Hard to believe, but…

It was ten years ago and I was pregnant with my second son, Jacob. I had just received permanent residency status and I was ready to concede that I might be living in Indiana for a while. Now it’s hard to imagine living anywhere besides Bloomington. So last week I filled out the forms and mailed my application for US citizenship! I’m excited to move through the process, and I’m imagining a big party at the end of the process to celebrate. The food will be catered and Jim will be in charge of organizing it! I’ll let him in on the details when we get a little closer to party time.

I’m on full art creation mode these days, trying to re-stock my studio for summer art fair adventures. The outline of my poppy piece appeared in the blog last week, and more recently I created the leaflets and forty stamens per flower that I needed for accuracy. Each stamen is an individually wrapped copper wire, so they’re pretty energy intensive. I’m really pleased with how the flowers and the elegant seed pods they leave behind have turned out. I also finished my daffodil and the leaves that go with it. To finish them I pressed the leaves in my big steamer. I’m so enjoying using it—it’s such a useful tool, saving me hours of tedious ironing. Soon I’ll start on my next weaving, and I’m channeling the Hilly Hundred bike race. I’m imagining hordes of colorful bicycles rolling through the Indiana countryside. That should be a fun piece to create.

In town, I dropped off two art pieces to Options for Better Living. Next week begins the Art of Chocolate fundraiser for them, which also features a juried art exhibition. Two of my pieces were accepted for display: Six Salamander Salsa and a peacock lattice scarf. I’m looking forward to seeing them at the reception on Sunday the 29^th.

And last, on Friday night my boys tested for their brown belt with a white stripe in Taekwondo at Monroe County Martial arts. They’re moving along! After the test we headed for Mother Bears. They were pretty busy, but they found us a table and we had some great pizza. When we came out the rain was just starting to fall and freeze, which produced a slick Saturday and a lot of ice scraping before the boys could get out to Taekwondo for their classes. Sorry honey, but only one car fits in the carport at a time!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Yellow

If you’ve ever driven through a neighborhood where the lawn was a solid, lush monoculture of well-bred grass seeds, well, that wasn’t our neighborhood, and it certainly wasn’t our lawn. I sometimes wonder if the lush lawn society harbors a certain paranoia that the weeds are watching them. The dandelions would take the lead in filling yards with yellow monitoring devices. After a while they turn into communications devices, spreading seeds to all the neighbor yards. It’s especially hard to infiltrate lawns laced with pesticides and patrolled by curmudgeons with bludgeons, but dandelions are fearless. I’ll admit it—they’ve won me over. I love to see them in lawns. They’re such a pretty yellow, and spring is such a yellow flower season. And they really are determined and fearless, ready to establish and prosper anywhere. Those are admirable qualities in anyone. I took a few pictures this week to show some of my favorite yellow friends to show what I mean.

Of course if you know me at all, you know that what captures my imagination in life ends up in my work. I decided this week to work on a piece called ‘Lawn Flowers’. I’ve done a similar piece that was popular and the composition made me happy, so I decided it was time to re-imagine the dandelion as beauty in the lawn. I pulled out my wonderful crunchy spring green yarns to start. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I should weave or make a salad. I’m envisioning a thick green base, as if you’re looking at the lawn from an angle, with three clumps of dandelions flowering. In a perfect coincidence, I ran into my friend Bonnie Gordon-Lucas at Bloomingfoods this week and had a spontaneous lunch date. The lunch was good, but she was concerned that I should be incorporating some reds and yellows into my green grass. We also bonded on the wonderful spring green colors that you can only see this time of year. If you look closely at the emerging foliage you can see the rich, iridescent greens that seem to darken as the summer goes on. We science geeks know that the leaves start to produce anthocyanin pigments to absorb the intense sunlight of summer, and those “non-green” pigments mask the spring beauty. Enjoy it while you can!

Speaking of yellow, I’ve been working on the fourth salamander for my ‘Salamander Salsa’ piece. Perhaps it’s subconscious, but I decided to make a Barred Tiger Salamander. He’s bright yellow with a black barring pattern, kind of like a tiger, only less orange and feline and more yellow and amphibian. So far I’ve only made the body, so he isn’t much of a threat to run away until I can add his legs. The ones I’ve made are more mobile, so I have to keep a closer eye on them. I don’t dare take them anywhere any more. So now I’m sitting at four-salamander salsa and waiting for two more guests.

The last big news is that this week was the Fiber Event in Greencastle. I carpooled there with Ruth Rives, a sweet friend with firm opinions. She recently started weaving and is really enjoying it. Overall, we had a delightful drive through the country on a warm and sunny spring day. We ended up spending several hours at the fair, longer than we expected, poking around in all the piles of fleece and yarns. I couldn’t wait to get home to start mixing green fleece with the drum carder I borrowed from the Spinners and Weaver’s guild. I’m trying to get just the right dark green for the dandelion foliage. And speaking of pleasant drives through the country, I also went to a reception for the recycled art show hanging the new Hotel Indigo in Columbus Indiana. The show looks great (stop by if your in the neighborhood!) and the reception was nice…thanks, Marilyn. It was followed by a fun visit to the recently re-opened ice cream parlor, Zaharakos. I got to see the massive musical instrument, the Welte orchestrion and sit at the marble bar. It felt like you were in a 1950s movie to see all the little spigots for soda. I had some nice conversations over a grilled cheese sandwich and a fruit cup. I forced myself to try and ignore the most amazing banana split walking past me, as well as all the other old fashioned ice cream treats. The good news is that I have two boys who will accompany me there in the summer to help me decide which to try first.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin