Madison!

I’m settling in at home after a truly delightful trip to Madison Wisconsin. The people I met at the art fair there are just so… Bloomingtonian! That’s the best compliment I can give. They really appreciate art, and fiber art specifically. An enthusiastic crowd turned out this weekend and made the whole trip worthwhile. Twelve of my pieces found happy homes in Wisconsin, which made take down substantially easier. It was almost a sad sight to see the few pieces that didn’t sell nestled in one half of a big plastic tub. That definitely sounds wonderful now, but on the way back the realization that my next show (the Fourth Street Festival here in Bloomington) is less than two months away! I have to get my creative juices moving and start weaving like the wind.

I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself. In the last hours before we loaded the U-haul and drove off to Madison I desperately worked to finish my ‘Summer Salad’ piece. I’ve been really excited about this piece as new elements came together at the very end. I was poking away at tomato slices until the afternoon before we left. It wasn’t until that evening that my world slowed down enough so that I could attach the vegetables. A day or two earlier I still had a rectangular hole that I struggled to fill until I decided that button mushrooms were the missing piece I needed. I really like them, and I’m proud of how the whole piece came together. The composition feels like it has movement, which makes me happy too. Jim thought it was the most attractive piece in the booth and was sure it would sell quickly. A lot of people showed a strong, immediate connection to the piece when they saw it, which was fun to watch. At the end of the show, however, with more bare wall than art in the booth, ‘Summer Salad’ was still there! I’m secretly pleased, though, that the piece will be available for display for Fourth Street—I really wasn’t ready to give it up. Plus, I really want to show it off to my peeps here in town.

I had lots of wonderful interactions with fair goers this year. One woman saw my ‘Vine Ripened Tomatoes’ from last year and really wanted it. She said she regretted not buying it all year, and luckily it didn’t sell during the year. She was delighted to be able to buy it this year. Another couple came in and clearly wanted a piece. The wife couldn’t decide which to get, so the husband sent her out of the booth and picked out the piece he was sure she really wanted. It was just an incredibly confident thing to do. They ended up with ‘The Harvest’, one of my recent pieces with a hand pulling a carrot from the earth. Another couple was looking for a wedding gift for their niece. She was an Indiana University grad with a job in a local food co-op, and they chose my ‘Best Friends Forever’ piece. It features a carrot, onion and beet in an earthy background. I think they were delighted by the name and theme of the piece, which seemed to be a perfect match for the occasion.

While I was off selling art, Jim and the boys were exploring rural Wisconsin with Wendy and Duane, our hosts for the weekend. They were just terrific, making us a wonderful grilled salmon dinner with garlic scape pesto—very garlicky and tasty! The meal was followed up with a dark chocolate bread pudding. The pudding was superb warm and tasty cold the next day. Their help and care made everything about the show easy and fun. I even made a new friend in Buddy, the large white guard dog at the front of the house. And while I was busy during the show, in the morning before I got to explore a little bit of the countryside with my boys. One stop was for lunch at the Viking Café in Blanchardville. Everybody found something they liked and we all left happy. And the boys used their drink straws wrappers to channel the true Viking spirit.

Thanks Wisconsin, Madison, Wendy and Duane, Buddy and Jamie, puppy friend of Buddy! I hope to see you all again next year.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Weaving in the Park

Saturday was a big day for me—I coordinated an outdoor community weaving project at McCormick’s Creek State Park. This project has been in the planning stages for a long time. I’ve been collecting materials and thinking through how I could make weaving fun and accessible for people who dropped by. I arrived at the park early to an absolutely gorgeous morning. I set up the five foot wide loom that I built for my giant commission pieces, and I was delighted to be able to use it again. The organizers set up a few tables for weaving materials. I quickly covered them with the funkiest objects I could assemble. I spread out highly textured yarn cords, rope, turkey feathers, sea shells, hair from the mane of a pony (thanks to Mary from the Recycle Center!), a feather boa, leather strips, Jim’s aunt Lois’ old nylons (well washed), braided belt materials (thanks to Abby Gitlitz for taking those apart!), old coasters, raw sisel, cheesy synthetic plant parts, flax roving, lots of lace scraps and more. The people who came by were just inspired and the final product looks amazing. I enjoyed watching people taking it all in and then coming up with their own ideas. One woman had a great idea to make a weaving that incorporated materials from her wedding from twenty years ago. She thought about weaving together treasures such as fabrics, ribbons and materials into a memory piece. Another couple said they own a coffee shop in Stinesville, if I remember correctly. They thought it would be fun to set up a weaving project in their shop and let their patrons create a piece using a box of scraps. I’m told they have a big brick wall that needs an art piece—I’d love to see what they come up with.

During the day I did my best to include everybody who wanted to weave. I used my standard weaving approach, which is to attach my loom to an adjustable easel. This let me lower the project to be accessible to the three year olds and raise it back up for the tallest of adults to weave. Combine that with a diverse selection of materials and I found that I could accommodate all the people’s needs and influences as they created the piece. I think the biggest surprise to most people was the appearance of giant seashells in the weaving. I say—why not? I was impressed with the people who selected some scraps of materials and created an art piece from them, then incorporated their piece into weaving. I even had artists, who were showing their own art that day, stop by to do some weaving. When sales were slow wove a little, then headed back to their booth when the traffic picked up again. I was really pleased to see park visitors drop by to weave a little, go away to do something else, then come back later to add a little more. They got to see the beginning, middle and end of the process. At the end of the day I felt really good to be an active part of the fair.

Over the rest of the week my efforts were intense but distributed over several projects. I spent a lot of time trying to finish up some pieces while moving others forward. I completed by BFF piece, which I really like. To me it’s just a set of mismatched friends, which brings back memories of my high school days. We didn’t quite fit in to the world as individual entities, but together we were pretty good. I did a lot of work on my Summer Salad piece, which meant a lot of needle felting. I laid it all out this week to see how much more I need to create. I’m wondering if I just might need some asparagus, or perhaps something else. I haven’t quite decided—maybe some cauliflower, or maybe some peppers to top it off.

This week I’ve also been admiring the lilies in the back yard garden as they come into full bloom. A trip to the compost pile brings out an intense, pleasant fragrance (from the lilies, not from the compost pile). It’s been such a rainy year that everything in the garden is doing well. We’ve even attracted a family of rabbits, much to the detriment of Tommie’s backyard lettuce patch. In our future I see either a small fence or more trips to the farmer’s market.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Ratatouille Arrives!

Finally—‘Ratatouille’ is complete! I’m delighted with how it turned out. I even feel as if I’ve taken the first step toward being a grandma by carrying around pictures of the completed piece and showing the people who have watched me along the way. I received so much support and encouragement as I felted tomato slices, eggplants, zucchini and herb leaves into existence over the past few months that I felt I needed to share the finished product. It has been fun to watch their responses to seeing the finished piece. The people who actually saw the size of the tomatoes have the best sense of the overall magnitude of the finished piece, which is huge 5' X 2 1/2 '—the tomatoes are the size of dinner plates. Even though I like the tomatoes, my favorite part of the piece is the basil leaves. I feel like they really enhance the cohesiveness of the piece, and I just like how they turned out. I can almost smell the piece!

Did I say I was pleased with how it turned out? That’s true, but I am sooo ready to move beyond creating vegetables. At the end of the week I devoted big blocks of time to my next piece, a signature piece for the Bloomington Playwright’s Project. If you’ve seen their aggressive writing tools on the attack you know the basic design. In my version the background is purple and the BPP letters are a bright yellow. That means I spent some time digging through my yarn boxes to find just the colors I needed. I was on a spring and birth mind set (their motto is "where theater is born") and so I chose a purple that reminds me of the Johnny Jump-Up violets in the lawn, mixed in with their shockingly bright yellow dandelion friends. I bought the yellow fleece at the Fiber Arts show from Donna Jo Copeland last November. It was dyed with tumeric to produce a brilliant, almost neon yellow, which is amazing considering that it comes from a natural dye. The yellow letters have a crispness that I’m enjoying, especially after focusing on organic vegetable shapes for the past few months. And weaving, finally weaving, in my art studio has been a delight. While I enjoy needle felting, there’s a certain rhythm to weaving that I’ve missed. The piece will feature a hand, which I’ve completed, holding an angry pen, ready to create a great play. I just need to adjust the length of the wrist, and make the pen.

The fact that it’s officially spring means the dandelions are commandeering the local lawns. I had the boys out collecting dandelion heads for dyeing later this summer. I even spent fifteen minutes this morning mowing down the yellow flowers in the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and road. I should have enough for a good dye pot. I’ve got to replenish some of my color stocks, which also led me to the big Fiber Event in Greencastle this past Friday. It’s one of the highlights of my year. I went with my friend Ruth, which made for a delightful trip. We chitty chatted the whole time, making it feel as if we made it there in ten minutes. I had a wonderful conversation with a weaver and natural material dyer from Nashville who sold fair traded spun banana silk yarn—that will probably make it’s way into a scarf this fall. We talked about some of her recent adventures in dyeing, and she showed me some yarn and fleece that she had dyed with wild rose clippings using iron mordant. It got me eyeing the wild rose in our back yard that I don’t really like because it scratches the whole family as they bring bikes through the gate into the back yard. We talked about using invasive plants for dyeing, which made me wonder about using euonymous as a green dye. That evil vine has taken over big parts of the back garden beds, and it’s heading for a major haircut this summer. I’ll do some experiments with added alum and varying conditions, but I’m sure I’ll find a use for any material that survives the dye pot.

The last bit of news from the week has to do with one of my favorite foods—pie! A rhubarb pie appeared yesterday morning. Although it came from frozen rhubarb because no fresh stalks could be found, it tasted great and the crust came out as a crumbly delight. Yippee! I’ll have pie and espresso for breakfast after Zumba all week!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Eggplant, Zucchini and Rhubarb Pie

Actually, I’m surrounded by zucchini and eggplant art. I ate the rhubarb pie. More on that later. The big news of the week was the completion of vegetable chunks for my large format ‘Ratatouille’ piece. I turned my attention to the giant hand that will pull a giant carrot from the ground in my ‘From the Garden’ piece. I’m not sure that’s the final name, but it’s the companion piece to ‘Ratatouille.’ I spent considerable time adding a layer of skin to the hand as we traveled to and from Michigan over the boy’s spring break. I’ll start creating the herbs and fleshing out the tomato slices this week, which means the light at the end of the tunnel is in view. I just have to work around the mountain of vegetables in my art studio.

The weather this week has just been beautiful. The boys decided to till and weed their garden bed, and I ordered three yards of hardwood mulch for Jim to use on the flower beds. That’s the grand metaphor explaining why our marriage works so well—I buy the mulch and he spreads it. As of today, the front yard is pretty well under control, but there’s still a big pile of mulch in the driveway. The warm weather even lured us out to May’s Greenhouse this afternoon. We ended up buying some lettuce, onions and a few pansies to brighten up the garden. Tommie and Jacob leaped into action and planted everything in their garden space. I have the salad spinner standing by and a new bottle of Ken’s Light Ceasar salad dressing in the fridge. Grow little leaves, grow!

The other big news of the week was our trip to Michigan last weekend to visit Jim’s mom. Grandma still had snow on the ground, ice on the patio and a frozen river behind the house, so we got to re-live winter. We stayed inside and had a delightful time. We ate too much good food and laughed for all we were worth. We rented a van and brought back a bunch of treasures she wanted to get rid of, including a tattered blanket from great grandma Drummond. I opened it up to discover a huge piece of wool batting in a gauze cotton cover. It’s perfect! I don’t know what its perfect for, but I’m certain it will be great. And it fits my motto: recycled wool is good, free wool is even better! The best news from the trip was that Jim made a rhubarb pie. By some odd coincidence, Monday the 14^th was national ‘pi’ day, as in the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. Could I help it if Jim thought it was national ‘pie’ day? Pie, as in, here’s two pounds of rhubarb, my sweet husband! (Think ‘mulch’ here, hee hee hee)! It was delightful! I wonder if he’ll get suspicious when I tell him about national pie day?

Until next week,

Martina Celerin