Beach week!

I didn’t get a lot of art done this week, but I got a lot of art thinking done. That translates into developing ideas for pieces and planning how to execute them. The location had a lot to do with that—my family spent the week on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I feel completely rejuvenated after a week of sand and sun! I took a lot of pictures of the waves, surf and sand to help jog my memory as I get back to work. I also did some material acquisition, collecting shells with holes in them from the beach. That happens to be one of Tommie’s favorite activities. We planned our mornings around low tide when the best collecting occurs. After one night of thunderstorms and wind we found a treasure trove of collected shells, sand dollars and beach glass just under the surface. What a haul I made for a few beach-themed weavings! Unfortunately, we packed so much stuff in our suitcases on the trip out that we didn’t have any weight to spare for packing shells. Fortunately, the post office has big boxes, and ‘if it fits, it ships’. About five days of beach treasures fits, along with a pair of jeans and some leftover rice to fill in the cracks. I’ll look for that to arrive on Tuesday.

Most of the week was spent in rejuvenation mode after a long winter of doing commissions. That meant eating fresh seafood as often as possible. We had fresh flounder, tuna, mahi mahi, and mako shark, plus a small black drum that Tommie caught. The shark was the surprise meal of the trip. Its texture was distinct from most fish and its flavor was mild and delectable. Along the boardwalk to the beach we found wild blackberries ripening nicely in the sandy soil. Tommie took the lead in berry collection and by the end of the week we had enough for Jim to bake a nice pie. Warm from the oven and paired with caramel frozen yogurt it was delightful. It was worth every bite, but I can’t wait to get back to Zumba in the mornings!

My family found lots of activities to keep them busy. The ocean was the major attraction. Jacob was the boogie board champion, riding the breaking surf all the way up onto the beach. He named his board ‘dragon slicer’, and they were together at every possible opportunity. Tommie got a board too, but decided he’d rather body surf. That left the second board to Jim, and he and the boys spent a lot of quality time riding the waves. The only downside was the ocean temperature on most days. It was occasionally so cold on that I couldn’t get much past my ankles, which made me the beach documentarian. On a few days I did swim, and it was wonderful to be in the ocean and feel the power of the surf. Besides the beach, we went to Jockey’s Ridge State Park where we hiked to the top of a few huge sand dunes. Jim and I sat and had pleasant conversation while the boys rolled down the steep dunes. We enjoyed the panoramic view of both the ocean and the sound while the boys ran up and down and finally buried each other in the dunes. The discomfort of having sand in your hair was removed by a stop at Logan’s ice cream in Nags Head.

The return to Bloomington means the return to art. The upcoming weekend (June 3-5) I’ll be in Columbus Ohio for the Columbus Arts Festival. I’m scrambling to finish a new piece before I go. This year I’d like to avoid the severe thunderstorms that trapped me in my booth for a while. I hope to see you there!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Thoughts of warmer weather…

We’re back in the icebox in southern Indiana after a nice warm-up last week. While my frozen toes understand reality, my mind is off in warmer places. I finished my seashell piece, but with a twist that took even me by surprise. I had very carefully laid out a pattern for the large shells, designed to create clear movement as you visually took in the piece. Then my inner child quickly surveyed the piece and clearly demanded: MORE SHELLS! I watched as she grabbed a handful from my ‘shells with holes’ bag and proceeded to dump them on the piece. I gave her a healthy snack to settle her down a little, and while she was eating I arranged the shells a little. I loved the idea of having a little chaos in the front, and yet if you look carefully you can still see the underlying pattern and flow. Now there’s a metaphor for my life with kids! Or maybe the feel of the piece just captures that little depression in the beach you find where all the shells collect at low tide. There’s usually a cute little beat-up seastar that didn’t handle the surf well. That’s the metaphor for my husband.

A lot of other new or commissioned art is also coming together in my studio, and some of it will unexpectedly be on display around town this month. I got word from Jean Kautt at Bloomingfoods (she organizes the Blooming Arts Series) that the February artist had a family emergency and couldn’t hang a show. I have a few new birch pieces (birches, beaches—I’ve got to branch out), plus a few ‘previously shown’ pieces that I’ll hang at both Bloomingfoods locations. The show will be called “Thoughts of Warmer Weather: Water and Sunshine”. The east side store will feature ‘Water’ and the west side will be ‘Sunshine’ in case you’re wondering. I won’t show my new ‘Home Grown Tomatoes’ commission piece, but after adding the last little cluster of tomatoes it looks warm, happy and yummy. This weekend I’ll complete the attaching and call it done. I’ll also be at Wonderlab this Friday as part of their “The Science of Color Series”, doing a kid- and adult-friendly community art project. We’re going to build a large Eastern Tiger Swallowtail mosaic out of wine corks that volunteers have been painting for the project. Stop on by and share in the fun!

Finishing pieces also means new beginnings, and at the moment I’m struggling to decide which piece to launch into next. I have several ideas swirling around in my head, and basically I’ll just wait to see what the weather is like Monday to decide which color palate I need to work with. The first piece will present a chameleon, sitting on a fernlike compound leaf. The second will feature a sand crab on a beach pocked with crab holes. Keeping the sand out of their living room carpets must be quite a task—I’m sure there’s a great market for rugged sand crab vacuum cleaners. The third piece hits a little closer to home, to be called something like ‘The Transplant’. It will show a section of earth with a freshly dug hole, ready to receive a geranium with a severely overgrown root ball. If you’ve ever bought a flower that’s spent a little too much time at the greenhouse with abundant light and fertilizer you know what I mean. It’s going to be a little painful (for everyone involved) to break up the root ball and get started in a new environment, but you know it’s both necessary and the right thing to do. I think about my own transplantations that way, whether it was my move from Ontario to Bloomington, or whether it was my move from world of science into the art community. I owe a lot to the gardeners along the way, and I know that with a little light, water and fertile ground, anyone can blossom!

Until next week…

Beach week!

I’m a little late in posting this week, but yesterday was a travel day. We spent a wonderful week on the beach in Corolla, North Carolina, at the north end of the outer banks. Normally I would have spent the transit time needle-felting ornaments for the holiday season, but the airlines frown on traveling with sharp objects. I have learned to pack my faithful Swiss Army Knife in the checked bags, but they still enjoyed running my purse through the X-ray machine multiple times. I think the culprit was the drill bits I bought in Michigan and forgot about, but who knows. I like to be prepared, so you never know what you’ll find in my purse.

This year we flew into Norfolk, Virginia, which shortened the drive to Corolla considerably. We arrived in time to catch some beach time, although high tide limited the shell collecting efforts. That wouldn’t be a problem for most people, but I’m always on the lookout for weaving materials and high tide doesn’t leave much room for collecting on the beach. We quickly settled into a routine of beach time in the morning, back to the house for lunch, off for an adventure like golfing or hiking, an ice cream stop, and then back to the beach either before or after dinner. Fresh fish shops abound, and you can’t beat fresh flounder. The HOA (Husband of Artist) and eSOA (elder Son of Artist) went on a fishing adventure on the sound and came back with Bluefish and Spanish mackerel. These were good, but not as good as the flounder. A week on the coast does highlight the one and only failing of our fair town, Bloomington Indiana—there’s just no great seafood to be found. We’re still glad to be back.

It’s hard to pick highlights from a trip with many. I love watching the lines of pelicans skim effortlessly over the surf and the dolphins popping in and out. Low tide brings all kinds of interesting critters, such as puffer fish, sea cucumbers, Jellyfish, sand dollars (OK, really sand quarters or so) and the very cool devil’s purses. They’re the egg casings from the manta rays that cruise the coast. Shells are everywhere, and of course they get picked over for compatibility with weavings. The sand crabs pop in and out of the sand to keep an eye on us, and the little birds that run in and out of the surf set a good example for the kids. Everybody is on board to make it a good trip.

On our last day we drove south to Hatteras Island. The Pea Island national wildlife refuge is home to an amazing collection of birds, and we even saw a banded water snake on the way. We ran into two very gracious volunteer bird watchers there, Pat and Neal Moore. Neal set up a telescope at Cubbie height, and he spent some quality time looking out over the wetlands and sketching in his new sketchbook. I was very proud. The Moores recommended the Dolphin Den restaurant, which served up some great tuna steak sandwiches. Next stop was the old Cape Hatteras lighthouse, which we checked out but declined to climb. We reached the top of the Currituck lighthouse last year, and the creaky open staircase wasn’t a good match for the HOA. It’s amazing to read that they moved the Hatteras lighthouse a half mile inland when the ocean threatened to eat the adjacent shoreline, then moved it back to the original site years later. That must have been quite a feat and something to witness.
All good things must end, and now we’re firmly back on Southern Indiana clay. The anti-deer spray seems to have discouraged our primary local nemeses from eating the remaining lilies that are about to bloom. That was a real bonus when we pulled in the driveway. The Tradescantia is also coming into bloom, but the peonies and irises are fading. I’m hoping that there are still a few strawberries around, and that a blueberry pie is in my near future. Let the summer begin!

Until next week…