From Frog Toes to Fall Cooking

My week started off with frog toes. I needed eighteen fresh ones for my red-eyed tree frog piece. Fortunately, I had lots of art-in-the-community meetings this week, plus my usual afternoon slots watching the boys do Tae Kwon Do at Monroe County Martial Arts. I started off by cutting copper wire pieces create the toe structure, then I searched out just the right shade of peachy pink for the sticky orbs. A little wrapping here, a little poking there, and before I knew it the little toes emerged. They’re so cute! They even get cuter when they’re attached to the red-eyed tree frog. The whole project was made all the more satisfying because I had a support section at MCMA that watched the whole thing come together and encouraged me at every step of the process. Except for poking the frog eyes, anyway. The frog is done—Oh happy day! Soon it will be hopping into the fern background before snuggling down in protective packaging for the trip to Ohio.

I also hung a show at the Bellevue Gallery at the Bloomington Playwright’s Project (BPP) front foyer. This fall exhibit is called “Reduce, Reuse and Re-weave.” It's part of this year's Aware-fest: A Greener World and happily, I was the recipient of a BPP/BEAD (Bloomington Entertainment and Arts Districts) grant to create the show. The exhibit is actually spread out over two venues, the BPP and the downtown Bloomington Bagel Company (BBC). I spent my time at the BPP today and on October 1st I’ll set up the rest of the exhibit at the BBC. The opening night reception will be on Friday, October 1st from 5-8 pm—please come! I can’t promise a lot of excitement, but I will bring some nice bruschetta from Trader Joe’s and a fresh baguette from The Bakehouse to contribute to the finger food spread.

My new art endeavor for the week center around a dimensional forest piece that features a secluded walk. I started with some dark brown yarns that I’ve been using to wrap around a core of shoelaces, used packing cords and old lanyards to create the tree trunks and reclaimed copper wire to create the tree branches. For the trees in the background, I’ve been mixing in some lighter brown yarns together to create the illusion of depth. With plenty of meeting this week I had ample time multitask and crochet leaf clumps using my suite of freshly dyed green yarns from last week. The piece construction has been moving right along in hopes of having it ready to hang at the BBC location on October 1st. I finished the woven background a few weeks ago and the piece has hung on my art studio wall in a place where I could see it every day. Sometimes the composition takes a while to develop, and seeing the unfinished background stimulates my ideas about which direction to take the piece.

We had a noticeable weather change this week with summer temperatures in the mid nineties giving way to the first hints of cooler fall weather. That got me into a baking mood; today I whipped out fresh bread, peanut butter cookies, and a big batch of peppered salmon using loads of peppers from the morning’s Farmer’s Market adventure. A lot of that will go into the freezer. I even planned out a recipe for pumpkin and red pepper fall soup to make soon. And so the choice becomes cook, felt, or weave, which should I do first!?

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Frogs, pockets and soup...

My big project of the week was to finish the home for my red-eyed tree frog. I thought I had finished all the fern leaflets I could possibly want. I made a huge pile and started attaching them on to the veins to create fern fronds for him to hide in. Unfortunately, when the more I attached the smaller the pile got, and soon I was left with one unfinished vein. Back to the art studio I went, cut up eighty more leaflets out of brass flashing and started to wrap them. Happily, I had plenty of the yarn stock that I dyed for the project. It would have been a nightmare to have to try to match the colors. I love the colors I get when I dye, but it isn’t an exact art and I just don’t think I could re-create the same colors. I attached all the completed fern fronds to my woven green background and all is good in my world. Now I’m working on completing the frog. This is a fun needle-felting project with a lot of detail work, but there are some limitations. For example, I do a lot of work at the Monroe County Martial Arts school and at art-related meetings I attend. I’m just now putting in the eyes of the frog, but I’ve learned that most people are a little freaked out by the repetitive poking with the needle around the eyes. In my mind it makes no difference which part of the animal I’m working on, whether it’s the skin, eye or tail, but I can see why that might be a little hard to watch. So I slip down into my art studio when the kids are in school for those parts. I wear black leather and put on creepy music to set the mood, too. Not really! I’m just kidding!

In addition to the usual constraints on my time this week, a new project fell into my lap. The schools are having a fundraiser that I think is just fabulous. Instead of getting friends and relatives (and parents) to buy stuff they probably don’t need to send some proceeds back the school, last year they started running a read-a-thon. You pledge money for pages read, and the kids go to town reading whatever chapter books interest them. The competitive aspect gets a lot of people reading more, which is great. To kick off the events, though, they have a style show where kids dress up as their favorite literature character. Jacob decided he wanted to participate as a Yu-Gi-Oh duelist (sounds like a Japanese alcohol-free beer). That meant he needed a slick white jacket with pockets for one hundred dueling decks on the inside. Kind of like the shirts where illicit street vendors open up their coats and try to sell you knock-off watches. I leapt into action and repurposed one of Jim’s old dress shirts (I hope he’s not reading this!). The pockets had to hold the decks, so I did some fancy darting to create 12 pockets for decks. He filled them up, put it on and added his duelist arm gear and voila! He was ready to go. The best news is that I persuaded him that it would also be a great Halloween costume. That’s like feeding two birds with one loaf of bread.

My last bit of news comes from the dyeing world. I pulled out the last bag of frozen plant material from my summer trip to Michigan. I collected a bunch of purple loosestrife that I had high hopes for. It’s a beautiful flower, but it’s an invasive weed that chokes out native wetland plants. I chopped it up and boiled it like a weed I didn’t much care for, but not much purple came of it. Off to the compost pile it went. On the other hand, it did inspire me to get out my stockpots for soup. I recently stopped by the By Hand gallery and was chatting with Joan, and she offered me the last of this season’s kale from the garden. Luckily, kale is the secret ingredient in “Lois soup”, which comes from Lois Graham, the boys’ fairy godmother in Michigan. Of course to her it’s “Sarah’s soup”. I use chopped up veggie sausages instead of real sausages, but it’s full of kale, beans and spices. A soup by any other name…

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

My September 11th

Today is anniversary day—Jim and I were married on September 11, 1999! Two boys and a lot of art later, I’m sooo happy with how things have worked out.

Today was a low-key rainy Saturday, which is what I have needed after a long summer of art fairs. I spent a bit of time today wrapping fern leaves for a commissioned piece featuring a red-eyed tree frog. I finished the woven background a while ago, and I’ve felted the body of the frog in my spare moments over the past few weeks. The frog’s skin should start appearing this week! That left the green yarn I needed for the fern leaves, which meant a dip in my big dye pots. I did some experimenting with overdyeing some wool and wool blend yarns and the final colors were very interesting. The wool showed a lot of variegation, which is just what I was looking for to create plant tissues. Plant leaves normally have a lot of depth and variation of color that often goes unnoticed until you look carefully. To create the fern leaves I wrap brass flashing with the just-right green yarn I dyed, and the flashing came from one of my secret supply stores in Michigan. I’ve got a big salad-sized bowl full of leaflets wrapped and ready to attach to the spine of the fern frond.

The end of the summer art fair seasons means that it’s time to restock my card inventories. I even ran out of card five-packs during the Fourth Street show, which shows how depleted I was. I’ve been traipsing back and forth between the printer (to get the cards) and home (to score and pack the cards) and my local venues to get them restocked. It’s been fun to catch up with friends at places such as Wonderlab, By Hand Gallery and Bloomingfoods when I bring in fresh cards. It’s also nice to get the checks in the mail when the cards sell! It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling when people buy the cards to share or frame them, especially when they’re familiar with the art pieces they’re based on.

As summer fades and the heat yields to cooler temperatures, it’s time to start thinking about fall traditions. My newest ‘tradition’ is wet-felting merino wool scarves, and I have to get busy on that front. Happily, I’ve been accepted into the Krasl Holly Market (in St. Joseph, MI) this November to show my scarves. I want to send about a dozen pieces, and I want to test out some new design ideas. Rather than having solid or lattice scarves, which was my starting point, I want to experiment with connected ring designs. It may not be a surprise, but I want to incorporate some more dimensional aspects into the designs, such as leaves dangling from the scarves. I also want to work with some more earthy tones, bringing in more browns and golds. I think I’m channeling the drying and fading plants in the garden after a long, hot, dry summer. The cooler air just makes me want to switch from bright greens to Midwest autumn browns. It’s also time to abandon summer-fresh bruschetta and start thinking about chopping up vegetables for fall soups! There’s always something to look forward to, isn’t there!


Until next week…

Martina Celerin

A Record Fourth Street Festival!

Wow, what I weekend I just had! Last week was a blur, with my efforts focused on getting ready for the big Fourth Street Festival of Art and Craft in Bloomington. I stopped weaving and started to focus on getting my card stocks in order and doing my part to make the show run smoothly. Friday evening was the show set-up, so I packed up bluebell (my trusty electric blue Matrix) and headed downtown to help mark the streets and get the 121 artists settled in. Jim unpacked the car and had everything staged by the curb while I worked and the boys played. Set-up went smoothly, and all was ready for Saturday morning. The day dawned very cool and clear, with a temperature somewhere in the mid forties (~7 degrees C). I set up my merino scarf display, which turned out to be a good idea, since I ended up selling a bunch of scarves before the temperatures climbed. Fall only lasted until around noon. When summer came back the scarf sales plummeted. On the bright side, the show drew an estimated 48 thousand visitors this year, an all time record! We bested last year’s number by six thousand. I’m sure pleasant temperatures and sunny days played a big part in the success.

This was a year when everything just went swimmingly! I owe a big thanks to people such as Officer Jeff Aldwine from the Bloomington police department and his cohort of badged wonders. They kept away the non-juried hawkers and unsanctioned buskers and were such a joy to work with. Jean Kautt did a great job again as show manager, sorting out the problems when the porta-potties overflowed and ran short of toilet paper (not in that order). I don’t know if it was the cool weather or the big turnout, but a lot of people did their business at the show.

As always, my support crew came through this year, bringing me a wonderful lunches from the area restaurants. Yum! But the food highlight was the fresh-baked peach pie that greeted me Sunday morning before the show. It was built from eight cups of blemished peaches from the farmer’s market, with several different varieties mixed together, and it was scrumptious.

Of course the show was about art! Several of my pieces found new and happy homes, which always makes me feel good. My new abstract pieces were well received. I was amazed at how many artists recognized that the abstract tiles represented a new body of work for me, and they gave me lots of compliments. Of all the shows I do, the Fourth Street Festival is my favorite for personal reasons too. I get to catch up and chitty-chat with all my friends, fellow parents, other artists and acquaintances from all my Bloomington circles. My husband thinks it’s funny to keep asking me if I had any nice conversations or got any compliments at the show, but it never gets old. Maybe I should be trying to sell more, but the chitty-chat and catch-up aspect of the show is the most important part to me. What’s funny is that while I’m talking to one person, another person I know want to talk to will be waiting in the wings or outside the booth. While that’s happening I usually see other people I know walk by and wave. I just feel so connected here, and that’s what makes the show so wonderful. Or maybe it’s the peach pie! Did I say I like pie?

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Anybody need a hand?

It’s time for my annual big push in preparation the Fourth Street Festival here in Bloomington. Thankfully, this year I’m not trying to deal with the children’s booth project. That ate up a huge amount of my time the past few years, and I still have the unfinished project from last year sitting in my living room. This year’s challenge was filling my booth with fresh art for my discriminating local clientele. That became even more of an issue than usual when the fine folks at the Madison Art Fair just about cleaned out my booth. Rain or shine, the set up is this Friday for the weekend show, so I only have a few days to bring things together. That includes helping stomp out all the little fires associated with the show’s production that pop up every year.

On the bright side, I just finished a big piece called ‘The Harvest’. It has a hand that’s pulling a carrot out of the earth, which means I’ve been needle felting a hand and a forearm for the last few weeks. I’m really pleased with how it turned out, but the disembodied arm has freaked out more than a few people. I’m sure it looks a little creepy to watch someone poke needles at high speed into a realistic looking arm. I took it to the farmer’s market yesterday, and while we picked up some corn, peaches and tomatoes, we hung the hand-in-progress from the steering wheel. As we walked away we all marveled at how realistic it looked. In hindsight, in today’s world it might not have been so smart to have a realistic arm hanging free of a body in your car. At least it wasn’t dripping blood. On the bright side, now the arm is securely fastened in its permanent location, pulling a carrot out of the earth. I’ll be in trouble though, if the police come for the arm —it will tell them it was framed!

I did do a little dyeing this week too. I pulled my frozen harvest of yellow goldenrod flowers out of the freezer and threw them into my dye pot. I first tried my stock protocol, which is to boil the flowers for an hour in water and let them steep overnight. Then I filter the brew and throw in my washed wool. I boil it again for an hour and let it steep overnight again. My first effort wasn’t too spectacular—the wool came out a pretty but rather drab yellow. There was still quite a bit of yellow in the dye pot, so I threw in some alum and some fresh wool to see what would happen. Out came a brilliant yellow that I thought was amazing. Next time I’ll start with alum see how it turns out. I may be an artist now, but still love doing experiments!

On other fronts, I finished my whimsical yellow bird and perched her in the framed tree I created for her. I've named it "Out on a Limb" and I’m very pleased with how that one turned out too, so I’m looking forward to debuting my newest pieces for my peeps here in town. That reminds me of waking up in the hotel room during the Columbus Ohio art fair next to my then seven-year-old son. He woke up with a smile, looked up at me, and said: “if your friends are your ‘peeps’, I think your best friend must be your ‘perp’!” Why that was the first waking thought in his head is beyond my understanding—weird stuff like that comes from Jim’s side of the family. That was the good old days, though. Now Jacob is eight, and Tommie just turned ten. We’ve been feasting on an excellent chocolate birthday cake this week. The intrepid boys, along with their friend Lara, chased butterflies in an open field until they collected 51 today, including a bunch of new species that were photographed, identified and released. I sat and sketched with my new wood-less coloured pencils while they ran around, so all was well in my world!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

French Onion Soup and Blackberry Pie

I had a big landmark in my art career this week: my boys went back to school! First there was the mad rush to get all the school supplies together. Then I thought I was going to have big blocks of time to get things done, but somehow a lot of time was consumed doing paperwork. Somewhere in the middle Tommie’s cast came off, his broken arm mended. This week I’m going to park my bottom in my cool art studio and get weaving! Yippee!

I guess I did get a lot of art done this week too. Mostly I worked on my whimsical bird piece. I had been struggling with how to translate my tree sketch into a wire and felt object. The big issue was creating tapered tree branches that were thin at the ends of the curly branches and thick at the base near the trunk. I started with a thin wire core that I bent and wrapped for the curly ends. As I moved from the curly ends to the stout base, I increased the thickness by incorporating some really nice felt wool fabric that I got from Kathey Gibson on a trip to Michigan. I cut it into triangles, pointy ends facing the thin tips, and kept wrapping the branches with these filler pieces to bulk them up. I then used thick strips of the felt to wrap the tree trunk and create the general tree shape I wanted. Finally, I just needle felted on top of the crude trunk to smooth it into the shape and color I wanted. I’m delighted with how it turned out! I’ve propped it together to see how it looks, and next week I’ll “nail” it all down on the woven background.

With all my successes on the stove last week, starting with fresh yummy bruschetta and ending with sumac dyeing, I decided to continue the trend. This week I had tomatoes, tomatillos and cilantro, so of course it was time to make salsa. I also decided it was time to bring out my collection of frozen onion skins. I collect the brown outer layers every time I break into an onion for cooking and store them in a bag in the freezer. This week I got frustrated with the disordered state of the freezer and decided to organize it a bit. I came across the onion skins and decided there were enough for the dye pot, so out they came to make a little space. I cooked them for an hour, steeped them over night, strained the skins the next day, then warmed it back up so it would be cozy for my fleece. Every project is an experiment for me, so I threw in three different kinds of fleece, all white, to see what would happen. I left the fleece in the pot overnight and was surprised and pleased when I saw the three very different caramel colors. I also saw that there was enough color in the pot to try again, so I threw in some more fleece. The materials that spent two nights in the pot were darker still—what a surprise! Next time I need to work with ‘time in the dye pot’ as a variable. This is obvious in hindsight but it never occurred to me until I saw the results of the experiment.

I have a lot on my plate these days, such as the Fourth Street Art Fair coming up on Labor Day weekend. I’m also doing a workshop for teachers in Danville, Indiana, in early October. Last time we made ornaments, but not everyone who wanted to come could make it so we scheduled a second session in October. I proposed that we could make felted hearts or turtles, and we’re likely going with the turtles. I’ve been making demonstration turtles parts so that I can show the pieces in stages—kind of like a cooking show where they have the beautiful torte already baked to pull out at the end. This turtle is more whimsical than my previous ones, when I was trying for accuracy. I like how my prototype came together, and I like his tilted head and the quizzical look that gives him. It’s kind of like the look I get from Jim when I ask him when he’s going to clean the bathroom.

And speaking of my sweet husband, this week’s pie was made from the last of the season blackberries. Mmmmmm…

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Always dye with a white shirt on...

This week was brutally hot in southern Indiana, but in the cool morning I pulled out my big dye pot, fired up the stove and tossed in my fresh Michigan sumac for a good boil. The brew had an impressive deep red color. After I filtered the fine particles I threw in some fleece, and to my great delight, out came a beautiful earthy red color. Of course, as I was pulling the fleece out of the pot, I managed to splash some on the white shirt I was wearing. Curses! I quickly grabbed my planet-saving eco-friendly dish soap and went after the stain. To my surprise, the stain turned a pretty blue-green. Thanks to my valuable but little-used scientific background, I recognized that the red color was probably pH dependent. My artist side thought: hey, what a cool color! My scientist came back out and dumped a bunch of baking soda into my scarlet dye pot. I made a glorious volcano (art can be fun!) that barely stayed in the pot, and when it settled down I added more to neutralize all the acid. I read that sumac is rich in vitamin C, which is an organic acid, and that’s what I think I was neutralizing with the baking soda. The native Indians used to make a lemonade-like sumac drink in the winter to get the vitamin C. The red dye itself has to be a pH indicator, so raising the pH brought me to a different color in the dye pot. In went more fleece, and this time I got a pretty sea foam color. And happily, once both are affixed to wool they are colourfast. Love science; love art!

I also started a new piece this week based on one of the sketches I did in Michigan. It’s a very happy piece centered around a whimsical bird in a tree that I felt I needed to start. I needle felted the bird and wove the background, two enterprises I really enjoy. I pulled out some wire I got from the Restore here in Bloomington that supports Habitat for Humanity. I bent the wire into shapes and wrapped each with yarn to meet my color requirements. As I was doing it I realized how much the branches looked like the tree I created for the Lotus festival. Then I realized the shapes of the branches really came from the ornaments I used to make. After I thought about that, I was reminded that they really came from the swirly patterns I used to put on ceramics I painted at the Latest Glaze. My boys and I used to go there to feed our artistic side when they were younger, and I made serving bowls for the family that we still use. It’s fascinating to me to trace progressions in my work to see how artistic ideas came together, tracking back through my mental forest to find the breadcrumbs I left along the way. Luckily there are no crumb-eating-critters allowed in my brain or it wouldn’t be so much fun.

While the oppressive heat of summer is in full force, the season is winding down with school starting next week. Tommie’s current passion is practicing CPR on the butterflies that cross his path (catch, photograph and release). He has a powerpoint presentation with all the butterflies identified and short audio clips identifying them for a slideshow. His cast comes off Tuesday, which I think he’s ready for. It’s the countdown to the Fourth Street Art Festival over the Labor Day weekend, and preparations are in full swing. I made a last attempt to capture a little of summer with my husband Jim, who wanted to make a bruschetta sauce. He and Tommie went to the farmer’s market on Saturday and picked up a big batch of heirloom and grape tomatoes to complement the stack of romas we got from the CSA. A head of garlic came home too, as did a bunch of basil. Oregano came from the backyard garden and some ‘soft’ white wine came from Oliver Winery to make the whole thing a local affair. We had some on baguette slices (from the Bakehouse, of course!) last night with cream havarti or pepper jack cheese, complemented by corn on the cob and local new potatoes. Yum! Everything was great, including the ripe red August watermelon we had for dessert. I guess summer is OK after all. Enjoy the bounty local bounty while it lasts!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin