Planting Flowers!

This week we are in the middle of a February deep freeze.  A fresh blanket of snow fell on the foot or so that we already have, but that just increased my determination to plant some flowers.  No, I haven’t completely lost my marbles.  I’ve been working on one of the commissions that features a fence with a bicycle propped up against it.  Behind the fence is a garden of summer flowers along a flagstone path, and creating summer colors is what has helps get me through the cold weather. 

 If you’ve read my posts regularly you know that I don’t post an image of the completed piece until the commissioner has had ad chance to see it, but I will post a sneak peak of the view looking down at the flowers to remind you that summer is coming.  I’m planning to ship the piece to Canada on Tuesday, where I’m sure they will appreciate an early peek at summer. 

As one piece comes together I’m usually well along on the next commissioned piece.  I have all of the tree trunks in hand and the background is woven for the next piece in line.  I’m making branches for the trees as well as leaf clumps to fill in the canopy.  

 The background weaving already contains elements of the treetops, but I’ll build it forward with crocheted leaf clumps.  When I have all the pieces assembled I’ll start putting it all together.  I promised completion of the project by the end of March so I feel like I’m in good shape. 

These days I’ve been splitting my time almost evenly between commission work and creating costumes for the Sounds of South production of Beauty and the Beast.  This week on Friday I got closure on one section of the costume making. 

  With the invaluable help of my dedicated team of costume makers (students, parents and parents of former students!) we now have all of the shirts and vests for the male villagers completed.  I decided to mark the occasion with a costume parade in the SOS classroom to see them all side-by-side.  Some of the students and I hung the outfits along the back closet.   

This also allows me (and Nancy Riggert, my right hand in this process) to evaluate how the costumes work with each other, as well as how they all look from a distance.  We stood back and decided which costumes needed a little more embellishment or fabric love.  We’re pretty happy, but there might be some more changes once we see them on stage on the set and under the lights.  Thanks Becky DeLong for that good advice.   

The pants are still a work in progress, but they’re almost complete—Geni Schermer is on the job!  We picked out full-length pants in the show’s color palette of orange, teal and plum.  The SOS kids have cut them off at the appropriate length and now Geni is hemming them and introducing elastic into the calf bands.  Nancy’s friend Noni has made the ties for the bottoms of the knickers.  The goal is to create the feel of an old French fairy tale.  I think we’re pretty close, but I’m sure some of my Slavic roots crept into the costumes.  I’ll settle for an old European fairy tale look. 

My life isn’t destined to be all winter fun.  I’m delighted to be packing up my suitcases this week and flying out to Tuscon, Arizona for a five-day trip/three-day workshop for their fiber guild. The weather forecast is for the temperatures in the eighties!  I’m very much looking forward to the trip, and in anticipation of the workshop I’ve already shipped two big boxes of stuff (yarn, fleece and looms, plus show and tell items).  It will be a packed three days of fiber fun where I get to share my passion for what I do.  I do seem to have a lot of friends who will be stowing themselves into my suitcases, though, so there might be some extra costs for baggage.

Oh, and I discovered a blueberry pie this week—mmmm!  It didn’t have the rich and subtle flavors of the last pie, which has sparked much discussion about blueberry growth, varieties and the best time of season to harvest.  This is such a serious problem that I think we should run some more tests!  Or compare blueberries with cherries or raspberries! 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

I want to ride my bicycle!

The story of my winter has been creating commissioned pieces.  The next in line features a bicycle propped up against a fence in front of a flower garden.  Last week I completed the fence and this week I finished the bicycle and painted the fence!  Painting is exciting in the winter because it means we finally had a brief window above fifty degrees that allowed me to coat my popsicle sticks.  I was delighted to get that done because the forecast for the next ten days is for miserably cold winter weather with ice pellets mixed in for good measure.  On the bike itself, I always feel a little extra pressure to get the shape and proportions of the bicycle just right.  

 I showed the very first bicycle I made to Jeanne Smith, the owner of Bikesmiths in town.  I’m sure she tried to not to hurt my feelings as she gently critiqued the angles and proportions of my bike.  Ever since I have tried hard to treat my bikes like my biological organisms and get the details just right. This was also my first red bicycle, which is what the commissioner wanted.  I’m delighted to be pushed out of my black bicycle norm.  I guess I flash back to the bicycles in Amsterdam from my visit twenty years ago—I remember the bikes were always painted black.  I discovered that red just makes me feel cheerful and happy and I really like it.  I promised to have this commission to the owner by mid-March and I feel like I'm on track for that deadline. 

The next commission I promised to deliver by the end of March, so I’m feeling a little pressure to keep moving on that piece as well.  The piece features a forest path with two dogs waiting for their keepers in the foreground.  I’m very pleased with how the sketch turned out and I’m looking forward to creating the piece, which features a lot of trees.  That means that where ever I have gone I’ve been needle felting tree trunks.  Or unicorn horns, or whatever people see when they view the unfinished trunks as I poke away to shape them.  

 Oh, and when the warmer spell hit I also took that opportunity to do some more dyeing, because my stores of green yarns were seriously dwindling.  From the sketch you can see that various shades of greens are essential to the composition.  I got a great start on weaving the background yesterday afternoon when we had a snow day for the local school system.   

That gave me time and space to work in the art studio as the boys entertained themselves upstairs in the afternoon.  The morning was filled with boy-made pancakes, Apples to Apples, and the movie ‘The Boxtrolls”.  Then the boys invented a game that involved rubber balls, metal bowls, rubber bands and doing push-ups.  That’s all I need to know!  It gave me several uninterrupted hours with my loom, space heater and classical music as they played upstairs.  They even transitioned into making dinner for the family.  

 That turned out to be artisan macaroni and cheese by Jacob and three different versions of blizzard cake balls by Tommie.  The evening ended with a fire in the fireplace and a delightful glass of wine.  Hooray!  I hope I can be as successful today with a second snow day. 

On the family front, the big news is that both boys won gold medals at the ISSMA (Indiana State School Music Association) vocal competition.  I’m so proud of them!  An apple pie did appear just after I wrote the last blog, which means it’s been gone for over a week.  

 Fortunately the espresso has been available each morning, which pairs nicely with the ‘Oblivion’ cake from the Bakehouse.  That’s a flourless chocolate cake with a wonderful chocolate ganache layer on top.  We had a guest over for dinner and didn’t have time to bake anything ourselves.  The Bakehouse only had large cakes left when I got there in the afternoon, but that turned into a positive because the cake is awesome and I’ve been enjoying it for breakfast.  I think I have my new favorite local cake from a bakery since the departure of Angel B’s!  I’m thinking it will last until Wednesday, at which time I’ll be ready to switch back to pie again.  Maybe a midwinter cherry pie?

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Only two weeks till Fourth Street!

My artistic trajectory has been a mad dash to complete a set of new pieces for the Fourth Street Festival on Labor Day weekend. I had the good fortune to sell a lot of my big pieces at the Madison show, but that meant my booth was pretty empty. This week I brought three new pieces close to completion.

One piece that I’m really excited about is my ‘Meet me by the Willow’ piece. I was channeling all the great bike trips the boys and I had this summer. I just had a great time discovering how to make a bicycle out of yarn, thread, wire and shoelaces. For the ‘Willow’ piece I created the bike wheels and frame out of used baling wire. At the last Spinners and Weaver’s Guild auction I bought some shiny silvery string that’s a little hard to describe. I wrapped it around the inside of the spokes and gears to get the metallic look I wanted. For the rubber tires I used some puffy black shoelaces, washed of course, that turned out to be perfect. The bike seat and pedals needed to be comfy, so I needle felted those into existence out of soft fleece. I’m just delighted with how the bike turned out!

My ‘Willow’ piece also needed some green, flexible hanging branches. I began with the tree trunk I made on the trip back from Michigan and felted branch extensions onto the main trunk to support the green hanging shoots. I made use of some thin wire from a recycled spiral notebook to make the actual branches, then added some raggy looking green chenille that was perfect for the hanging branches. I just wrapped and felted everything until I was happy with it. When I added the bike it looks like a beautiful miniature scene. I even angled the front bike wheel forward a little, because when you lean your bike against something it never lays perfectly flat. I also like the feel of the piece because it tells a story. It makes you wonder about where the rider is and whom she’s talking to. To me it’s like opening a book in the middle of the chapter to read a passage without knowing what comes before or after.

If that weren’t enough, still more art is racing toward completion in my studio. The lemon piece was officially declared finished this week. While watching the boys do Taekwondo I’ve been needle felting pea pods. I have the set I need finished, so I’ll be attaching pieces this week to the now-completed completed pea plant. I’m hoping I can finish the projects in time to have my photographer, Tom Bertolacini, come to town nearer the weekend to take pictures of everything for my portfolio. It always bugs me when I sell a piece before I have it photographed, and I now have a bunch of pieces ready to go into the booth so I have to get cracking.

With so much art happening I have to think a little about what went on with my family this week. Friday will be the big Taekwondo test when the boys test for their brown belt. Then Jim (and others) will officially have to address them as ‘sir’ when they’re on the floor, something they’re excited about. I’m really proud of the years of work they’ve put in to reach this point, and I’m pleased they’re still going strong with TKD and sparring. We did also get to the farmer’s market on Saturday as a family. I put ten pounds of tomatoes in the freezer for wintertime sauces and cooking projects. We got fresh corn and a watermelon. Best of all, we got a big basket of peaches and I got—you guessed it—a peach pie! Yummm! Now that the boys like pie I don’t get as much, but I think I’ll manage at least one more breakfast pie with espresso.

Life is good, if busy!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin