Mother’s Day means pie!

This week I excitedly laid out all the vegetables for the ‘My Roots’ composition, thinking I had enough vegetables to fill the piece.  I was mentally ready to stitch it all together, but dang if it didn’t still have an empty spot!  That sent me back into my art studio with my fingers digging deep into my boxes of yarns and fleece.  I settled on making one more kind of root vegetable that speaks to my childhood—kohlrabi.  I remember finding peeled and chunked-up pieces in the fridge quite often and eating it after school like pieces of apple, although I don’t remember anyone ever cooking with it.   

To get started on making my own kohlrabi, I sorted through my big bin of green fleece and pulled out about six shades and tints of green that I thought looked as if they could come together to create the coloration of the skin.  I used my drum carder and blended my choices together into a green that I was happy with.  The kohlrabi bulb typically has a light green color with petioles that come straight up from the bulb.  I decided to do a little wet felting to create those structures.  I used my kohlrabi green fleece to needle felt everything together and viola—kohlrabi!  Now I think I need to make five more bulbs and I’ll have enough root vegetables for my piece. 

This week I also launched into my commission piece that will involve creating a trellis to stand in front of a garden fence.  I’m envisioning the fence to be made of weather-worn wood, much like the one that surrounds our back yard.  I went out and took a few pictures so I could capture all of the colors hidden in the aged wood and returned to my stash of yarns.  I dug through my gray and sand and light olive bins and pulled out everything that was even close to the colors I envisioned.  I warped a loom and now I’m looking forward to weaving this week. 

I haven’t completely abandoned my efforts for the Sounds of South production of Pippin this fall.  One side project that I did was playing with graphics that we might use to support the production as T-shirts and posters.  In designing the imagery, I thought a lot about the story line.  It’s basically a coming of age story where the principal character is guided by the lead player who wears a black top hat.  

 Our setting will be a vintage circus decked out in royal colors that represent precious stones.  I’m using sapphire blue, emerald green and amethyst purple for the chorus costumes.  Pippin is the son of the king who rebels against his tyrant father and ultimately chooses his love interest to be Catherine, a member of the circus troupe.  He decides that a simpler life with her and her son is closest to his heart.  Some how that seems appropriate on this Mother’s Day.

Speaking of that, I’d like to wish a happy Mother’s Day to all today!  I got a beautiful bouquet of flowers yesterday from my boys, and I woke up to the smell of pie baking in the oven.  It turned out to be a mutsu pie from last summer’s fruit.  It made a fine breakfast as a fresh-from-the oven warm treat.   

Last week I delighted in a strawberry-rhubarb pie made from Nancy Riggert’s rhubarb and farmer’s market strawberries.  That was nice, but only lasted until about Wednesday, since the boys seemed to like it a lot too.  For me, life is good when you get two different fresh pies in one week!  I hope you find whatever makes your life special on Mother’s day today.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

To the Des Moines Art Festival and back!

The tomatoes are done!  I had a wonderful trip out to Iowa, which gave me lots of time to needle felt the rest of the tomatoes I needed for the piece I’ve been envisioning.  I’m in a hurry to finish up pieces because I had such a great art fair in Des Moines.  Now I need to replace pieces and expand with some new pieces for an exhibition that I’ll describe in a minute.  In Iowa, the weather didn’t cooperate as well as I hoped, punctuating the show with some pop-up thunderstorms.  

 The patrons still came out to support the artists, though, which I appreciate and respect.  Our visit to Iowa began in Iowa City to see friends we haven’t seen in sixteen years.  We stayed with Ute and David, Jim’s friends from a previous life.  Their two boys are the same age as ours, and we all just clicked beautifully as if we’d been visiting for years.  After a delightful dinner, a good night’s sleep, and a wonderful breakfast we were ready to set out for Des Moines.  Setting up the booth took us longer than usual due to frequent interruptions from the rain.  On the bright side, that gave us plenty of chances to stop into our favorite vegetarian coffee shop, the RitualCafé.  

 In spite of the weather, or perhaps highlighted by it, it’s clear that the show is extremely well organized and administered.  It ran like a well-oiled machine with lots of happy volunteers. There were always people ready to help, from directing us through set-up to squeegeeing the streets to help keep a dry surface between rains.  What impressed me most, however, was the reliability of the patrons.  When the rains came they scattered, but they popped right back into place when the skies cleared.  I really like the feeling that my art is well appreciated; I certainly feel that way in Des Moines.  

 In the end, seven pieces found new homes.  I also managed to break into the local television and print media, appearing in three videos that you can access online.  Click here, here, or here for the links!  My sons Jacob and Tommie appeared in some of the videos and were terrific in the booth with explaining my techniques and materials to patrons.  I just love sitting back and listening to Jacob expound on my work, and he seems to love doing it.  We also managed to find some time to walk through the Pappajohn sculpture park, which was the backdrop for the show and very close to my booth.   

My favorite piece there is an amazing sculpture by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa.  It is built from fused metal letters that you may walk into and experience from the inside or outside.  We also experienced the newest sculpture, which looks like a rainbow of panels built into a circle.  I took a nice family portrait from the center of the piece.  While I was busy, my family managed to sneak off to do some sailing on Grays lake close to Des Moines and hit the local water park.  Unfortunately, heavy downpours cut short their adventures.   

The show ended early when the organizers watched severe storms developing in the area.  My crew broke all of our records for both take down and packing the trailer, which was all completed in an hour.  Certain my art was safe, dry and protected for the drive home, I completed my tomato felting project as we drove through the hills of Iowa and the fields of Illinois.  

 Now I'm nestled back in my studio thinking about my upcoming exhibit, “Looking at Water”.  One of the pieces I’m envisioning is a large format beach piece where the sand and shells lie in the foreground, the water and waves fill the mid-ground, and the sky is in the background.  One truth that everyone who has visited the beach knows is that one invariably brings home sand.  To capture that concept in my piece, I’ve spent some time coating the frame for my beach piece in sand.   

We got home from Des Moines on Monday evening, which was just in time for me to slip off to the Tuesday Farmer’s market while the boys did TKD.  I brought home some red raspberries, hoping against hope that they might be transformed into a victory pie.  And sure enough, a pie appeared!  It must have been a good show!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Getting back on my feet

I got home from my disastrous show in Columbus Ohio last week and set to work assessing the damage. One common problem was dye from the yarns leaching into the silk thread used to stretch out my pieces in their frames. Unfortunately, silk picks up colors beautifully, so I ended up having to restring several pieces. I also found a lot of damage on the frames, although most of it was minor. I’m lucky there, but I will need to re-sand and freshly paint some of them. I did some aluminum frame bending and re-shaping, but for the major structural pieces I just couldn’t trust the integrity of the repaired pieces. I called up a very friendly and helpful artist representing Light Dome Canopies and ordered a few replacement pieces. I also bought some new bars to enhance the strength of the structure and a vinyl repair kit. Things are looking up!

After a couple of days of triage and repair, though, I really felt the need to create some fresh art. I continued working on a piece I decided to call BFF (best friends forever). It features a beet, a carrot and a yellow onion sitting on a cross-section through dirt. That translates into working with my chocolaty brown yarn. The dirt sits beneath a cloudless, rainless, windless blue sky! I spent some time needle felting my friendly veggies for the piece. I had just the right color for the yellow onionskins, a fleece that I dyed using—you guessed it—onionskins! That really made me smile, and onion-dyed onion gives the sense that I’ve completed a circle.

This week marked the end of the school year. That means I need to transition into my summer mode, and I have two friends to play with each day. Yesterday we went to the Monroe County Historical Society’s garage sale, an annual event for the three of us. It’s the biggest garage sale in all of Bloomington and serves as a major fundraiser for them. I go looking for treasures and it never lets me down. My big find this year was a Singer steam press iron that’s in excellent shape. I’ve been eyeing them for a while. I’m thinking that when I needle felt a bunch of leaves I can press them all at once, or I can press my scarves without the ironing board. I can almost hear the big shhhhhhh! as the top comes down and steam pours out! Summer mode also means time at the pool, so I spent time with the boys and their friend Claire at the Bryan Park Pool this afternoon. I swam a little, but I spent most of my time needle felting broccoli florets. I decided that after I sold my ‘Fruit Salad’ piece at Columbus I needed to create a vegetable salad. Broccoli is something new for me, but I’m pleased with how it turned out. All my vegetable creations remind me that I haven’t been able to get to the Farmer’s Market for a while, a problem I hope to resolve Saturday morning bright and early. I read in the paper that it’s blueberry time, and blueberries make a great pie! I bet if I just buy waaay too many to eat and put them in the fridge in front of the milk - Jim will have no choice but to bake me one!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin