Come see Portraits of Trees!

February?  Sorry, but there just wasn’t enough time to blog!  I feel badly that I couldn’t find a little time to sit down and share some stories about my work and life.  I really have been spending every free minute in my art studio trying to complete the artwork I promised for my ‘Portraits of Trees’ exhibition scheduled to go up on March 4^thin Bloomingon's City Hall atrium.  If you live in town or are passing through, I hope you can stop in and see it!  I’m really looking forward to seeing all 15 of them together and experiencing the story that they tell as a group – a family album.

I think the most fun I’ve had creating this exhibition has been bringing together the last few pieces for the story.  One of them is a piece called “Working Trees.”  I think everybody goes through times when they are working to save money, which made me think about stringing the laundry out to dry on a clothesline behind our house.  I created a line between two trees, then repurposed some of my family’s old clothes to hang on the line.  The T-shirt is a little piece I sewed out of one of Jim’s old favorites.   

And as long as he doesn’t know which one it is I think I’ll be OK saying that.  Tommie produces fabric for me to use all the time.  In this case I made a pair of jeans from a pair he ripped apart at the knee.  Luckily they were also a little too short for him, because the knee rips are now stylish and it’s harder to get him to part with his treasures.  I add a pair of red socks (from a felted sweater) and create a laundry basket to complete the composition.  Oh, and I had to play around a little with fabric stiffeners to get the clothes to hang the way I wanted.  I tested several brands against swatches to get a sense of how they behave.  I quickly found one that gives the effect I wanted on all the fabric types: wet clothes hanging on the line in a breeze. 

Last week I finished my “Flowers by the Tree” piece for the show.  I’m still working on that name, it's just a bit too factual.   I desperately needed a little spring color and memories of summer.  When it got so cold and nasty I just started making some colorful flowers.  I created a few colorful clumps and decided I needed some spiky liatris for a structural contrast.  

 I started out thinking about spring flowers, but as the piece came together the flowers turned out to be from the summer season.  I really like the bright red roses that I created from some bits of satin cording.  The piece also features a fence that I made out of used (and washed) Popsicle sticks that I stained to look like aged fence wood.  The staves are narrowed sequentially to create the forced perspective of the fence.  I could go on describing pieces, but it would be easier if you would just stop into City Hall and check out the show sometime in March!

A whole month passing means a lot happened in my family.  The highlight was Friday night, when my sister Edita came to visit.  One of the great things about being on Facebook is being able to reconnect with family and friends living in distant places.  This was so true this week when I saw that my sister, whom I haven’t seen in almost ten years, was flying from Chicago to Indianapolis for a workshop.  I reached out to her just before she reached out to me!  She ended up coming to Bloomington for a couple of days.  The first night we decided to stay home for dinner, then have a nice glass of wine by the fire and catch up.  It was great to sit back and share memories that were long forgotten by one of us.  It’s about time, since we’ll both turn fifty this year.  We agreed to stay connected and try to be a part of each other’s lives. 

The boys have been very busy too, with Jacob doing extra practices for his Hip Hop performance next Saturday (March 8th) atthe Buskirk Chumley theater.  His dance troupe, called the Footnotes, will be playing with the Hip-Hop troupe, ConnXion.  Tommie went off to Butler University with the Jackson Creek Science Olympiad team and came back with two medals - we’re very proud of him!

And...I’d like to note, though, that there hasn’t been a single pie in ALL of February, which is UNACCEPTABLE, especially given that there are four pie fillings waiting in the freezer.  It may seem like winter is going to last forever but it isn’t.  Lastly, I have some fun pictures of the boys to share.  Tommie wore shorts and flip-flops on the day it reached well into the sixties, and Jacob is very proud of his new Minion hat (thanks Peg Dawson!).  

Life. Is. Full. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Trip to Grandma’s

Last week was spring break for the boys and Jim, so the whole crew got out our winter clothes and headed seven hours north to see Grandma.  Along the way I created 32 green leaves that will go into my ‘Old Friends’ piece that features white lilies.  I know a lot of my friends question the wisdom of driving north for spring break, but we have such a wonderful relationship with Grandma.  We hung out, played ping-pong, ate well, and Jim and Tommie even braved the cold and wind to go on a fishing trip.  I’ll just report that the fish we ate all came from the freezer and Meijer’s.  While the trip was restful for everyone, I’m just not good at just sitting around.  I took my needle felting with me and also managed to finish all of the red petals for the tulip piece I’m envisioning for the Garden Walk exhibit.   All the pieces I’m working on are very spring-esque, including the now-finished tulip piece and the lily piece that’s still in progress.  

In Michigan we had lots of family time.  We even introduced Grandma to fondue, which she liked.   When Jim and Tommie went off fishing, Grandma, Jacob and I headed out to check out a stained glass supply store.  I did a lot of poking around to see if there were some interesting bits of glass that might be useful in my fiber pieces.  As I was looking, Jacob came up to me with a new craft he was interested in trying—now he’s making Kumihimo bracelets.   

He started out with dyed hemp cord and has since launched into bracelets featuring more bling-y material we picked up at Jo-Ann’s in Fort Wayne on our drive home.  He’s even hired me to attach the findings when he’s done, and so he’s off on his latest creative venture.   I suspect that if you come to our house for the Open Studio’s tour in late April he will have a display wall set up to vend his creations alongside my art work. 

Now that I’m back in my art studio I’ve been assembling the pieces I’ve made into completed works.  The first is Spring Tulips.  I love the colors in the piece—they’re just so bright and happy.  The piece is an off-the-wall bouquet and is very robust.  Now I’m gradually attaching the main veins to my lily leaves, and then attaching each leaf onto a major stem.   

I have been needle felting the white lily petals that will eventually be assembled into a lily flower.  All the while I’ve been moving mountains—of laundry!  The big piles down by the washer have all been moved through the system and onto hangers or into piles.  Now if I could just get someone to carry them upstairs! 

Finally, Indiana basketball has been a big thing.  They played an exciting game against Michigan to win the Big Ten Conference title (hooray!), and now they’ve won their first game in the NCAA tournament.  It’s all fun.  The flowers are just starting to appear (finally!), which means crocuses, snowdrops and the first daffodils are appearing in the yard and around town.  And since it’s spring, my thoughts are tuning to…  PIE!  Aren’t we due for another pie soon?  I see the bags labeled ‘cherry’ and ‘peach’ in the freezer.  Fingers crossed!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Flowers on my brain…

It has been a busy week of art creation this week, but not much on project completion. I took a few big steps forward on my ‘Hilly Hundred’ piece—I wove the entire green background. I wasn’t sure about the color palette that I wanted to develop for the bicycles, but while I was reading art magazines at bedtime I came across an image that solved my problem. It features a clock tower and a green pathway. I want to emulate the feel of the color combinations by featuring the green hills of southern Indiana and splashing on the colorful bicycle bodies. To create the bicycle wheels I’ve been collecting a bunch of old bangles from various garage sales and places such as Opportunity House. I’ll wrap these with silver yarn and wrap a black shoelace on the outside of the ring to create the bike tires. I like making bikes – it reminds me that spring is approaching!

On another front, I’m now fully committed to creating my ‘brain’ piece as part of the ‘brain art’ installment series around Bloomington. The project is being organized by Jill Bolte-Taylor and will feature embellished six-foot wide fiberglass brains at selected sites. I’ve been felting soft flowers for one side of the brain, and now I have four trays ready to attach. They’re all made out of scraps of wool and commercial felt bits that I’ve been collecting. I’m quite partial to a series of marigolds I’ve been creating and having fun with. I made a few of them at my art-associated meetings where my colleagues are used to watching my ‘voodoo’ art. That’s how they often describe my intense and incessant poking of small objects with felting needles. More recently I’ve been cutting fringes into strips of felt about a foot long. Then I roll them up to create the yellow marigolds. I always seem to learn something new when I start down a new road in art, and the marigolds are a fun offshoot of my ‘brain flowers’, and they blossomed from my holiday ‘Sweater Petals’ project.

The third piece that’s almost done now is my poppy weaving. I have been featuring the flower parts over the past few weeks (scroll down to see them) and I had hoped to complete it this week. My busy meeting schedule got in the way, however, so this week’s the charm for bringing the elements together.

In family news, my crew went to see Stomp! at the IU auditorium on Friday evening. It was wonderful to watch the boy’s reaction to the production. Tommie especially was engrossed by the percussion dance performance. He was bopping and tapping in his seat right beside me. And last night I was off to the ‘Art of Chocolate’ exhibit at the IU art museum. I juried two pieces into the show, so I got a free ticket to sample the special chocolate goodies they’ll have. I did manage to snag a few treats to bring home for the boys – Ooo, were they pleased !

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Thanksgiving 2011

Before I tell you about my travels and discoveries from this past week, I wanted to share some more about the Déjà Vu show. It was held in the Columbus Commons two weekends ago, which is a wonderful venue for the show. This week Marilyn Brackney sent me a few pictures that show off the space and my booth and so here they are…

My last ‘new’ project was creating noodle scarves by cutting up felted wool sweaters and repurposing them. As I played with the process a little I realized I could take the process in new directions. I started creating wool flower petals and combined them with small felted balls I had in my collection and came up with a pattern I really liked. About then it was time to head for Michigan to see Grandma for Thanksgiving, so I packed up my felted materials in a bag with threads, scissors and my new thimble for the trip. During the drive I made a bag full of ‘sweater petals’ (thanks, Grandma!), my name for the new creations. They’re fun little bright spots to go on jackets, sweaters or hats. I just know that the gloomy weather is coming and a little bright spot can go a long way to brighten your day. I’ll display these at the Unitarian Universalist Church Holiday Art Fair and Bazaar this weekend (the UU show) if you’re interested in seeing them in person.

It was nice to travel to Michigan for the holiday to hang out with Jim’s mom, the Gibson’s next door and Aunt Lois. I got to just relax and spend time with everybody, although I did have to help with Thanksgiving dinner preparations. Jim made the crusts for the traditional pumpkin pies and prepared steelhead and salmon for one main course. These are the fish that he and Tommie caught in October so it was a real family effort. After Thanksgiving the whole crew spent a day at the King Tut exhibition in Midland, which I hadn’t seen since I was living in Toronto before moving to the states around thirteen years ago. Has it really been that long? I enjoyed seeing the Egyptian alabaster carvings and other art pieces, the gold work and liked the whole atmosphere. On Friday I helped Grandma transplant seven trees away from her barn, which made her happy and me sore. Jacob got into that project with me while Jim and Tommie were off fishing again. They did come home with a bucket full of perch from the pier at Tawas, so Saturday brought another nice fish fry. The whole family ate very well over the long weekend.

Now I’m back in Bloomington, back to Zumba to work off the holiday food, watching the first snow settling on the tree branches and gearing up for the UU show this Friday and Saturday. I’ll have all my new scarves—lattice, ruffled and noodles—along with my new sweater petals. Of course I’ll bring some art pieces for the display too, but I’ve been focusing on making scarves and commissions rather than new pieces to display. Stop in and say hello, see what’s new in my booth and don’t forget to pick up some cookies from the cookie walk!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

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…