My Corner of the Sky…

What a week!  It has been a whirlwind of activity around our house.  Everyone in the family stepped up to make the house presentable for Grandma and Tim, Jim’s brother.  I must say it is awfully nice to have the entire house clean at one time, rather than attacking the neediest room each week.  The main focus of their visit was to see Pippin, but I’ll save those stories for later.

After the house started to shine, I did manage to squeeze in more needle felting.  I’m very excited about the felted tiles I’m creating featuring vegetables and fruit.  Everyone knows that fruits and vegetables are healthy to eat, but mine are especially high in fiber.  Ha ha ha!  This week I focused on peas.  When I was sitting outside the room where the boys were having their voice lesson I was positioned underneath a large commissioned piece that featured pea vines on a trellis, which made for a wonderful creative connection.  I worked, listened to singing and looked up at my artistic history.  When I thought about the fancy wine we planned to drink with Tim, I got to thinking about grapes so I had to make a few of those to feature on tiles.  And of course you can never have enough tomatoes, so I made more thick slices that show off the delicate seeds and internal structure. 

Saturday night featured the opening performance of Pippin!  It was fabulous to share the event with my family around me in the center of the sixth row—best seats in the house!  I just got to take it all in.  The kids were amazing!  They sang and performed their hearts out and the audience loved it.  The costumes really pulled it all together—I must say I’m really proud of my designs, and I’m incredibly grateful to all the people who transformed them into costumes, especially Nancy Riggert.  It was fun to see some of the parents who contributed to the costuming after the show, and they got to see how their efforts fit into the big picture.  They were in awe of the entire performance.  I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish as a group.  I’m grateful to Gwen Witten and Chris Miller for giving me this opportunity.  It’s just the biggest canvas I’ve ever worked on, and it’s so much fun to see it all come together. 

Next, a little parental gloating is in order.  Tommie and Jacob were fabulous!  The transformation that Tommie undergoes when he is onstage is phenomenal, to the point that people don’t recognize him.  He does appear different visually underneath grey hair and behind a beard, but his body movements, gesturing and voice characteristics are completely fabricated and distinct from his day-to-day persona.   And, if you want to see them live - the next performance is this Saturday Oct 22, 7pm - and here is the link to the tickets!

I wish my grandfather, a bass in the Czech opera, could have seen him in action.  Jacob shone too—he was a glowing, performing ball of energy.  He embraces the stage, but his stage persona is a caricature of how we see him at home.  He was a confident magician, a dynamic circus performer, and always in command of his art.  My little pumpkins!

We had a wonderful visit with Grandma and Tim.  We shared lots of stories and laughs over meals and a trip to the Farmer’s market on Saturday morning.  We found hot chocolate and coffee for everyone—including me!  Marina made me a special, off the menu, decaffeinated coffee that made me very happy.  At the market we sampled a variety of dainties for breakfast and found enough vegetables for the week. The biggest news from the gastronomic adventures was that there was pie.  It was an amazing blueberry/strawberry creation using fruit from our trip to Andrews Produce on Topsail Island back in May.  It came after the almond encrusted walleyes the crew caught in July and a nice bottle of wine, so we had an excellent meal.  And I got pie for breakfast over the next few days!  Today I finished the last slice, though.  I’m beginning the next countdown to the next pie—I wonder what and when it will be?

Until next week

Martina Celerin

Basket Full of Veggies!

Melt some butter and get out the garlic press—this week I have been making what I’m confident are the last two vegetables for my "Fall Stew" piece.  Yes, it has been a long, drawn-out process, but the slow process of making all the vegetables means I get to savor each contribution.  I got to thinking about Amy Hamilton from the Core Farms CSA.  We used to travel to Musgrave Orchard each week to pick up our basket of summer vegetables before our schedule just became to erratic to be able to plan on receiving vegetables each week.  Now we rely on the Bloomington Community Farmer’s Market.  Anyway, I remember how much she enjoyed describing the different characteristics of each garlic variety they grew.  

 I learned that there were many varieties and that they were either soft or hard necked, which helped guide my design.  I prefer the hard neck varieties over the grocery-story soft neck versions.  The hard neck garlic heads don’t store as well, but they are more flavorful and complex, just like a nice red wine.  They feature a single row of toes around a central core, as opposed to the jumbled toes of the soft neck variety.  I made three heads by first making small felted balls.  I stuffed small clumps of sheep’s wool that I got from Gale Hale (but I think she got it from Nancy Kreuger).  Last summer I invested a huge amount of time washing and cleaning and now I’m able to use the beautiful white fleece.  I stuff clumps into Grandma’s old nylons (the ones with holes) and tie knots off between the clumps.  A trip through the washer and dryer and a snip next to each clump releases a soft felted ball about an inch in diameter.  I needle felted the balls into toes and shaped them into the garlic head.  I’m really pleased with how they turned out!

My final choice for vegetable to fill the last space on the piece was inspired by a birthday party I went to last week.  My friend Cinny had her sixtieth birthday party at her home in Brown County, and Dawn Adams gave me a tour of the property.  I was struck by the sea of purple turnip tops that act as a cover crop to retain soil and nutrients.  The richly colored tops were shielded a tiny bit of green that survived the ravages of the cold snap we had in early January.  I couldn’t see the white bottoms, but I knew they were there, drawing from the deep tap roots that stabilized the soil.  I’m always up for a sign from the universe, so when I needed my own cover crop to fill in the last space in my weaving I knew it had to be turnips!  I can’t tell you how happy I will be attach my bushel basket of vegetables to the weaving and call it done!

The other project that has been keeping me busy for most of the week was working on costumes for Sounds of South.  This was my first full week of going into the costume studio every day.  With the help of my sewing and glueing faeries, Nancy Riggert and Misti Hays, we have made great strides on the boy’s vintage circus costumes.  As of Friday I have designed twenty of the twenty-five male costumes in the current SOS group.  I fully understand that there will be a new crop of freshman joining in the spring, but for now I’m looking forward to celebrating the complete set of the male costumes by the end of the coming week.  I should even have made a pretty good dent in the girl’s costumes too.  I’ll post the images of some of my favorite costumes next time.

It has been a good week, but I ran out of pie around midweek and have gone three days now without pie.  I think I need Werner Herzog to narrate a documentary on my pie struggles.  On the bright side, we’re one trimester away from a summer vacation!  

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Parsnips, Pie and ISSMA Gold

This week’s vegetable is parsnip.  At least that’s the felted vegetable I’m making for my piece in progress called ‘Fall Stew’.  I grew up with parsnips as a big part of our diet.  It’s a key ingredient in svíčková omáčka.  Every family makes it a little differently.  My father always prepared it with a meat roast surrounded by carrots, onions, parsnips and celeriac.  The key spices are peppercorns, bay leaves and juniper berries.  We used to collect the juniper berries, illegally I’m sure, at the Pinery Provincial Park during summertime visits.  That kept us in dried berries through the year.  After baking, the ingredients were combined with sour cream and milk and pureed.  This was an event where he always wore an apron because he managed to splatter the omáčka everywhere.  The sauce was then poured back over the meat and big knedlicky (big dumplings).  There was lots of sour cream to make it good and a little vinegar for flavor.  The carrots and parsnips were important to add a sweetness.  Many families have different versions, but that’s the basic recipe. 

As I was making the parsnips, which I always tried to sneak into my fall stew, I realized that most people aren’t familiar with the shape.  People around me who watch as I needle felt ask if I’m making albino carrots.  They’re probably the same people who can’t tell a loon from a duck.  It doesn’t matter, though—I know what they are. Next I’ll add to the composition a little garlic as my next ‘vegetable.'  You can’t really have a stew without garlic, can you?

I have a lot of art fairs on my summer schedule that I’m excited about doing.  That means I need to hide away in my studio and weave.  I always forget how much I enjoy weaving!  My frame maker, Tom Bertolacini, has been busy as well. He is a woodworker and photographer who lives out in Greene County and makes my frames from locally sourced oak.  He has been busy making seventeen new frames for me that he delivered on Friday.  I know I’m getting off track a little, but that was an incredibly busy day.  I have been going into South to work on the costumes for Pippin on Mondays and Fridays.  This particular Friday, the 29th, is exactly one month since my birthday.  I had lost track of that, but as it turns out, my husband and the SOS director (Gwen Witten) hadn’t.  As I was coming out of the costume studio into the big choir room to measure one of the girls for a skirt waistband, the spotlight fell on me and Gwen announced that it was my birthday!  Four big boxes of cookies came into the room from Baked in Bloomington, still warm and full of wafty smells to share with the room. It’s pretty amazing to have sixty-five vocally gifted kids singing happy birthday to you in perfect tune, all staring at you and smiling.  It was a little overwhelming.  My son Tommie was among the 65, but my husband and younger son Jacob walked in to be part of the experience.  I even got a present—a Kuerig coffee machine that will stay in the costume studio.  What a perfect gift and a wonderful surprise! It’s almost as good as the Bahamas!  Almost. 

Saturday turned out to be pretty intense too.  Both boys participated in the ISSMA (Indiana State School Music Association) voice competition.  Jacob was in Division 2 and Tommie in Division 1, and both received gold medals.  Tommie will be competing in the state competition on February 20th.  I’m so incredibly proud of them!  They are both gifted in many many ways. They sang with confidence and poise and passion.  When I sat in the audience and they opened their mouths and this beautiful sound came out of their mouths I had a moment of ‘who is this kid?’  We went from there to a 60th birthday party for a friend of mine who lives on a beautiful property in Brown County.  I saw an impressive field of turnips planted for ground cover, which got me thinking about Fall Stew again.  Sunday was my actual birthday party, with conch fritters, baked salmon and boca negra, a delightful flourless cake from Julia Childs.  

 Oh, and so much happened that I almost forgot to mention that it was a pie week!  Blueberry, yum!  I still have blueberry pie and chocolate cake in the fridge.  My life is complete.  At least for the moment.  I’ll probably want another pie by Wednesday.  

Until next week,

Martina Celerin