Fall Fun with Fibers

I had some great treasure hunts this week that took me all over the county. I started out driving my son Jacob to his doctor in Bedford to get a flu shot, which took me through some beautiful fall foliage in southern Indiana. To be out in the warm fall weather early in the week after being cooped up last week was terrific. Closer to home, a little internet sleuthing turned up a clever artist with a proprietary process for creating felt balls without a lot of effort. This really appealed to me since I’ve been making small fiber balls by wrapping threads, which is pretty tedious. I spent the money to learn the secret—if you’re interested, check out her work here. Knowledge is power, and I set off to scour Bloomington for the secret ingredients I needed. After a little bit of experimenting I’ve learned to create wonderful felt balls in a range of sizes. The little ones are really cute, especially the red ones!

One of the joys of any treasure hunt is finding kindred spirits in secret places. They’re not always on the same quest, but the goal is the same. At Opportunity House I ran into Lisa, the owner of LolaRue and Company , a place to create crafts. She said she often stops in at Opp House to poke around a little before opening her shop in the morning. We both get inspiration there, and Lisa calls it her therapy before she starts work in the morning. I also had a nice stop at the Thrift Shop, a consignment shop run by the Zeta Chapter of Psi Iota Xi sorority. Part of the fun for me is interacting with the people who run the stores—I get to chitty chatty with them, and they always seem interested to know what I’m going to do with my basket of mismatched yarns and odd treasures. What I get isn’t always what I see, like the beige sweater I found that ended up converted to felt balls in a happy leaf green color. And of course once the dye pots came out, watch out yarns! I didn’t have much green boucle left, which I use to make crocheted leaf clumps. I had some textured turquoise, but the color was all done. When the fiber stopped flying I had 7 skeins of green yarn, plus the white wool I dyed to exhaust the dye pot. The exact final color isn’t too important to me, as long as it’s green.

The rest of my week was less of a treasure hunt, but I did some prospecting for treasure. I worked on the demographic analysis, show summaries and the final report for the Fourth Street Festival. I used some of that information to write a grant proposal to expand the advertising reach for the festival next year—I guess that’s treasure hunting too. I’m gearing up for the Déjà Vu art show coming up in Columbus, Indiana on Saturday, November 7. Keep your eyes open for the posters around town sporting my sunflowers and Cappi Phillip’s heavy metal chicken, which I think is a very cool piece. Then you can drive to Columbus for a great day of classic Indiana Architecture and modern Indiana art!

Until next week…

Turtles and Ferns

For a working artist in Bloomington, this is the biggest weekend of the year. The Fourth Street Festival is Saturday and Sunday, and that means two things. I’m frantically working to finish a few new pieces and I’m working to make sure the show appears effortless to the fairgoers. The piece I’m working on is tentatively titled ‘Among the Ferns’ and it features an Eastern Painted turtle. I really like turtles, and I’m the person who stops to help the turtles across the roads when they set out on a quest. Everybody needs a little help when life’s traffic starts speeding all around you. Last weekend I wove the background for the piece, including some dirt. Normally I try to create the reddish brown earth tones that are common in this area (and remind me of chocolate!), but this time I wanted a mossy feel to accompany the ferns. I came up with olive brown earth tones to anchor the ferns. The fern leaflets I need were also started a while back. They’re pretty labor intensive, and it only gets worse if you can do math. I wanted 8 fronds with about 50 leaflets each—that’s a lot of cut copper flashing from my secret supply store in Michigan! This week was I was in a serious wrapping mode, consuming a whole ball of green yarn from my big dyeing project a few weeks back (the “Greens of Summer” blog from July 18th). The turtle was my good-humored travel companion (I’m always poking at him). He’s been taking shape as I watch my kids at their Tae Kwon Do class, or when I’m in the Creek-Love class at Rogers as the kids sort beads, or any place I have a quiet few moments to fill. Don’t worry though—soon I’ll be done and he’ll have some new fronds. When I get a picture he’ll join the painted turtle from “Among the Hostas” and the soft-shelled turtle in the “Summer Pond” sculpture on my website.

The other big draw on my sanity this week is tying up the details for orchestrating the Fourth Street Festival. I have a lot of wonderful friends who have volunteered to facilitate the Children’s booth this year as they create a mosaic art piece. I hope I have enough glue—it’s hard to know how far forty bottles (and 30 leftovers from last year) will go on the project. I’ll also help mark the show layout tonight with chalk on the streets, and that’s a big project. Then I have to set up my booth and put on my artist hat back on. We are extremely fortunate to have Jean Kautt acting as show manager—she organizes and directs the volunteers, distributes artist packets and information. She tells them where to park, where they can find great pizza—whatever they need. Her calm, steady temperament is perfect for interfacing with artists, who are famous for their curmudgeonly independence. They’re the kids who wouldn’t take directions in school in case you want to spot them early. She also loves to use Excel, so we bond on a deep level. With the show in her hands I can go off and set up my booth with confidence that everything will run smoothly. So if you’re in town this week, come by and meet the turtle, visit the Children’s booth, and stop in and say hello!

Until next week…

Treasures from Michigan...

Last week was a vacation week for the family. For me too, I guess, but I can take my work anywhere and so I ended up crocheting maple leaf clumps during the 8-hour drive to Michigan. The trip was more peaceful than normal, which let me focus on crocheting while the HoA (Husband of Artist) drove. This was because the crew went to the library and picked up some books on CD prior to the trip. We heard some great stories (Matilda by Roald Dahl and the first two Araminta Spooky books), but we also had to listen to many repetitions of tracks from ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ and ‘Run DMC’ that became, shall we say, distracting. Everyone arrived safe, happy and ready for fun at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

The two highlights of the trip were adventures with my father-in-law (aka Grandpa). One trip, along with the HoA and elder son, was on a fishing charter out of Ludington. We met the captain of the Hattrick at 5 a.m. at the dock, which is before any sane artist without an art fair deadline would crawl out of bed. It was a stunning trip to glide out of the harbor and leave the port lights behind and head to the pinpricks that reveal the secret fishing spots of the fishing fleet. After a while the harbor lights faded and the other fishing boats came into view. As we cruised across calm seas we watched the full moon sink slowly into the lake as the sun came up over the horizon. The gathering light brought the deep blues up from the lake. Later the dunes along Lake Michigan came into focus, as did the ferry arriving from Wisconsin and the lighthouse north of the harbor. Who needs fish? The answer, it turns out, is the rest of the crew. I caught the first fish, a big Chinook salmon, to show them how it was done. My father-in-law landed a nice steelhead later in the day, but overall it was a slow day. The captain and first mate unpacked and washed every lure they had but nothing seemed to appeal to the fish. The fish made for a wonderful meal with the family, with plenty left over for a few dinners in Bloomington.

For the second adventure I traveled alone with Grandpa. He knows the location of two top-secret supply stores. I’m sworn to secrecy on location so other artists don’t figure it out and take all the good stuff. They don’t even call themselves ‘art’ supply stores but I know it’s all a front operation. They’re so secret that we had to drive for hours through rolling Michigan landscape, through endless stands of birches, aspens and pines. Much of the land was covered with fern monocultures, which got me thinking more about a new fern piece. At one store I found the essential ingredient for stiff fern leaflets—copper flashing! I just love working with copper sheets. They’re strong and flexible, they hold their shape, and they yield to the mighty power of my Fiskars, courtesy of Big Lots. I’ve been cutting leaflets and wrapping with the beautiful green yarns I dyed a few weeks ago. The 15 shades of green come in handy all the time! I’m picturing a piece for Jaime Sweany at the Wandering Turtle that has ferns growing in front of a rock wall with a turtle resting in the shade.

Harvesting treasures in Michigan does have its down side. When you travel in a small car with lots of luggage it fills up fast. It was full coming up but I needed to pack in my treasures, including many pounds of fish, cheese from Wilson’s in Pinconning, and Kluski noodles from Kryziak’s in Bay City. Mmmmm. Luckily necessity is a playground for the creative mind, so I ended up packing stuff around and under the spare tire and other secret places. The HoA drove like crazy to make it back for the Gallery Walk, since I needed to be present at the reception held at the By Hand Gallery that was showing my work. We made it to the square at 5:01 and I ‘tucked and rolled’ with my gallery outfit and leapt into action. I’m grateful to Ruth Conway for hanging the show while I was traveling—the work stands out well at the front of the store. As usual, I had a wonderful time chatting with people about my work. I met one kindred spirit who hates the taste of beets but likes most everything else about them. I’ve discovered that the greens work well in soups and the beets themselves are good for dyeing. Everything has its place, and today I’m back in my art studio.


Until next week…

In they go!

My elder has a joke this week that goes: “Do you know what I do when I’m feeling blue?” The answer is: “I stop holding my breath!” My plan for turning blue was to connect with Mary Pendergrass in Nashville last week. Mary was running a workshop on indigo dyeing from Thursday through Saturday that I really wanted to attend. So of course on Friday evening I was thinking there was something I should be doing but I couldn’t think what. Arrghhh! Indigo dyeing! So I called up Mary to ask what was happening on Saturday. It turned out to be a ‘mini workshop’ for anyone who wanted to come. She told me I could bring all the skeins I wanted and to show up at 9:30. I didn’t need to be told twice and I was there with bright eyes and bells on. I also had lots of white fleece, wool skeins and a blank pad of paper. Was it ever worth it! I was the only person who turned up, and Mary was an incredibly good teacher and very helpful. I got to ask all the questions I wanted (which means a lot). Mary was very generous with her time, advice and materials, and we talked about colors, techniques and sources. Armed with new materials and ideas I’m already plotting uses for my new indigo materials in holiday ornaments and other projects.

The first thing I learned was that indigo dyeing is a little stinky. On came the long gloves, in went the yarn and I learned that rapid immersion is crucial to the process. It’s important to exclude air from the process, so you don’t want to froth around in the pot as the yarn goes in. In the dye pot the color is an exquisite deep teal color—I’d like to be able to capture that color! Once in the pot you work the yarns to get the dye throughout the skein, under any ties and deep into the fabric. When the yarn comes out of the pot the color transforms into the deep indigo hue characteristic of the process. The whole thing is really cool to watch, and now I’m excited to try this at home. Thanks Mary! The process was punctuated by periodic calls from Mary’s husband. He was watching the weather on radar, and he’d call us with warnings about heavy rain on the way and sent us inside on a couple of occasions in anticipation of impending doom. I guess Mary has an HoA (husband of artist) kind of like mine!

The rest of the week was hectic as I prepared for a new show at the By Hand gallery. I’ll be on hand for the reception from 5-7 this Friday so be sure to stop in when you’re on the Gallery Walk. Later in the week I put together a weaving and a stack of cards to mail to a gallery in Madison, Wisconsin. The owner saw my work during the Madison Art Fair and asked if she could hang some pieces in her gallery. Hmmmm, let me see. OK, YES! That was very flattering, and my web check of the place shows that my work will have a good home. That’s good to know. Last, my personal achievement of the week was when I got green beans on Wednesday from the CSA and had to slip them past my green-bean-hating-HoA. Well, I did it! I have a special dish I make where the beans are chopped up fine, lightly cooked and carefully disguised in a flavorful sauce that is put over rice. And…he liked it!

Until next week,

Riverbeds and Arugula

This week I’m descending into the green riverbeds of Monroe County. Last week I was dyeing a suite of verdant yarns that have already found themselves in my weavings. I constructed the base of one piece using a sumac weave that lets the weaving grow off the loom. It creates a realistic base for the single tree that will stand in the foreground. I wrapped the tree branches, needle felted the tree trunk and attached branches onto the trunk. As I laid out the background weave I used my trusty black sharpie and drew the outline of the piece on the warp. Then I started weaving, using a set of deep teals I blended to create the predominant colors of the weaving. I documented my progress with a picture and decided it was time for a break. The boys were ready to go for a bike ride, so we loaded the bikes on the rack, filled the water bottles and headed for the old rail trail and started our adventure. We stayed in the shade canopy and traversed the Clear Creek trail, a most pleasant eight mile trip.

That evening I got back to weaving and by the next night I had the piece finished. I’m really enjoying creating my most recent pieces with tree and water themes, and I’m pleased with how they have turned out. I stretched out the weaving and this evening I’m incorporating it into a dark brown frame. To finish the piece I’ll worked on needle felting trees onto the distant shore. I’ll also expanded the river into the foreground using sparkly silvers and a lot of strong contrasting blues to achieve movement in the water and give still more depth to the piece. To finish it off I’ll added some rocks I collected from Lake Monroe last year. My secret is to scour the creek beds entering the lake for small rocks that have a small hole eroded through the rock so I can discreetly secure them to the weaving with thread. I spend hours combing the creek beds and evading the copperheads for just the right rocks, and I must say that my collection of rocks with holes is extensive. Of course when that fails I have a secret back-up plan: my drill press!

To complete the foliage I also need to crochet leaves using the materials I dyed last week. I love it when just the right color for a piece I’m working on turns up, even if it comes about by accident. If you try enough color variations on enough materials you’ll find what you need. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

The other news of the week involves my latest breakthrough soup. I get all sorts of new greens from the CSA group each Wednesday, and this week it was arugula. I think I used the green arugula (and not my green yarn) in the Tuscan white bean and arugula soup I made on Thursday, which was very tasty. One sprinkles it with grated, aged Parmesean cheese from Bloomingfoods and it tastes terrific! It’s amazing what you can find on the internet—recipes to consume just about anything. Late in the week I dropped off one of my last abstract weaving to Wonderlab for their silent auction. Of course the boys quickly disappeared into the building as I chatted. I ended up doing my default activity, which is creating ornaments for the upcoming holiday art shows. I had a striking mohair teal that I picked up at the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival in Franklin, IN a few weeks ago. It’s such a strong, rich color that I had to incorporate it into a project. Later I dropped off some soup to one of my enablers, Mary at the recycle center. She gave me some organic soybeans that went into the soup, so I made sure Mary got to try it. I think that’s what recycling means. Anyway, the soup made Mary—and me—very happy.

Until next week…

The Greens of Summer...

This week I’m back in the art studio and weaving like an artist who sold all the pieces she intended for a gallery show in two weeks. I’m still excited about finishing the ‘river’ piece I wrote about in last week’s blog, but I was short on the right green materials. So out came the dye pots, including the new ones I bought at the Monroe County Historical Society garage sale. Out came the RIT dye (from Indianapolis!) and a pile of materials that I brought home from the Spinners and Weavers Guild auction. Sometimes the wools call out to me, like a high-pitched sound only a dog can hear. Other times the Guild members taunt me when a lot comes up that nobody wants. Martinnnnaaaaa—don’t you need this pretty blue yarn? So of course I buy them all. I pulled out deep blue cottons, golden corn silk and teal boucle wool, some green and yellow dye, my dye pots and I leaped right in! OK, not into the dye pots, but 14 skeins of yarns went into the pots. The process is long and involved, so life went on in between. I got started dyeing, and then the boys and I went to the library to claim their prize for completing 25 books this summer (insert proud mom smile here in your imagination). They each brought home a nice chapter book, which hopefully will be #26. We came home to move the yarns along in the process, then off to Bloomingfoods. We bulked up on fresh fruits and vegetables, and Tommie had to bring home the gnarly carrots he found. We were then off for a bike ride to burn off some summer energy, then on to pick up the CSA vegetables for the week. The greens from the CSA went into chowder that was mostly corn, kale and sweet potatoes, but it also had the vegetable stock I made from the freezer-burned green beans, turnips and other unused delicacies from last summer. I can only slip so many green beans past the HoA (Husband of Artist) before he gets suspicious.
The hectic-running-around pretty much sums up the events of the short week after our return from Madison. I’m still basking in the afterglow of my successes. We drove in to the driveway to see some beautiful flaming orange, yellow and red glads that had just opened, along with a few unopened burgundy racemes that were on the verge of opening. I planned to cut them for a nice welcome-home bouquet the next morning. But during the night the terrors of the town struck. No, it’s not adolescents out of control with scissors, it’s just deer fattened up on flowers. Those rascals mowed the glads down to the quick! If only the HoA were so good with the lawn! Only one bud of burgundy glad survived the nocturnal carnage, and that’s in a vase in the kitchen with a few zinnias. I guess our garden is just a nice buffet, timed to keep the deer happy all summer. Sometimes karma just spills out into the yard.

Until next week…

The Greens of Spring

Someone once told me that in order to really appreciate Indiana, you had to appreciate all the subtle shades of brown. But if you want to appreciate springtime in Indiana, you really have to appreciate all her shades of green. The progression began almost two months ago, which we noticed on our trip to Michigan over spring break. We left Bloomington guarded by skeletons of brown trees, spent a few days in Kawkawlin, and came back to the soft, timid greens of earliest spring. Her arrival isn’t like stepping into a new world of color, like Dorothy did in the Wizard of Oz. It’s a gradual process that most stop following until the whole spectrum of greens is on full display. All the textures, colors and variations are enough to keep an artist busy for a lifetime!

Maybe you’ve guessed that it’s been a green week for me. I’ve been thinking about the ‘Tree Woman’ commission piece and working on her leaves (see the sketch in the April 25 post). To begin I got out my big storage containers of green yarn and my crochet hook. That scared the leafy green colors and set them quivering, which is how I create the effect of a breeze (OK, OK, I’m just kidding!). To get the textured effect and colors I wanted I mixed three green yarns. Two of these I bought but one I created—you never know what you’ll find in my artwork! Here’s the story of a yarn’s mid-life crisis:

The yarn was raised as a pretty blue bouclé with a wonderful texture. She had every advantage in life and was well cared for, but no one really loved her. Even the person that cared for her most knew she wasn’t happy, and that a great career in the arts, admired by many, was her true destiny. I happened to be attending the Spinners and Weaver’s guild annual auction, one of my favorite events, elbows out and bidding on yarns in the midst of the shrewd and seasoned local fiber artisans. The auctioneer was Cheryl Johnson, a local spinner, and she was desperate to help her blue friend. “Martina, you need this yarn!” she implored, but I think she knew the yarn needed me. Blue just isn’t a color I work with a lot, so I grudgingly bid a dollar and brought home the blue bouclé. After puzzling over what I would do with it, I got out my yellow RIT dye and over-dyed it. Out came a magnificent, lush green (the upper right yarn in the panel of three yarns). She quickly made friends with the other greens and is heading for a dual career in the arts and home decorating. There’s always a happy ending when people bring fiber into their homes.

I have truly enjoyed the greens of spring this year, scootering or biking in to school with my boys and watching the lush foliage emerge. The highlight of this particular week, though, was going on a fishing trip in our canoe with the HoA (husband of artist) and elder son (aka the fishing machine, Tommie). I really enjoy paddling in the canoe—maybe it’s the repetitive nature of the paddle strokes that remind me of weaving. It was a beautiful evening on Tuesday, in between days of heavy rains. The water was glassy but not flat, and the partly cloudy skies let enough sun light in to see the glory of the lake and all the surrounding greens. I caught the first AND biggest fish, which usually wins you small sums of money in fishing bets in our family, but I haven’t seen the financial reward as of yet. I did enjoy the fish fry, with 25 modestly sized crappies (OK, there were a lot of small ones). But they were tasty! Especially with some heavy bread, some French fries and a bottle of Pilsner Urquel. Now that’s a fish fry!

Until next week…

Celandine Poppies and Spring Eggs

Completion! This week I finished a commissioned piece I’ve been working on for months. It has a fern background and Celandine (wood) poppies growing through. These are two of the truly hardy plants in our backyard, necessitating constant vigilance, trimming and plucking to keep them in check. I had finished the fern background and I needed to create the yellow poppies, so I stepped into the back yard and snipped a model bouquet. They immediately cheered up my art studio and set me to the task. I started with scraps of thin, plastic-coated wire that I shaped into petals. The flowers were needle felted onto the wire frames, ironed flat, then wrinkled into shape. The wire nicely holds the shape. The pistils are made from wire wrapped with green wool and touched up by needle felting. I think they’re really pretty in a vase.

In the Creek-Love classroom we took the next step on our Gold Fish in the Blue Ocean piece. We finished gluing seashells onto the frame, and the kids have sorted tons of gold beads and jewelry pieces to make the gold fish. At home I’ve finished sculpting the fish by bulking them up with cellulclay in anticipation of gluing on the gold scales. Now I’m excited about seeing the final project—it’s been two years in the making. It started when my older son Tommie was in the second grade and is continuing as Jacob moves through the first grade. The weaving phase was the most time consuming as we slowly built up the giant background, but now we’re rapidly approaching completion.

The last big project of the week has been gearing up for our annual spring egg hunt, assuming it doesn’t rain. So far we’re looking good on the weather, but of course you never really know in the spring in Indiana. We’ve invited 19 kids and have a twenty-gallon tub filled with packed eggs. We save the plastic shells from year to year and the kids take home the booty inside. Last year we geared up for the event but it rained every weekend in season, and suddenly it was 90 degrees. Melting chocolate candy is not what you want to have a bunch of screaming kids handling while running around your house. We did have to discard most of the contents of the eggs from last year—Whoppers go bad, it turns out, as do a lot of other rich chocolate dainties. The gladiolus corms were dehydrated but apparently OK, so they got their own spot in the garden after an overnight soak. I guess it kept the kids from thinking they were candy and accidentally eating them. After the hunt the HoA (husband of artist) will have a suite of cupcakes for the annual ‘Cupcake Picnic’. As of now we’ve checked off all the key requirements for a successful kid party: Chocolate? Check! High-sugar products? Check! Chance to run around and scream? Check! Time limit so wired kids go home before the house is destroyed! Check! Check Check! We’re ready!

Until next week…