Celandine Poppies and Spring Eggs

Completion! This week I finished a commissioned piece I’ve been working on for months. It has a fern background and Celandine (wood) poppies growing through. These are two of the truly hardy plants in our backyard, necessitating constant vigilance, trimming and plucking to keep them in check. I had finished the fern background and I needed to create the yellow poppies, so I stepped into the back yard and snipped a model bouquet. They immediately cheered up my art studio and set me to the task. I started with scraps of thin, plastic-coated wire that I shaped into petals. The flowers were needle felted onto the wire frames, ironed flat, then wrinkled into shape. The wire nicely holds the shape. The pistils are made from wire wrapped with green wool and touched up by needle felting. I think they’re really pretty in a vase.

In the Creek-Love classroom we took the next step on our Gold Fish in the Blue Ocean piece. We finished gluing seashells onto the frame, and the kids have sorted tons of gold beads and jewelry pieces to make the gold fish. At home I’ve finished sculpting the fish by bulking them up with cellulclay in anticipation of gluing on the gold scales. Now I’m excited about seeing the final project—it’s been two years in the making. It started when my older son Tommie was in the second grade and is continuing as Jacob moves through the first grade. The weaving phase was the most time consuming as we slowly built up the giant background, but now we’re rapidly approaching completion.

The last big project of the week has been gearing up for our annual spring egg hunt, assuming it doesn’t rain. So far we’re looking good on the weather, but of course you never really know in the spring in Indiana. We’ve invited 19 kids and have a twenty-gallon tub filled with packed eggs. We save the plastic shells from year to year and the kids take home the booty inside. Last year we geared up for the event but it rained every weekend in season, and suddenly it was 90 degrees. Melting chocolate candy is not what you want to have a bunch of screaming kids handling while running around your house. We did have to discard most of the contents of the eggs from last year—Whoppers go bad, it turns out, as do a lot of other rich chocolate dainties. The gladiolus corms were dehydrated but apparently OK, so they got their own spot in the garden after an overnight soak. I guess it kept the kids from thinking they were candy and accidentally eating them. After the hunt the HoA (husband of artist) will have a suite of cupcakes for the annual ‘Cupcake Picnic’. As of now we’ve checked off all the key requirements for a successful kid party: Chocolate? Check! High-sugar products? Check! Chance to run around and scream? Check! Time limit so wired kids go home before the house is destroyed! Check! Check Check! We’re ready!

Until next week…

Wood Poppies

Spring is here, and it’s the week of the commission piece. This week I’ve been working on a green fern piece with wood (Celandine) poppies to add a splash of color. My projects always seem to involve a mixture of local or recycled materials, Bloomington landmarks and my own personal history. The recycled material this time is the brass flashing that seals doors to the outside. I cut this into fern leaflets that I wrap with green yarn to achieve the rigid structure I need to grow the ferns out of the frame. The brass comes from the ever-reliable Kleindorfers’ hardware store, one of the best-kept secrets among three dimensional fiber artists. The wood poppies have special meaning for me as they have taken over our backyard gardens. Shortly after I moved into the big gray house (now yellow!) with my husband, every time one of us spotted a wood poppy flower and said ‘wood poppy’ we had to kiss each other. It works like tapping your water glass at a wedding, only you’re less likely to break a glass or spill water.

The warmer weather of last week was also great for letting me move ahead with finishing frames. The magic temperature for a lot of the paints and stains I use is 50F, and we easily passed that last week. Tom Bertolacini is a local friend who makes my unfinished frames. He does an amazing job with mitering beautiful joints and drilling the rows of holes I need to display my pieces. I putty any imperfections, sand them into submission, and finish them on the veranda. Finishing means painting or staining and sealing, depending on the piece. It isn’t my favorite part of the process but I work hard at making them look nice.

I’ve also been out and about town this week. I met up with Amy Hamilton of Musgrave Orchard and Core Farms CSA fame. She had on her big muddy boots and was happy to be outside planting. The vegetables that will appear in big wicker baskets this summer are popping out of their seed coats and reaching for the sky. That means big Russian Black tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and apples. Plus all the zucchini we can eat, give away or compost. Amy is the only person I know who was happy for the rainy weather of the last weeks to get her seeds germinating. I also went with my son Jacob’s class (the Creek-Love room at Rogers Elementary) to the Indiana University Art Museum and Lilly library. The Art museum was an inspiration for me, especially seeing some of the patterns in the African art exhibit. I made some sketches and I’m sure some of the themes will end up in ornaments for the holiday season. The weather was fabulous and the kids were energized so I got my weekly dose of shrieking. The passing IU students looked a little confused, but that’s pretty normal. The highlight, though, was that I got to enjoy a rare lunch with my son Cubbie on my lap.


Until next week