into the winter season. And off I go into a reverie, thinking about weaving long-stem dandelions into crowns with my grandmother from Prague and beachcombing for treasures on Lake Huron, and learning to dye with onion skins. She was a special friend to me, a very classy person and her take on life was far ahead of her time.

This week’s art project is a dandelion display. The flower heads are yarn pom-poms and the stems and veins are made from wire that retired from a career in electrical fencing to focus on art. The leaves are needle felted in place and patterned on a picture from a library book to ensure anatomical accuracy. That’s the downside to having a degree in plant biology I suppose. Anyway, the piece is intended for one of two upcoming shows I’m doing titled: “Inch by Inch and Row by Row”, taken from The Garden Song by David Mallett. The “Inch by Inch” show will be hung in the Showers building downtown on April 1st. This is your official invitation to stop in and see the pieces.

It was also an exciting week for other reasons. The excitement started Thursday morning when I was in the shower, right next to where I broke through the wall to melt the frozen pipes (see January 17 th blog entry). I started to smell smoke, which led to a 911 call, which turned into five fire trucks, an ambulance and a police car sitting in front of the house while the muscular guys in heavy coats carrying axes came running up the stairs to check out me and my shower. I should have thought of that when I was single! They quickly found a fluorescent light ballast that had shorted out, disconnected it, and off they went. Everybody got to school a little late and the HEPA filter got a workout to clear the smell. The real highlight, though, was when I was standing on the front lawn chatting with the fire chief who admired our one-of-a-kind mosaic shutters! They were made by Cappi Phillips, a local mosaic artist and good friend. Before the smoke spiced up my shower, I was getting ready to pick her up and head off to the Heritage Quilt Show with another wonderful Bloomington artist, Dawn Adams. We had a great morning together, and I really admired the quilts of Carol Taylor. I especially liked the leaf patterns in vibrant colors, which got me thinking about—you guessed it—a leaf piece!

Until next week…