The art world reclaims me.

By some combination of reasonable weather and administrative fortitude, the school system managed to string together five full days of school this week. For me, that’s like waving a red flag in front of my internal artist. I was able to move along all my major projects this week. First, I finished the background weaving for my large format weaving and tied it off from the loom. I stretched it out on the frame that my personal wood craftsman Tom Bertolacini made for me and stitched it to the oak members. It looks perfect! Then I laid out the completed veggies: three beets, four carrots and one of the onions. The veggies still needed rootlets, so I started wrapping onion rootlets in my waiting times. I have a nice wooden bowl full of them, enough to garnish a big salad. The rootlets that I’ve attached to the onions looked very nice, which meant I could spend a little quality making onion leaves. I picked yarns that formed a gradient from pale to rich green and started wrapping some reclaimed macramé yarn. The finished leaves are more like tubes, the kind of thing a chef chops up for a pretty garnish on an elegant dish. I can finally see the light at the end of the row of vegetables. Of course the real challenge has been to keep the garden rabbits from eating them while I slept at night.

Another project whose deadline is approaching involves putting together a dress for the Trashionista show. I started out with a fabulous idea that involved legs from Barbie dolls. I did a lot of Barbie collecting last year. Then I fed my inner demons by ripping off their little legs! Jim found it all a little creepy, but it was all in the name of high fashion. Given all the icky things models really have to do to succeed I didn’t think I was that bad. As the dress came together, though, I decided that it was just going to be too heavy. I quickly switched to the plan I developed for a second dress. I’ve been collecting dryer sheets, one of my signature recycled fabrics, for a year now. I got out the ironing board to smooth them out and prepare them for painting and glitter application. I’d give you more details, but I know Versace is a troll on my blog. I made the mistake of laying them out on the kitchen island as a surface to add some puffy fabric paint. I added my designs, only to discover that the paint takes three days to dry fully. That’s not consistent with having two boys who need regular feeding and a place to dump all their school stuff. The living room carpet is now covered in handcrafted designer fabric tiles. OK, so they’re really just painted dryer sheets. On the bright side, the people who really appreciate fashion have very broad tolerance for new fabrics. Either that or they can’t tell painted dryer sheets from dyed silk squares. By Monday I should have all the materials for one Trashionista dress, some assembly required. While I have my seamstress hat on I’ll probably mend some of Tommie’s pants with torn out knees. Nothing like two boys to keep your life in perspective.

That covers most of the highlights from the week. I did give my ArtsWork presentation to a small but enthusiastic group of artists in transition on Tuesday. I described my own metamorphosis from scientist to artist, which I really enjoyed. Part of the charm is being able to see how much I’ve grown over the past few years. Each new technique or endeavor, whether it’s needle felting animals, creating wet felted scarves, or print cards of my pieces has been a new part of the adventure. I still feel like I’m a newbie in the art world, though. There’s so much to learn!

That means it’s time to get back to chugging along, making more art, and looking forward to springtime. I am so ready for a change in the weather—it’s like I’m still living on Ontario, with the snowiest December and January that most Bloomingtonians can remember. It’s been so cold that Jim and Tommie even went ice fishing yesterday, being so desperate to get out and do something. It was a mild day and nobody fell through the ice, which made the trip a success for me. On the other hand, the best we’ll do for fresh fish tonight is salmon from Kroger.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Warm from the dryer…

This has been a good arts week. My inner fashion designer was validated when I got a nice e-mail from the Trashionista show coordinators. Not only was I juried into the show, they asked if I could make a second piece! Of course I couldn’t pass up a challenge like that, so off I went trying to design another ball gown. I was channeling river themes when I started, and the piece ended up blue, silver and black. I started off by repurposing an old blue sundress—the high-waisted variety that was popular back in the eighties. Then I trimmed out a bit of material from a pair of pants that was part of an old Halloween costume. It has a smooth, crushed velvet texture that’s now the waistband. You can’t live in the eighties, I say. I needed some decoration for the waistband, so I went to my collection of silver things and found a bag full of handles from fancy paper shopping bags. I had a vision that involved the bottles of glue left over from last year’s Children’s Booth project at the Fourth Street Festival where they glued all sort of found materials onto large panels in the colors of the BEAD logo. I added water to several of the glue bottles, dunked the bag handles into the diluted glue, then laid them out as a swirly pattern on wax paper to dry. The handles became the little swirly whirlpools on the waistband. Of course I had to maintain a little continuity with the first piece, so I zipped over to Opportunity House and snagged a nice black bathing suit for the top. It also secretly fits into the water theme, although the casual admirer might not notice it. As I was in the process of dress design I stopped in at Yarns Unlimited (celebrating 30 years in business) to see their beaded handbag display and ran into Suzanne Halvorson, which is always a pleasure. I was amazed at the intricate work, and one thing that caught my eye was the dangling triangles on the beaded handbags. I decided that’s what I needed to add some width and flounce to the gown. I achieved this on the dress by cutting slits into the bottom two thirds of the sundress and sewed in triangles of shiny black raincoat material. To top it all off I pulled out some leftover black spray paint. How often do you hear the top fashion designers say that—look for the technique to be big in the spring shows! I realized I could stencil nicely on the blue material, so I introduced a few black swirly patterns to give it a more industrial feel. I can’t make a ball gown with out a dryer sheet shawl, but this time I went with silver and black. The good news is that it looks great, but the bad news is that I ran out of dryer sheets. I’m going to need more for the ‘Edible Lotus’ project that I volunteered to participate in, so I’m on the lookout for more used dryer sheets. Yes, I blend the real and the surreal in ways unimagined by the greats of the renaissance.

While my dressmaking project has taken up a lot of my time, I haven’t lost track of my tomato project. I’ve been poking tomatoes and I’m up to sixty-five, three short my goal for ‘Homegrown Tomatoes’. I’ll need to make a few more stems and hopefully I can begin pulling that piece together this week. To celebrate I bought a single red tomato from Bloomingfoods, which I’ll enjoy on a veggie burger sometime soon. Nobody else in the family likes raw tomatoes, so this one is all mine!

Until next week…

My inner fashion designer emerges…

This was a week when, even with two boys to entertain and ferry about to play dates, I was able to keep my nose to the sewing machine and finish my ball gown for the Trashionista fashion show. I’m delighted with how it turned out! I call it ‘Elegance Reclaimed’, and now my budding fashion career is in the hands of the jurors. My inner scientist can handle either outcome, since all my expectations as an artist have pretty much been fulfilled. Still, I think I really met the challenge to reclaim and repurpose materials from the trash flow. The shawl for the gown is made from dryer sheets that I painted gold and black and stitched together. To feed my emerging inner fashionista I discovered a new stitch on my sewing machine—a compact zig zag stitch to fuse the diaphanous material. Wow! Now I’m even talking like a designer—this is great! The top is built from a favorite but failing black bathing suit. I stretched and abraided the bottom beyond the point where my modesty no longer allowed me to wear it. Instead of tossing it I transformed the sturdy part into my elegant gown top. I reshaped the neckline and stitched on a piece of an old black t-shirt, and at the junctions I attached well-worn black leather belts I acquired from the Backstreet Mission here in town. The antique gold trim is from a family friend, Kathey Gibson, and in its former life it was used to decorate Christmas gifts. The swirly doo-dad is a piece of plastic I’ve saved so long I don’t even remember where it came from (but of course I knew I’d need it someday!). The skirt itself is basically a crazy quilt made from old men’s and women’s shirts that I picked up at the recycle center. It’s built from a black leather skirt, bits of black lace bra (no need to go into that here), samples from a discarded upholstery book and animal print scraps. The animal print fabric was in scraps because my son Tommie and I made a shirt where he cut pieces out of the fabric and sewed them on a fading but favored grey fuzzy shirt, and now it’s still one of his favorite winter shirts. Back to the gown—the back is held together by scraps of Velcro and the buckles from the belts keep the whole thing closed. There are also a couple of old eye-and-hook closures that were left on cards priced at 19 cents for 25. That speaks to how old those are, but they still found a purpose.

In other big family news, we went to see the Cardinal Stage Company’s ‘Sound of Music’, featuring a charming neighbor of ours as Gretl. She was great, as was her supporting cast and the production. It’s actually amazing that a town of this size supports such fabulous theater, and we’re very fortunate to have them. They’ve never let us down. My boys really enjoyed the play, but I have to admit to having been jolted a few times with some of the staging devices. When the swastika banners dropped down, and the machine-gun toting Nazis came on stage, I was a little overwhelmed. These cast sinister shadows from my family history, even though my young kids (thankfully) don’t yet appreciate why.

Anyway, I’ve got to run. The phone is ringing, and the caller ID says it from New York City, some fashion design shop. Ah, the life of the nouveau fashion diva!

Until next week…

Tomatoes for Christmas!

At least that’s the way it started. Amid all the cookie baking, present wrapping and packing last week I got a phone call from a new patron who wanted a tomato piece for a Christmas gift. This is a bad news/good news scenario. I sold the ‘Homegrown Tomatoes’ piece I made, and last time the piece required 68 needle-felted tomatoes. That’s the bad news part. The good news was that I’d had some holiday wine and I love a challenge. I pulled out some felted wool balls I’d made and my red fleece and set to work. The first challenge is to create the tomato shape and get the ‘shoulders’ right. Then I start blending the reds to match my memory of September tomatoes. I love the fact that each fruit is a little different, not just among varieties but even on the same vine. Each one has its own special little lumps and bumps, a lot like people. The different varieties remind me of families, too. You’ve always got a few green ones that you know are good inside but haven’t quite made it in life.

Tomato construction didn’t stop as we drove to see the Grandparents for Christmas. My sweet husband drove for most of the trip and I poked tomatoes while the boys listened to books on tape. The seven hours seems a lot shorter when you’ve got a good book. I got a nice digital camera for a present and I’m looking forward to some higher quality images. It was just a lovely time with lots of hugs, food and cookies. Kathey and Ben Gibson hosted a Christmas dinner this year and everyone had a good time next door. There was enough snow for a few boogie-board runs down the hill, and some new records for distance were set. The major disappointment was that Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeakwel, was sold out when we wanted to see it. Some among the group were more disappointed than others (hee hee hee). The drive back was slightly more interesting, with snow falling and lots of cars off the road. A jackknifed semi blocked traffic around Muncie for a while, but we pulled off for dinner and the whole thing only slowed us down a little. It was still a long day.

Now that I’m back in the art studio I’m going to re-launch into a project I started last week for the Trashionista fashion show. The challenge, and I do love a challenge, is to make something that’s elegant and formal out of things you’d normally throw away. I’ve put together a skirt made from old shirts, scraps of animal print fabric and the lining from an old leather skirt. I’m going to embellish the piece with gold pulltabs from my collection and bits from a black lace bra. Some things you just have less use for after ten years of marriage and two kids. Plus, I can thank my kids for the torso part of my creation, which will likely be the top of a black bathing suit whose bottom was worn thin on the rough bottom of the Limestone Lagoon at Bryan Park Pool. I’m pleased that I have my display mannequin for the whole process because I’m really making up the whole thing as I go along. Kind of like the rest of my life!

Until next week…