Newsflash: Moss grows on wheelbarrow!

OK, so maybe it's not actually moss...This week I decided it was time to start working on some of my commissions. One features a three-dimensional path through the woods on a large-scale format. The tree branches will need leaf clumps to project out of the piece, so a couple of weeks ago I started crocheting some yarns together to see if I could produce the effect I wanted. The initial result was disappointing, which convinced me I needed to dye some mohair boucle a deeper shade of green for the leaves. Around a month ago I ordered some big loop mohair boucle from Sheep Street in Morgantown for the project. A few weeks ago I picked it up, but I’ve been waiting for a block of time in my schedule to pull out my dye pots and experiment with it. Fortunately, I have several big stainless steel dye pots in storage. My father-in-law envisioned them for traditional salmon boil dinners, but they never got much use. They’re perfect for me—thanks Grandpa! The day’s success was some gorgeous greens that will be perfect for the commission piece. I was also feeling very experimental, so I decided to try dyeing with some fur scraps and old fur clothing I got from Marilyn Brackney a couple of weeks ago to share with Cappi Phillips. I took what I thought was a reasonable amount, throwing in the white and light brown fur pieces into the dye pot to fulfill my grand vision of fluffy green fur pieces to use in the ground cover adjacent to the trail. Unfortunately, I learned that when you boil animal skin it turns into a globby mess. Only a few small pieces survived the process. My inner scientist reminded me that every experiment is useful, even the failures. She thinks that will help rationalize having to clean up the mess, but she’s wrong. I just focus on the intense green boucles and some other wool that I threw in as a ‘what the heck’ kind of test. I always find a use for everything.

My other major art project involved an intense effort on completing the grassy blades for my ‘Sunrise over Goose Pond’ piece. I attached them to the background and I’m close to calling the piece done – I think that a wandering, half awake salamander looking for his “morning joe,” unaware of the distant hooded crane, will be the finishing touch.

The mail carrier has been my friend this week. When I think of our mail carriers, I fondly remember a family story involving a very young Jacob. We were sitting at the dinner table having an animated conversation about something. We asked him, with enthusiasm, “What do birds eat?” He shouted out “mail carriers!” Of course we all broke up laughing. Anyway, the mail carriers escaped the birds of prey to bring me a letter from Homeland Security inviting me to take my citizenship oath in about two weeks. As soon as I finished my citizenship test (did I mention I got a perfect score?!) I decided on a vision for a weaving I wanted to make. The piece will be called ‘A Home of my Own’. It’s really about my journey toward citizenship in this country with my wonderful extended family and the loving community I live in. It will feature a hand holding a trowel, digging a hole in a patch of garden soil. Adjacent to the hole will be a small seedling, ready to be transplanted.

The snail mail carriers weren’t the only ones on my side this week. My e-mail brought me the news that the Loring Park Art Fair in Minneapolis had chosen me to be a featured artist this year! I had to scramble to put together some text describing my work and my history, but that’s all in place. I’m really honored to be selected, and I’m looking forward to the trip out there this August.

The big local event on my horizon is the Trashion-Refashion show this Sunday at the Buskirk-Chumley theater. It is presented by the Center for Sustainable Living and Discardia, and it starts at 7 p.m. It’s all very hush-hush, but I’ll let you in on a secret—I’ve created a trophy for the show. I’ve been sworn to secrecy about the design, but next week I’ll post a picture. I also created some fashion for the show, which I will model this year. My son Jacob has an outfit that he designed and will model, and Tommie has volunteered to hand out programs at the event. Jim will chauffeur and applaud, and so it will be a family event. We had our first rehearsals this week and I know it’s going to be a lot of fun. I hope to see you there!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

I Must be Finnish!

The news this week is all about finishing projects. I’ve been making the salamanders for ‘Six Salamander Salsa’ for several months now, and this week they put their feet on the bright green woven background. When I first set my colorful amphibian friends onto the minty surface, I was a little concerned that the contrast might be too stark. I was thinking up ways to help break up the background as I added the salamander legs and feet to connect the bodies to the weaving. As soon as the feet touched down, though, I realized that was just what I needed. The twenty four legs and twenty four feet really brought together foreground and background. I like how the salamanders are partying.

I was also into finishing frames this week. The oppressive humidity relented for a couple of days, so out came my unfinished frames. I broke open a jar of gel stain that I picked up from the Re-store to try. I’m all for trying to re-use and re-purpose materials when I can. The bad news is that it wasn’t very nice to work with. Either I don’t know how to use it, or the gel has lost some solvents along the way, but the stain turned into a sticky mess when I tried to wipe it off. I guess I know why it was at the re-store! I figured that the solvents in my usual stain would dissolve the sticky stuff on my frame, so I just gave it a second coat with my fruitwood stain. To my great delight, it turned out perfectly! I had been slightly unhappy with the fruitwood stain, because the color, a dull brown, wasn’t just what I was looking for. I ended up with a subtle brown with just a hint of a brighter yellow. Plus, the frame dried beautifully. The days are still quite humid, but I got into a routine of sealing frames outside at 11:30, zipping off to pick up my boys from their art camp at noon, then putting the mostly-dry frames into the basement with the dehumidifier to complete the process. Just three days and they were done!

I did have several other irons in the fire, or maybe shuttles in the weave this week. I started working on a three-dimensional forest scene. One of my early popular pieces was ‘A Walk in the Woods’, which had some dimensionality from the trees and canopy that surrounded a path into the woods. I now have a few new techniques, like projecting the ground forward and crocheting leaf clumps that increase the volume of the canopy. I’m going to try to bring these elements together in a more elaborate composition . I realize that isn’t really finishing a piece, which is this week’s theme, but I’ve finished deciding how I’m going to do it!

We did have a little extra drama in our lives this week. My son Tommie broke his wrist this week and will be in a cast for three weeks. The good news is that the bone stayed in alignment—it’s a fairly common torus fracture—and he should pop back into action without a lot of complications. He’s had the cast for a week now and it doesn’t seem to hold him back too much. But he is finished with the pool, water, the beach and fishing for the summer. The cast comes off the day before school starts. Snap! We thought he should keep it on for a few extra days to get the sympathy factor working for him at school but he refuses.

Here’s hoping that everyone stays cool and comfortable this week through the heat wave that’s settling over the Midwest. This is the one time of the year I’m really lucky to have a basement art studio that’s cool and filled with all the best toys!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

How to turn oak into fruitwood...

The weather this week in Bloomington was glorious: the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the bulbs were bursting. We even topped 80 degrees at the end of the week, warm enough to open doors and windows to let in the spring. After a long, cold winter, what does spring mean around here? Yes, it’s time to start staining frames! I always have a few projects that need temperatures over fifty for paints, sealants or other finishes to work properly. I’m starting to back up on weavings and need frame homes for them. So first I dusted off my power tools and did a little spot sanding. My friend and photographer Tom Bertolocini makes oak frames to my specifications and I stain them to match my weavings. This week I got out a dark oak, a colonial maple and a lighter fruitwood stain. Don’t ask me what fruitwood is. I just know that when I put it on oak frame I get a range of light finishes that work with a lot of my pieces. I can finish a frame and hold it to the piece and decide exactly which finish I like best. It’s sort of like holding up my socks against a pair of pants to see how I like the match. If a certain frame finish really doesn’t work, back out to the veranda it goes and out comes the black spray paint!

I also have some big electronic news from the week. I joined the twenty-first century, aka Facebook. I was amazed at how easy it is to get connected and start talking to people. It’s been good to connect with a lot of people I’ve lost touch with over the years. I must seem to be getting older, because some of my local art buds were shocked that I did it. While it’s great to know what everyone is doing, I can see how someone could spend a lot of time keeping up with her friends, new and old. There’s also kind of a weird voyeuristic aspect to it all. You get to read about things that a person might not tell you, based on your own sensibilities, but they might tell another friend. You’re going where? Are you sure that’s a good idea?

In the salamander world, we now have a party. You can almost see them together in the waiting area at Red Lobster: ‘Salamanders, party of three—your table’s ready’. My latest creation is a cave salamander. It isn’t white, like you might expect from a dweller in the back of the cave. It lives at the openings and it’s a lovely papaya color with tiny black spots. She joins her friends the black spotted and mud salamander. I’m planning on having six salamanders for a salsa, but the weaving might take seven. Six is my favorite number, and six is a lot less salamander creation than seven, so I’m rooting for six but then seven is a better number artistically. They should be ready for the summer art tour, which is going to be a college town circuit. So far I’ll be in Columbus, OH in June, Madison, WI in July and here in Bloomington in September. I hope to see you somewhere this year!

Finally, this is a major flowering season in the yard. My first Facebook post reported the first tulip that burst into color in the yard. It just made me so happy to see it. It was red, of course, and it came up right in the middle of the herb garden. The herbs get their chance to shine later in the year. We’ve got deer candy—oops, I mean tulip buds—appearing all over the yard. The best part is that I’ve forgotten what colors I bought last year. Sometimes I’m like Dory in Finding Nemo for stuff like that. I find that life’s a lot more fun when it’s generally good and you get to keep reliving the best episodes! I’ve also got my bulldog husband out spraying the emerging tender greenery with his own anti-deer blend spray. So far so good! And I’ve done my part, although it isn’t for the flowers. I still hear our local raccoon climbing on the roof in the middle of the night, but now he’s clearly on the outside looking in. I just curl up, my eyes still closed, and smile a big warm smile.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

The Week of Tylenol

I had a full and delightful week. This was spring break week in Indiana, so the crew and I packed up and we drove north to see Grandma in Michigan. The first highlight was the rhubarb pie my loving husband made, using the two pounds of rhubarb I packed. Of course nothing ever turns out quite as planned. We didn’t have quite enough rhubarb, so in went an apple and some frozen strawberries. The baker made a slight error and used self-rising flour for the crust and over-filled it with filling. Everything got bigger; the crust rose up and the filling bubbled out. It turned out to be a tasty creation, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a pie. I also never miss a chance to scout out new supply stores, so I visited the Northwoods Outlet store in Pinconning and Larson’s Salvage in Bay City. I found lots of useful stuff but no brass flashing, a key secret ingredient in fern leaves. It also turned out that during our trip the last of the snow melted in Kawkawlin, so on our last day we got into picking up sticks with Grandma. That event signals the exit of winter. One cleans up the worst that Michigan’s snow, ice and wind deal out between Halloween and St. Patrick’s day. I was pretty sore on the drive home, but that’s part of the adventure.

Our return to Indiana was marked by trees beginning to bud and the first daffodils coming out. We left the forests in winter mode, but on the drive back we could see the subtle pinks of budding trees on the horizons and the yellows of willow in the low areas. During the drive I put the last touches on my black salamander with yellow spots and fleshed out my mud salamander. Now he has arms and is ready to crawl around my art studio. The background for the piece is already finished, so he has a home when he’s ready for it. When we pulled up to the big yellow house we were greeted by the iris reticulata, which have a beautiful deep, rich purple and elegant yellow markings. They burst through the carpet of leaves that my loving and well-intentioned husband meant to remove last fall but didn’t. The leaves probably gave that little extra bit of protection that carried them through the last cold spell. That’s one secret to a good marriage: a wise spouse learns to rationalize their partner’s failings as strengths that probably turn out for the best. If you’re smiling too you appreciate what that means.

I did have one job to do when we got home. We’ve had a raccoon that defeated the last home security system we installed. He found a way to burrow between two layers of wire mesh that weren’t well connected over the soffit on the east end of the attic. There’s nothing more upsetting to a good night’s sleep than hearing a raccoon creak his way into your house, slide down the trusses over your bed, rearrange your insulation and plunk down for a good day’s sleep right above you. Did I mention that this happens at 5 a.m.? If you’re lucky you get to hear him go out around 11, too, although his egress is slightly less offensive. I’m sure they have food and sex on their minds so they’re eager to get out. Anyway, after more serious but failed attempts to capture him in a live trap outside (thanks for the extra trap, Cappi!) we decided to be a little more devious. We waited until he was outside, then before he could settle back in for his morning snooze I climbed into the attic. I was armed with hammer, nails, wire mesh, wire snippers, flashlight and a mask. It’s always a bit of a stretch and shimmy to get through the small hole into the attic, then an uncomfortable crawl on hands and knees using the trusses spaced every foot or so. I cut up my mesh to fit the opening then started nailing it up with every nail I had. The work was especially challenging because I couldn’t make full swings with the hammer, so each try included a hit on the nail and a hit on the preceding truss on the backswing. After an hour of that I was ready to get back to the light and clean air, desperately hoping that we hadn’t trapped the critter inside. So far so good—no scratching last night, and no thumping around this morning. The bad news is that I’m paying for it now—all my hammering muscles are screaming out to me, so it’s back for more Tylenol.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, sunny and seventy, which means a perfect day for collecting. I went along on a family fishing trip to lake Monroe. The crew was looking for crappies, which they found along with a small bass, but I was looking for a stone fish head and tail for a weaving. Well, not actually stone fossils, but good enough replicas to capture my imagination. Stone elements make a nice contrast with the fibers in the weaving, and I like including collected fossils and rocks in pieces. I found what I was looking for and I found the beautiful bones of a small mammal. They were bleached white from the freeze/thaw cycles of winter and the water and sunshine of spring. The cleaning process was probably enhanced a bit by a few little critters along the way. Despite their appearance, I need to find just the right compositional idea for a piece to include them because my loving spouse cringes every time I mention using bones. It’ll just be our little secret when I put them in and we’ll see if he notices.

Finally, the real headache of the week is just coming on. It’s that time of year when I have to sift through all my business records to come up with the numbers for my tax forms. Oh joy. At the same time I downloaded the forms I need to become a citizen, which is a big step for me. I now know that not every American has a gun, and that Bloomington is a wonderful oasis for an artist like me. Plus, I’ll get to vote! Watch out world!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Chameleon Conga and Salamander Salsa

My life and art seem to revolve around my friends in Bloomington, Indiana. I live in a community rich in resources of all kinds that help me flourish, and I’ve come to deeply appreciate what I have. For example, this was ‘chameleon week’ for me, courtesy of one of my benefactors, the Monroe County Public Library. I went to the kids section to find picture books with big, brightly colored images of my quarry. I found a treasure trove of books to help me on my way, including a picture of a nice pardalis chameleon. To create its body, I searched through my materials only to find that some evil spell-casting wood sprite had transformed a ball of my fleece into a parsnip. Oh wait—that was me! The parsnip didn’t fit into my veggie piece, so I transformed the parsnip into the body of a chameleon. I keep everything I make, since you never know when something important will turnip. Sorry, my kids are into bad jokes right now and I couldn’t resist. I also pulled out all my green fleeces that I dyed last year and a dark brown natural fleece that fit in nicely and set to work. I put the last touches on it while listening to the proceedings of the Fourth Street Art Festival committee meeting, surrounded by local artists and craftspeople who are all committed to the success of the local art scene. As you can see in the picture, I then let the chameleon run around my art studio and inspect my yarns before she settled down among her home ferns. I hope somebody likes her as much as I do.

Well, I figure that if I can make chameleons out of turnips, I can turn amphibians into salsa. More precisely, I’m now off making six salamanders to dance together in my next piece, ‘Salamander Salsa’. I picked up a few colorful books from, you guessed it, the Monroe County Public Library. The variety of colors palates for salamanders is truly amazing. I’ve completed the first dancer, a spotted salamander, which is a rich, rich black color with yellow spots. Now I’m working on a mud salamander, whose name fails to capture its beautiful bright red color with tiny black spots. They always seem to be standing on sphagnum moss beds so I’ll have to whip up some moss for this piece too. This project will take a little time to bring together, since my three-dimensional animals always take more effort than I imagined.

The other big event on my calendar this week was the DBI (Downtown Bloomington Inc) annual awards ceremony. It was well attended, and I got to chitty chatty with lots of downtown business people. It’s so nice to see how cohesive and well-supported the downtown community is. This is a community that wisely values the vitality of its downtown, which is succeeding where other downtowns are failing in this tough economic market. I’ve benefitted from a number of downtown businesses showing my art over the years, with big thanks to places such as the Wandering Turtle, By Hand Gallery, Bloomingfoods and the Bloomington Bagel Company. I feel like I’m part of a vibrant community, and I like that feeling. Bloomington feels like home.

Until next week,


Martina Celerin