Finding Rusty Things

Last week I wrote about my latest piece that incorporates rusty found objects into garden soil. The more I thought about the concept of memories and history under the ground, the more I wanted to expand the series and develop new compositions. That meant it was time for a treasure hunt! The boys and I first went to BIM, or Bloomington Iron and Metal. Sadly, they changed the rules since the last time we visited. The boys were no longer able to rummage through the piles of scrap with me. Due to insurance issues, even I had to wear a hardhat and gloves. Tommie and Jacob graciously agreed to give me five minutes of free time to look around. I saw and collected a lot of cool things, including six old bicycle wheels for the community art project at the Fourth Street Festival. This year the kids will be weaving into the spokes of old bike wheels. After the fair the creations will be displayed at Wonderlab along the B-line trail, which is heavily used by bicyclists (including us!).

Our next stop on the rusty metal summer tour was Auto Heaven. There we all searched in the front parking lot and turned up all sorts of treasures. We found hood ornaments, springs, nuts, bolts, and other small metal objects, plenty of which were rusty. These were packed up and taken home for a good wash, which turned out to be a bad idea in some cases. To my surprise, a goodly number of the pieces were stainless steel and cleaned up nicely. Never fear, though, because we’ll keep looking.

My main focus in the studio this week was to finish my first rusty object piece. That meant creating the tulip (neither found nor rusty) and attaching it to the bulb I made last week. I pulled the elements together and framed the piece, which means I’m a step closer to having a collection to display at Fourth Street. I will keep on the theme of making pieces containing forgotten treasures trapped in the ground, although they’ll most likely appear in next year’s collection as I develop new ideas. Right now I’m feverishly poking at lemons to complete my ‘When Life Gives You Lemons’ piece, and my pea leaves need some attention. On the bright side, my life will change next week when—wait for it—school starts again! There will be a big hole in my day when my boys are off at school. Tommie starts the sixth grade at the youthful age of ten, but he’ll quickly turn eleven. This year he gets to have different teachers for each subject and have a lot of moving around between classes. Jacob will launch into the fourth grade, hopefully following in Tommie’s path with regard to excellent teachers. I’ll have an extended work day in the studio, but I’ll miss all the summer adventures we’ve shared. It’s been a good summer!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Attacked by flying pens and falling dirt.

The whirlwind of holiday activities lessened and the boys went back to school this week. That let me get right back into the art studio and weave like the wind! A big focus this week was my large format commissioned piece. I got out my weaving equivalent of the big shovels and heaped some of dirt and stones into the piece. Now you might imagine that weaving a five-foot wide by three-foot high piece while sitting on the ground would force me to hold up my arms up all day, and you’d be right. In a minor cosmic convergence, my Zumba instructors decided it was time to bring out some new moves that focused on arm strength. It feels like I just flew in from Chicago, and boy are my arms ever tired! I do see the results, though—I’m becoming the new Arnold Schwarzenegger of the Midwest. I just need a couple of rocket launchers and some determined liquid-metal androids to chase me around town. Instead I’ve got baling wire that I’m wrapping to create the carrot stems. I’m using a green wool yarn that I dyed the last time my dye pots were out, bringing back nice memories of summer activities. I still have to leaf them out, but everything seems to be coming together nicely.

In between weaving, wrapping and generally getting buffed up I worked in a few other projects and activities this week. I have a commission to make five round ornamental pieces. I’ve been literally poking away all week in my spare time to move them forward. I also took a little time for catching up this week, doing a little housework and traveling to Indianapolis for lunch with my friend Erin. We worked together in Mimi Zolan’s lab a few years back, and we were both pregnant with our first children together. We were reminiscing about maneuvering ourselves around in restaurants at a time when turning sideways didn’t help you get past obstacles. We had a good chuckle about that. I then met up with Chad, the artistic director at the Bloomington Playwright’s Project to talk about a commission they’d like me to do for them. I’m pretty excited about creating a signature piece for the BPP based on their logo, but the project has to wait until I’ve finished with the other commissions in progress. I have to create some evil flying pens before tax day in April. Somehow that seems fitting.

That covers the big news. I’ll close with a proud moment from the week. I’ve managed to lose fifteen pounds doing Zumba over the past few months. Some of my favorite pants are falling off me, and some of my exercise pants won’t stay up any more. I forced myself to go shopping this week to upgrade my image a little. The BloomZum owners wanted a ‘before’ and ‘after’ set of pictures to show how well the program worked for me. I’ll share the ‘after’ photo here. It has been a lot of fun, and I’ve made new friends along the way.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Holiday week 2, the sequel...

What a full week! The holiday season is winding down, with only one houseguest left. Grandma and Aunt Lois flew home on Monday, and Vojta heads back to LA tomorrow afternoon. We tried to fatten him up a little on Kluski, flatbread, salmon and American beer and chocolate, but it’s hard to see the effects. He and I drove out to Sheep Street this week to bond a little and pick up my new drum carder. I’ve been borrowing the Spinner’s and Weaver’s Guild carder, but it’s clear I needed my own when I got into my big-format commission piece. It was a win-win situation: he got to take a lot of pictures of the Indiana countryside for his picture-hungry grandfather Pepik, and I got my shiny new carder with all its teeth. We shared a nice conversation in Czech on the way. I’ll christen the carder with some carrot orange fleece—I can’t wait to get carding! I even managed to sneak down to my art studio a few mornings and evenings when the world was quiet and do some weaving. I laid down my browns yarns and did some serious dirt creation to grow carrots and beets. Oh, and I enlisted Tommie to help with a big year-end yarn organization project. His brother got a Beyblade for Christmas, and he wanted one too. To earn a little extra cash he offered to organize a giant bag of mixed yarns. I couldn’t imagine when I’d get around to organizing it, so I beyond delighted to have the help. It feels great to start the New Year off with an organized art studio.

Wednesday was a big day in our house, since it was my birthday! I turned 35, again. I got a nice pan-seared tuna dinner with a spinach salad and a special bottle of wine. And since I got to pick the kind of cake for dessert, which is a family tradition. I chose—you guessed it—pie! Jim made a delightful apple pie for me from frozen Mutsu apples we got at the farmer’s market last summer. Yum! He’s really got the oil crust recipe down. I’ve had a slice of pie and an espresso for breakfast the last couple of days after Zumba. Life is good! The only down side was that the photographer for the Herald Times was scheduled to stop by Thursday morning to take a few pictures. That meant a lot of cleaning and picking up after a big dinner and wine—we should have planned that out better. In the end, just about all the pictures Pete the photographer took were taken in the art studio and the surrounding storage areas. All that work cleaning in the kitchen, living room and dining room were misdirected, although we do have a clean house. On the bright side, Jacob did ask if Pete would take some pictures in his newly cleaned up room. We got a family portrait, including Shadow the hamster, on Jacob’s bed at the end of the shoot. The article and pictures should appear in the February Home and Living magazine that is published by the Herald-Times newspaper, so watch your mailboxes. In my case, I’ll watch the puddle at the end of the driveway where our delivery person aims every time it rains.

The last stories I can think to tell involve Vojta, our 20-year-old cousin and guest from Prague via Los Angeles. We had pleasant Skype conversations with grandparents Pepik and Mila, and later Renata (his mom), this week. They all wanted to know what we’d be doing for New Year’s Eve. In our house New Year’s Eve usually means going to bed early. They were shocked! Shocked I say! Renata said they stayed out to seven a.m. last year, yikes! If there’s any reward to being, um, 35, it’s that you can go to bed early if you want to. Renata said that that Vojta was expecting fireworks, and he injected ‘giant fireworks’. I magnanimously offered him a sparker. Heck, I’d have given him two if he’d asked. Instead, for fireworks we went to the IU women’s basketball game against Northwestern. Unlike the last men’s game, when we sat so high up that the little oxygen masks dropped down during emergencies, we got to sit in the third row near center court. It was like we were in the game. The finish was intense, with IU pulling out a hard-fought and well-earned win. We even won a free Buccettos pizza in a give-away at the game, so a good time was had by all.

That’s enough for 2010, I suppose. Vojta flies back to LA today and the boys head back to school tomorrow. The Christmas tree ornaments went back into storage today and the tree hits the recycle truck on Monday morning. And then I become an artist again!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

The Big Fiber Art Fair

The calendar might say it’s mid-November, but the weatherperson had other ideas last week. We had some delightful sunny days with days in the mid seventies. Normal people think of raking leaves or going for a nice walk, but not me. I took the unexpected opportunity to finish four wood frames for weavings. Just like rodents putting away nuts for the winter, I store away finished frames for those long winter days when I’m cozied up in my art studio weaving and it’s too cold outside to use putty or stains. Of course that got me excited about weaving, so I spent some time working on my Baby Carrots commission. I wove a little dirt and remembered just how much I enjoy weaving. Luckily I snapped out of my reverie in time to get ready for the Bloomington Spinners and Weaver’s Guild Fiber Art Fair on Friday and Saturday. It was wonderful to catch up with people I only see once or twice a year. It was especially nice to finally cross paths with a woman who’s been looking for me for five years. I did a show in Sellersburg, a small town in southeastern Indiana not too far from Louisville. I haven’t done the show since, mostly because Sellersburg isn’t an apt name. I even read the papers the next day, thinking that the bridges between Indiana and Louisville must have washed out, keeping all my potential patrons south of the Ohio River...

The thing that struck me about this weekend’s show was the number of people who not only recognize my art, but can also point out the pieces that represent my new directions and ideas. This year the big hit for me was the ruffled scarves. I sold every one I had, which has sent me into a frenzy to find more merino. I try to buy all my stuff locally, but I've exhausted the supply of merino fleece for fifty miles. I ultimately ordered some from a web source in Portland, Oregon, but I ended up buying them out too. I’m patiently waiting for the delivery and a refund for the rest of the incomplete order. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m anticipating making more ruffled scarves and a black shawl, all before the next show, the UU Art Fair and Bazaar on December 3 & 4.

Doing the show this weekend made me appreciate my support crew. I got a delightful breakfast of toast, sausages and eggs. OK, the eggs were egg beaters and the sausages were the veggie version, but they were just what I wanted. They brought me food at the show when I needed it, including a delightful sandwich from Panera for lunch Saturday. When the show was over they packed me up in the rain and drove me home, smiling the whole time. I’m very lucky. My security translates into warm fuzzy art and new challenges.

A next step for me came to pass over the past few weeks, with David Goodrum stepping down as the president of the Fourth Street Art Fair executive committee. I tried to bribe him with some old champagne. Actually, I gave him a bottle to congratulate him and a second bottle to bribe him to say on. It didn’t work. When the committee reconvened and had elections to replace the executive committee, I threw my hat into the ring. Now I’m the new Fourth Street Fair president. I’m a little nervous about the enormity of the task but I’m looking forward to the challenge. The show has been a big success for 35 years, so I have big shoes to fill and long shadows to grow beyond. The good news is that the hard working crew of volunteer artists that make it happen is still in place. They make it fun and worthwhile.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin