Weaving blue skies…

This week I spent time in my studio working on my next commissioned piece.  After the long, wonderfully busy summer, I needed to take myself back to the beginning of the summer.  We spent two weeks on the beach in North Carolina looking at water and blue skies, and I’m delighted to report that the background of my commission captures those elements.  The foreground will feature a willow with its long branches swaying over the water.  I have started working on the tree as a traveling project to poke at while I wait for the boys at their activities.  I have been using army blankets to create the inside of the tree trunk and I still have one more blanket piece left.  Those of you who are regular blog readers will recall that I began using army blankets when Grandma gave me Grandpa’s old army blanket.   

She didn’t know what to do with it and didn’t want to throw it away.  I discovered that it was perfect for the core of trees I make.  It’s basically a felted, solid wool base that I can build on to form the trunk.  Over the surface I needle felted fleece that came to me by chance from a young woman raising Shetland sheep.  She approached me at Fourth Street a few years ago and I bought some fleece from her and I’m just now using up the last of it.  It’s the perfect color for willow bark. 

The Fourth Street Festival, my next big event, is rapidly approaching.  The image that I've posted is of this year's T-shirt design - a tribute to Jerry Farnsworth and his amazing kaleidoscopes.  Coordinating all the small tasks and making sure they’re completed commands a lot of my attention these days, but only for another month.  I made the difficult decision in late spring to step down as president of the Fourth Street festival committee.  I’ve been with the group for over twelve years, and I’ve learned an enormous amount from them.  

 I’m grateful for the experience and the friendships I’ve made.  Still, it’s time to move on after this fortieth anniversary art fair.  I’m excited about all of the artists that will participate this year—120 come from all over the U.S. to descend on the art-loving community of Bloomington.  I’m very proud to be associated with the event that is such an integral part of the Bloomington arts scene.  I do need to keep my nose to the grindstone and create a few new pieces for the Labor Day event.  I have had a very successful summer art fair season already, which means that I will need more work to fill my booth with a fresh display of my pieces. 

On the family front we are approaching the beginning of the school year.  Wednesday will find both of my boys in high school!  Amazing!  I will have to split my time between my studio and the costume studio at Bloomington High School South to complete thecostumes for Pippin.  One of the last elements of costume design that I’m contemplating is providing headdresses for circus performers.  I found a used copy of the “The American Circus:  An Illustrated History” online and it has plenty of inspiration. 

Yesterday morning Jim and Tommie went off fishing and Jacob and I headed for the farmer’s market.  We slept in a little longer than the fishermen and we found the market packed and rocking—it was full of people!  We scampered around to get the produce we wanted.  We got watermelon, corn, cucumbers, basil, plums and peaches.  We dropped our treasures off at the car and sauntered back to get delightful dainties from Maria at Piccoli Dolci.  Jacob and I relaxed on the grass and watched the world go by on a pleasant Saturday morning.   

Oh, and the best news of the week!  All is right with the world.  I found a warm peach pie after the last market that went delightfully well with decaf espresso in the morning for breakfast.  If that weren’t enough, Gwen Witten dropped off a warm Derby Pie yesterday evening for dessert! It was AMAZING!!  Life is very good.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Looking at more water than I’d care to!

I moved my latest exhibition, entitled “Looking at Water”, to the Bloomington Bagel Company last Monday.  I think it looks wonderful!  There was a nice blurb in the Herald Times over the weekend mentioning the show, so I’m hoping a different set of people will see it during its run to the end of January.  That’s the good news from the past week.  Unfortunately, after I reconstituted my art studio following the Thanksgiving flood, disaster struck again.  Two more inches of rain fell on Friday night into Saturday morning.  Just before bedtime Friday I decided to pop into the studio to check on things.  Lo and behold, the water level was halfway up my window and hissing in through the cracks around the frame.   

I leapt into action moving materials and rolling the carpet back, while Jim jumped into action outside.  He kept baling the window well while intermittently clearing a path for the water to flow around the house.  Fortunately, the rain let up around midnight and we both got to bed around one a.m.  As in the first flood of 2014, no art was damaged in the process, but now I’m back to drying carpet pads outside and the studio is a mess.  The low winter humidity in the house is finally a blessing. 

My life had a few more unexpected twists last weekend.  I was scheduled to do a workshop to create needle felted ornaments on Saturday at Gather, but too few people officially signed up to make it run and we canceled.  I think that the busy Holiday shopping, concerts and family schedules just made the timing too busy for most people.   

I thought by scheduling it early in December we could work around busy schedules, but apparently not.  I made several demonstration ornaments for the workshop and was ready to go, and I feel very badly for those who did sign up and really wanted to participate.   We will try to pick a date in late January or early February to hold a workshop to make felted heart shaped ornaments for Valentine’s Day.  If anyone wants to get a head start on next year’s Christmas ornaments I’ll bring those supplies as well.  It’s really all about the technique, so both will work.  I promise to let everyone know well in advance so you can mark your calendars.  Learning how to successfully coordinate a local workshop is new for me, so next time we’ll do better.  I really hate to disappoint people.

The rest of my news is piecemeal.  I did finish my ‘Summer Salad’ commission, and that will ship today to its new home in New Hampshire.  I'm delighted with how it turned out.  I’ll post pictures after the new owner has a chance to see it in place.  I’ll then launch on my next commission, which involves a river running through a forest of trees.  I have already completed the base structure for the tree trunks out of old wool army blankets.   

I don’t yet have a final sketch for the composition, but I know the trees are a necessary part of it.  You likely didn’t know that December first was also national cake day.  Tommie took it upon himself to make an amazing vanilla cake with butter cream rum frosting.  It really tasted like a traditional European cake that was heavy and not too sweet.   

This weekend the boys and I moved holiday baking into high gear, making several batches of cookies.  I even created a new cookie I’m calling boysenberry moons—they are delightful!    It’s a sandwich cookie featuring toasted pecans and boysenberry jam filling that I decided just needed to be tried.  We also created this year’s version of our annual candy house.  The rule is that no one gets to eat anything off of it until Boxing Day.   

Finally, there has been no pie in my house since well before Thanksgiving, which is very sad.  Even pumpkin pies at the holiday dinner did not satisfy my need for the berry-filled treat.  Helloooo… is anybody listening?

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Weaving Water and Reclaiming Re-Shirts

I’m working on an exhibition in October called ‘Looking at Water.’  I have been distracted by family projects, such as our trip to North Carolina and a family gathering in Michigan, so the weaving sat unfinished for some time.  I was so excited to get back into my studio earlier this week and start work on it that I released the piece from the loom before I finished weaving the sky.  Argh!  I hate that sinking feeling in your stomach when you know you’ve done something silly that can’t easily be fixed.  When life gives you lemons you have to do something.  Jim has been bugging me to try a wall piece where the background is needle felted instead of woven, and this seems like the perfect compromise.  I’m actually getting excited about it!  The woven part has a lot of movement that really is consistent with water.  The sky will be felted, allowing it to be smooth and softer by contrast.  I’m hoping to add some felted and dimensional clouds to the piece.  I’m excited about trying to pull it all together. 

The new piece will feature a dock.  I’ve stretched the woven part into the frame and I’ve layered on to a mock-up of the wooden structure.  This helps me get the scale right and the paper pieces are a good template for cutting the boards.  

 I’m creating the wooden parts out of the last of Grandpa’s army blanket pieces.  To make them look like sun-bleached wood I’ve been needle felting grey-white wool onto the shaped blanket pieces.  I was pleasantly surprised during the process as the olive green blanket crept through to the surface to make kind of a greeny-brown color.  The color just clicks for me as a good dock material.

And so to back up a little and share some family stories - we spent a few wonderful days visiting with family in Michigan.  Scott and Cathy Drummond flew in from California, Tim and Bobi Drummond came in from New Mexico, and Haley and the new baby Arya from New Mexico were there when we arrived.  Arya is walking with confidence and quite an independent thinker.  Scott introduced the boys to a new game called Boxcars.  They’ve been enjoying that ever since.   

We enjoyed a nice walk through the Bay City craft fair with Aunt Lois, and the boys enjoyed archery and badminton.  They also drove around on Miss Daisy, Grandma’s golf cart, which Arya found very entertaining.  Meal times were big and busy, especially the night we had pizza on the patio with family friends the Gibsons (Ben and Kathey) from next door.  The weather was beautiful—cool with low humidity and very few bugs. 

The drive back from Michigan was a great time for me to felt some tomatoes.  I’m going to revisit a piece I made a few years back called ‘Homegrown Tomatoes’.  It featured sixty-seven individual tomatoes of all varieties, shapes and sizes.  I really liked that piece, and while sixty-seven sounds overwhelming, it isn’t so bad if they’re done a few at a time every few weeks.  I giggled as I placed some of my felted tomatoes on the garden tomato plants in the back yard.  I took a picture and posted it on Facebook.  It seems that I have both skeptical and gullible friends!

Yesterday I did Art Fair on the Square here in Bloomington, which is a delightful regional show.  I decided to do it with my Re-Shirts rather than my large-woven wall pieces.  My shirts were very well received, with lots of people excited about the style and the fact that they were made from reclaimed and recycled fabrics.  I’m pleased to report that many of them went off to new homes.  I also enjoyed watching people’s faces when they realized that I do the three dimensional wall pieces they’ve seen elsewhere.  “Oh, that’s you!” was a phrase I heard many times.  I also had to assure many people that I was not moving away from doing wall pieces, and that making my art clothing was my hobby.   

From a practical artist perspective, I was thrilled that we were packed up and driving home within a half an hour of the show ending.  That’s an absolute, all time record that will never happen with the wall pieces!  At home I was treated to a celebratory dinner of flatbread.  We had cheese treasures from Williams cheese factory in Pinconning Michigan, including beer cheddar spread, along with Bruschetta and aged Gouda from Trader Joe’s that we picked up on the drive home from Michigan.  A bottle of Red Silk shiraz from Australia topped it all off.  This morning I woke up to the smell of baking pie.  It made for a very decadent Sunday lunch with a second cup of coffee!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin