In they go!

My elder has a joke this week that goes: “Do you know what I do when I’m feeling blue?” The answer is: “I stop holding my breath!” My plan for turning blue was to connect with Mary Pendergrass in Nashville last week. Mary was running a workshop on indigo dyeing from Thursday through Saturday that I really wanted to attend. So of course on Friday evening I was thinking there was something I should be doing but I couldn’t think what. Arrghhh! Indigo dyeing! So I called up Mary to ask what was happening on Saturday. It turned out to be a ‘mini workshop’ for anyone who wanted to come. She told me I could bring all the skeins I wanted and to show up at 9:30. I didn’t need to be told twice and I was there with bright eyes and bells on. I also had lots of white fleece, wool skeins and a blank pad of paper. Was it ever worth it! I was the only person who turned up, and Mary was an incredibly good teacher and very helpful. I got to ask all the questions I wanted (which means a lot). Mary was very generous with her time, advice and materials, and we talked about colors, techniques and sources. Armed with new materials and ideas I’m already plotting uses for my new indigo materials in holiday ornaments and other projects.

The first thing I learned was that indigo dyeing is a little stinky. On came the long gloves, in went the yarn and I learned that rapid immersion is crucial to the process. It’s important to exclude air from the process, so you don’t want to froth around in the pot as the yarn goes in. In the dye pot the color is an exquisite deep teal color—I’d like to be able to capture that color! Once in the pot you work the yarns to get the dye throughout the skein, under any ties and deep into the fabric. When the yarn comes out of the pot the color transforms into the deep indigo hue characteristic of the process. The whole thing is really cool to watch, and now I’m excited to try this at home. Thanks Mary! The process was punctuated by periodic calls from Mary’s husband. He was watching the weather on radar, and he’d call us with warnings about heavy rain on the way and sent us inside on a couple of occasions in anticipation of impending doom. I guess Mary has an HoA (husband of artist) kind of like mine!

The rest of the week was hectic as I prepared for a new show at the By Hand gallery. I’ll be on hand for the reception from 5-7 this Friday so be sure to stop in when you’re on the Gallery Walk. Later in the week I put together a weaving and a stack of cards to mail to a gallery in Madison, Wisconsin. The owner saw my work during the Madison Art Fair and asked if she could hang some pieces in her gallery. Hmmmm, let me see. OK, YES! That was very flattering, and my web check of the place shows that my work will have a good home. That’s good to know. Last, my personal achievement of the week was when I got green beans on Wednesday from the CSA and had to slip them past my green-bean-hating-HoA. Well, I did it! I have a special dish I make where the beans are chopped up fine, lightly cooked and carefully disguised in a flavorful sauce that is put over rice. And…he liked it!

Until next week,

The Greens of Summer...

This week I’m back in the art studio and weaving like an artist who sold all the pieces she intended for a gallery show in two weeks. I’m still excited about finishing the ‘river’ piece I wrote about in last week’s blog, but I was short on the right green materials. So out came the dye pots, including the new ones I bought at the Monroe County Historical Society garage sale. Out came the RIT dye (from Indianapolis!) and a pile of materials that I brought home from the Spinners and Weavers Guild auction. Sometimes the wools call out to me, like a high-pitched sound only a dog can hear. Other times the Guild members taunt me when a lot comes up that nobody wants. Martinnnnaaaaa—don’t you need this pretty blue yarn? So of course I buy them all. I pulled out deep blue cottons, golden corn silk and teal boucle wool, some green and yellow dye, my dye pots and I leaped right in! OK, not into the dye pots, but 14 skeins of yarns went into the pots. The process is long and involved, so life went on in between. I got started dyeing, and then the boys and I went to the library to claim their prize for completing 25 books this summer (insert proud mom smile here in your imagination). They each brought home a nice chapter book, which hopefully will be #26. We came home to move the yarns along in the process, then off to Bloomingfoods. We bulked up on fresh fruits and vegetables, and Tommie had to bring home the gnarly carrots he found. We were then off for a bike ride to burn off some summer energy, then on to pick up the CSA vegetables for the week. The greens from the CSA went into chowder that was mostly corn, kale and sweet potatoes, but it also had the vegetable stock I made from the freezer-burned green beans, turnips and other unused delicacies from last summer. I can only slip so many green beans past the HoA (Husband of Artist) before he gets suspicious.
The hectic-running-around pretty much sums up the events of the short week after our return from Madison. I’m still basking in the afterglow of my successes. We drove in to the driveway to see some beautiful flaming orange, yellow and red glads that had just opened, along with a few unopened burgundy racemes that were on the verge of opening. I planned to cut them for a nice welcome-home bouquet the next morning. But during the night the terrors of the town struck. No, it’s not adolescents out of control with scissors, it’s just deer fattened up on flowers. Those rascals mowed the glads down to the quick! If only the HoA were so good with the lawn! Only one bud of burgundy glad survived the nocturnal carnage, and that’s in a vase in the kitchen with a few zinnias. I guess our garden is just a nice buffet, timed to keep the deer happy all summer. Sometimes karma just spills out into the yard.

Until next week…

Reach for the sky...

At long last she’s finished—and I’m delighted! I completed my ‘Tree Woman’ piece this week, although I’m still trying to come up with a more fitting title for her. It’s been a hectic week with the boys in the art camp at the John Waldron Arts Center in the afternoons and the HoA (Husband of Artist) visiting the GPUs (grandparental units) in Michigan for a few days. I’ve been running around like crazy this week, but I just decided it was time to start attaching the branches. Then came the leaves, which was exactly what I needed to bring a measure of control and completion into my life. I’ve been scavenging little windows of time to get things done—a little poking here, a little grass-making there—until things came to a head Friday afternoon. Jacob had his friend Claire over and I convinced all the kids to come into my art studio and work on projects. That let me focus on my piece at the expense of the art studio floor turning into a disaster zone. I gleefully finished the grass and flowers at her feet. These were a composite of linen yarn, jute, cotton, fake evergreen boughs from a Christmas wreath and latch hook rug remnants. Everything finds its own niche around this place. When I called it done I showed it to the kids for an opinion. After a brief refocusing of three engrossed children (what—you mean you were working on something too Mom?) the consensus response was ‘wow!’ I’m really savoring having her hanging on the wall, and I’m patiently waiting for her to tell me her name. Every time I look at her I’m reminded that my favorite feature is her belly button, even if she does have a little wool in there.

It’s good to have the HoA home again. The boys have been a little sad, especially at bedtime. The world is set straight again, though, as the HoA triumphantly returned with cheese from ‘The Cow’ in Linwood, Kluski from Kryziaks, walleyes from Saginaw Bay, and Spatz’s hot bread from the bakery in Bay City. He even brought a few Tim Horton’s doughnuts home for his Canadian expatriate spouse. We’ll eat well this week!

The experience without the HoA in the house gave me a newfound respect for the trials of single parents. Life was full and boisterous, and herding 2 to 3 kids for meals, cleaning up, art class and bed is quite an adventure without any help. The week did have its highlights, though. At the boy’s art camp, one of the teachers was Rob of Bloomingfoods fame. He brought a wonderful fresh outlook on art to the camp. Rob introduced them to many new artists, techniques, and ways to think about creating art. He inspired Jacob to write a book entitled ‘How to Draw Aliens’, who told Rob he’d be willing to sell him the book. Always the entrepreneur, that boy. Jacob also made a beautiful vase, although the fact that it isn’t watertight will limit its applications. Tommie made a very nice dragon sculpture in the section with Jan Arbogast. It was a great two weeks, capped with an art reception to which we brought many brownies and brought home none.

My last big discovery of the week was the Monroe County Historical Society ‘garage sale’. I called my friend Cappi Phillips to ask her if it was worth going as she trundled off to the Talbot Street Art Fair. She recommended it as huge, fun and loaded with treasures. She didn’t need to tell me that twice! It is held in the old RCA storage building behind Cook Pharmaceuticals, and it was indeed huge, fun and loaded with treasures. I brought home a new dye pot, a basket for my cards and some very useful wire. I also just had to bring home a little nutmeg grater with a storage space on top and a cute little lid. It even had a hole on top to hang it on the wall! How could I ever leave such a special little thing at a big, impersonal place!

Until next week…

The Greens of Spring

Someone once told me that in order to really appreciate Indiana, you had to appreciate all the subtle shades of brown. But if you want to appreciate springtime in Indiana, you really have to appreciate all her shades of green. The progression began almost two months ago, which we noticed on our trip to Michigan over spring break. We left Bloomington guarded by skeletons of brown trees, spent a few days in Kawkawlin, and came back to the soft, timid greens of earliest spring. Her arrival isn’t like stepping into a new world of color, like Dorothy did in the Wizard of Oz. It’s a gradual process that most stop following until the whole spectrum of greens is on full display. All the textures, colors and variations are enough to keep an artist busy for a lifetime!

Maybe you’ve guessed that it’s been a green week for me. I’ve been thinking about the ‘Tree Woman’ commission piece and working on her leaves (see the sketch in the April 25 post). To begin I got out my big storage containers of green yarn and my crochet hook. That scared the leafy green colors and set them quivering, which is how I create the effect of a breeze (OK, OK, I’m just kidding!). To get the textured effect and colors I wanted I mixed three green yarns. Two of these I bought but one I created—you never know what you’ll find in my artwork! Here’s the story of a yarn’s mid-life crisis:

The yarn was raised as a pretty blue bouclé with a wonderful texture. She had every advantage in life and was well cared for, but no one really loved her. Even the person that cared for her most knew she wasn’t happy, and that a great career in the arts, admired by many, was her true destiny. I happened to be attending the Spinners and Weaver’s guild annual auction, one of my favorite events, elbows out and bidding on yarns in the midst of the shrewd and seasoned local fiber artisans. The auctioneer was Cheryl Johnson, a local spinner, and she was desperate to help her blue friend. “Martina, you need this yarn!” she implored, but I think she knew the yarn needed me. Blue just isn’t a color I work with a lot, so I grudgingly bid a dollar and brought home the blue bouclé. After puzzling over what I would do with it, I got out my yellow RIT dye and over-dyed it. Out came a magnificent, lush green (the upper right yarn in the panel of three yarns). She quickly made friends with the other greens and is heading for a dual career in the arts and home decorating. There’s always a happy ending when people bring fiber into their homes.

I have truly enjoyed the greens of spring this year, scootering or biking in to school with my boys and watching the lush foliage emerge. The highlight of this particular week, though, was going on a fishing trip in our canoe with the HoA (husband of artist) and elder son (aka the fishing machine, Tommie). I really enjoy paddling in the canoe—maybe it’s the repetitive nature of the paddle strokes that remind me of weaving. It was a beautiful evening on Tuesday, in between days of heavy rains. The water was glassy but not flat, and the partly cloudy skies let enough sun light in to see the glory of the lake and all the surrounding greens. I caught the first AND biggest fish, which usually wins you small sums of money in fishing bets in our family, but I haven’t seen the financial reward as of yet. I did enjoy the fish fry, with 25 modestly sized crappies (OK, there were a lot of small ones). But they were tasty! Especially with some heavy bread, some French fries and a bottle of Pilsner Urquel. Now that’s a fish fry!

Until next week…

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…