My Foray into Graphic Design

Monday is a big landmark for me.  I’m due to hang my ‘Garden Walk’ collection at the MonroeCounty History Center.  This represents a series of garden-themed pieces I’ve made over the past few months specifically for the show.  I have blogged about most of the pieces over the past few months, but Monday they will all be up for viewing at the venue (202 E. Sixth St.). 

My life took an interesting and productive turn when I mentioned the show debut to Colleen at Wonderlab. I dropped by to re-stock my cards in the gift shop, which is managed by Colleen.  She told me that visitors who see the cards often ask where they can see the art, and that she would love to be able to direct people to the actual pieces.  She asked if I had a rack card for the show—the kind of small promotional card you can pick up for free to help advertise a show.  I’ve never done one, but that only meant I had a new challenge!  They said they would happily distribute rack cards for the show, as did some of my other notecard distributors, so I was off to design a rack card. 

I spent a big chunk of my week, in between completing pieces for the show, coming up with a design I liked for my new and first-ever rack card.  My final design tells you as much about my friends as it does me, because I got a huge amount of help and input along the way.  When I came up with a prototype I showed it to Cappi Phillips, Dawn Adams, and Sarah Pierce and got some very useful advice to create the second version.  I belong to a Facebook group called Art Girls, and they were wonderful at giving me their opinions.  Sometimes you have friends and don’t know what their background is, and I learned that my friend Pat Hecker used to be a graphic designer.  She gave some great advice to help me finalize my design.  The rack card design is complete and off at the printers, and they’ll appear around town as soon as I receive them. 

As I’m writing this, I’m in the final stages of completing my last piece for the Garden Walk show.  I’ll snap a picture before I post the blog so you can see the lilies I’ve been working on.  I encountered a very unusual phenomenon as I was quietly working away in the art studio.  Usually I listen to WFIU but sometimes I like to work with the music off and listening to my own thoughts, and I swear that as I finished the lilies I could smell them!  It freaked me out a little bit.

With all my energies directed toward finishing my garden collection, there hasn’t been time to think about much else.  Time marches on, though, and there are two big events coming up at the end of the month.  The Trashion-Refashion show is always a big event.  Even though I’m not modeling any clothing this year I will have my Re-Shirts there for sale.  The Open Studios Tour was a big hit last year, so I’ll open my home again for the show at the end of April.  I’d like to have a bunch more Re-shirts for each of those two events, so Monday afternoon I’ll pull out my trusty sewing machine and get to making more.  That should be a fun change of pace for a few days.

On a final note—good news!  With only a little prompting, Jim recognized that it was time to bake me another pie.  I went off to a meeting Monday evening and I came home to the delightful aromas of a cherry-strawberry pie sitting on the oven.  The next day, even before I could get a picture, Jim gave Tommie a slice for breakfast.  Apparently Tommie didn’t want to take a piece because he knew it was ‘Mom’s’ pie, but Jim assured him it was OK.  Just as he lifted it out I came downstairs in the morning and they both looked a little worried.  In the end, I got my picture, a slice of delicious pie accompanied by an espresso, and a relieved and happy family!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Trip to Grandma’s

Last week was spring break for the boys and Jim, so the whole crew got out our winter clothes and headed seven hours north to see Grandma.  Along the way I created 32 green leaves that will go into my ‘Old Friends’ piece that features white lilies.  I know a lot of my friends question the wisdom of driving north for spring break, but we have such a wonderful relationship with Grandma.  We hung out, played ping-pong, ate well, and Jim and Tommie even braved the cold and wind to go on a fishing trip.  I’ll just report that the fish we ate all came from the freezer and Meijer’s.  While the trip was restful for everyone, I’m just not good at just sitting around.  I took my needle felting with me and also managed to finish all of the red petals for the tulip piece I’m envisioning for the Garden Walk exhibit.   All the pieces I’m working on are very spring-esque, including the now-finished tulip piece and the lily piece that’s still in progress.  

In Michigan we had lots of family time.  We even introduced Grandma to fondue, which she liked.   When Jim and Tommie went off fishing, Grandma, Jacob and I headed out to check out a stained glass supply store.  I did a lot of poking around to see if there were some interesting bits of glass that might be useful in my fiber pieces.  As I was looking, Jacob came up to me with a new craft he was interested in trying—now he’s making Kumihimo bracelets.   

He started out with dyed hemp cord and has since launched into bracelets featuring more bling-y material we picked up at Jo-Ann’s in Fort Wayne on our drive home.  He’s even hired me to attach the findings when he’s done, and so he’s off on his latest creative venture.   I suspect that if you come to our house for the Open Studio’s tour in late April he will have a display wall set up to vend his creations alongside my art work. 

Now that I’m back in my art studio I’ve been assembling the pieces I’ve made into completed works.  The first is Spring Tulips.  I love the colors in the piece—they’re just so bright and happy.  The piece is an off-the-wall bouquet and is very robust.  Now I’m gradually attaching the main veins to my lily leaves, and then attaching each leaf onto a major stem.   

I have been needle felting the white lily petals that will eventually be assembled into a lily flower.  All the while I’ve been moving mountains—of laundry!  The big piles down by the washer have all been moved through the system and onto hangers or into piles.  Now if I could just get someone to carry them upstairs! 

Finally, Indiana basketball has been a big thing.  They played an exciting game against Michigan to win the Big Ten Conference title (hooray!), and now they’ve won their first game in the NCAA tournament.  It’s all fun.  The flowers are just starting to appear (finally!), which means crocuses, snowdrops and the first daffodils are appearing in the yard and around town.  And since it’s spring, my thoughts are tuning to…  PIE!  Aren’t we due for another pie soon?  I see the bags labeled ‘cherry’ and ‘peach’ in the freezer.  Fingers crossed!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Walking Through Gardens…

I’m really excited about the piece I just finished.  I’m calling it “The Visit,” and it’s another piece in the series I’m creating for the Monroe County History Center’s Garden Walk Show.  I think that it’s a piece that nicely conveys the inspiration for the piece, so I’m really pleased with how it turned out.  I had been thinking a lot about two ideas that fit together in my mind. 

One aspect is the effort to see things that are slightly hidden, obscured by something in the foreground, looking through a mesh or partly closed curtains. My mind’s eye is trying to build a picture of what’s on the other side from the bits and pieces I can see.  The fence blocking the path and some of the flowers captures that essential part of ‘The Visit” for me.  The other aspect is the feeling you get when you visit a friend and leave pieces of yourself outside and step into their world.  

I tried to capture that with the abandoned bicycle at the fence, leading you to the conclusion that you’ve stepped through the gateway and into the yard beyond, something you couldn’t see clearly from outside the fence.  I really enjoy visiting with my friends, both in the physical sense of being with them and because I can step out of my world to get an idea about how they experience life. 

I had two wonderful experiences this week that helped me bring those ideas together.  Early in the week I went with my friend Dawn Adams to the SOFA gallery at IU to see the current BFA show.  It’s a completely different experience from my usual routine, and I learn a lot by paying close attention to the art – what works and what doesn’t.  One of our memorable conversations was about the concept of large areas of open space in artwork, really pushing the amount of negative space in a piece.  I tried to incorporated that concept in ‘The Visit’ through the amount of green space off in the distance and balance it with an abundance of information in the foreground.   

The other terrific experience I had this week was a visit to Jill Bolte-Taylor’s studio.  She invited me to play in her sandbox, working with stained glass, which is a medium I’ve never explored.  Her studio is a welcoming place—it’s well organized and brightly lit and she has power tools!  My standard choice for composition when I’m exploring a new medium is to create a tree.  Jill is going to fuse it for me, but for now it’s already laid out, foil wrapped and ready to assemble.  She’s really an amazing person—caring and generous, and just fun to sit and chitty-chat with.  I’m glad she makes Bloomington her home. 

This week we had what I expect is our last snow day of the year.  I could tell you we had lots of snow, but the reality is that two inches of wet snow closes the schools in Bloomington.  It was very pretty to see.  The wet, sticky snow attached to all the branches and gave a nice patina to my yin-yang piece hanging at the carport.  I made it as an installation piece, where the yin and yang are the arts and sciences.  I thought it was pretty with the branches covered in snow.  I was ready to take it down earlier this year, but now I think it’s OK to stay up a little longer.  And the really big news of the week—I got a raspberry pie!  Jim ‘discovered’  frozen farmer’s market raspberryies he had squirreled away in the freezer and forgot about.  It was under the frozen Girl Scout cookies.  Anyway, the flavor was awesome!  And spring is almost here!  The birds building nests and chirping happily outside, so I know it must be true.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

The city Blooms…

Last week featured a lot of preparation for the Bloom Artists Showcase this past Sunday.  I pressed and tagged all my new Re-shirts, including my latest style.  My first style I called  ‘Art Tanks’, but the new ones feature a flap in the back.  My friend David Goodrum suggested I call these ‘Art Tails’ - he’s such a creative fellow!  In the wake of my sewing machine breakdown, I also had plenty of time to start more pieces that I’ll feature in the ‘Garden Walk’ show at the History Center starting April first.

  My latest piece will feature three white lilies, inspired by some of my older friends.  Lilies take a long time to develop and flower, then they burst into display mode late in their lives.  I’m a very detail oriented person, so when I started on the project I needed to have some models in the house.  The pictures from the web just didn’t give me the level of detail I needed.  Jim answered the call and picked up some lily buds, but then he left them in the car in an attempt to surprise me.   

It turns out that the lilies didn’t like the freezing temperatures and came in as little green rocks.  The plant tissue just started decomposing in the warm temperatures and I never got to see my lilies!  Fortunately, I found some post-Valentine day lilies that needed to be adopted for a very reasonable price.  My art studio smelled great for a couple of days, and I got to look carefully at the shape of the stamens.  It didn’t take long to get the hang of making them, and so I plowed forward and wove the green background for the piece as well! 

Sunday brought the Bloom "Local Artists Showcase", and I was up early and set up by 10:30 for the noon start.  Even though about one thousand people came, it still wasn’t as well attended as last year, when the show was held on a Saturday.  The artists were an enthusiastic bunch, and everyone had a good time.  My Re-shirts proved to be a big hit.  At one point there was a real feeding frenzy, with people swapping shirts and trying them on in a round robin fashion fest!  I had a great time and did a lot of laughing with my customers.  The best news was that it was a lot lighter to pack them up to bring home after selling a bunch of them!  I did have half a booth full of my wall art pieces to complement the Re-Shirt half, but I think fewer people noticed my wall art.  I think the Re-Shirts were just so bright and colorful and vibrant that my wall pieces played second fiddle.   

There were even a couple of humorous moments when people were drawn in to the colorful Re-Shirts before connecting me to the wall art.  I got the “Oh!  I know you!” response a few times.  I did also get several generous offers from people who have clothing and fabric scraps willing to donate them to my stock, something I’m delighted about.  I’ll start block printing next week for my next round of Re-Shirts.  And before you ask, no, I don’t sleep. 

On the family front, the boys went over to a friend’s house to have a multi-holiday celebration.  How do you celebrate Lincoln’s birthday, Valentine’s day, the Chinese New Year (the year of the Snake), and Darwin’s birthday?  By making a chocolate stovepipe hat and decorating it with Gummi snakes!  Of course!  Everyone had fun, and we came home with more chocolate than we needed.  In between everything else there was lots of eScrabble, a beautiful day on Sunday after Friday’s ice storm, but alas, no pie.  Very sad.  I did hear that Jim discovered a bag of frozen Farmer’s Market raspberries hidden in the freezer!  I’m going to start thinking really loudly about what I want now, OK? 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Re-shirt week.

This week I pulled out my trusty Jeans Machine sewing machine that Grandma gave me and spent the whole week sewing!  I first converted the dining room into a sewing room.  After the Unitarian Universalist Art Fair in December I was secure in the knowledge that my new Re-Shirt designs were well-received.  Around that time I had cut out some fabric for the next batch of Re-Shirts.  If you haven’t seen them, they’re artsy tank tops with tuxedo tails made out of fabrics that have had a previous life.  That means that old shirts, skirts, tablecloths and curtains are all fair game.  When I think of curtain fabrics, all I can think of is the great Carol Burnett and her parody of "Gone With the Wind."

My friend Ruth has been wonderful about giving me all kinds of fabric scraps, including batiks and embroidered pieces that I think came out of a jacket.  I even ‘retire’ a few shirts from my husband’s closets that he shouldn’t be wearing any more.  The process of creating shirts itself is a lot like making soup—what goes in depends on what you have on hand and what color palate strikes my fancy.  Just as I was finishing up this week, the tension on the sewing machine went wonky and it got stuck in reverse !?! And so the sewing was over.  ugh.  It now sits at Klaiber’s Sewing Center awaiting some care and attention.   

In hindsight, it probably would have been a good idea to give it a little oil every now and again instead of plowing through several show’s worth of Re-Shirts.  I mentioned to my friend Karen Cherrington that my machine would be down for two weeks, and she generously loaned me her sewing machine as a replacement.  She bought it in 1984 and the machine never made it out of the box.  It looks like a really solid machine, but I’m guessing it’s going to need a little oil.  I should be chugging along again by the beginning of the week.  Basically I’m gearing up for the Bloom show, which will be this coming Sunday, February 24^th from 12 to 5:30 at the Bloomington Convention Center.  

 I’ll be in booth #60 if I’m not talking or laughing loud enough for you to hear me when you come in.  I have seen a lot of advertising for it, including in this morning’s Herald-Times, so I’m expecting a good turnout. 

On the home front, we celebrated Valentine’s Day with special chocolate.  It wasn’t homemade pie, but instead I picked up a mousse cake from Angel B’s bakery in town.  It went nicely with the 2010 Molllydooker shiraz.  Yum!  On Friday night the whole crew went out to see ‘Traces’ at the IU Auditorium.  It was an amazing show!  The upper body strength and athletic ability of the performers was outstanding.  We saw individuals who could hold their rigid bodies at an angle of 90 degrees from a standing pole, or climb a pole while spinning around it without using their feet or bodies.  It’s truly a cross between circus acrobatics and modern dance.  It had a few dramatic choreographed falls and dramatic recoveries that freaked out Jim a little, but otherwise we all had a great time.  On Saturday morning I slipped off to the Bollywood dance class at Panache.  Darrelyn runs the class, and basically it’s a huge sweat fest.  She’s an enthusiastic ball of energy that inspires the thirty or forty participants to dance their hearts out.  I may not be exceptionally coordinated, but I really enjoy the class.  And finally, between everything else, I’ve had a chance to slip into my art studio and do a little weaving.  I have idea for another Garden Walk piece.  It involves a stone path turning thorough a white picket fence that guards the flowers on the inside yard.  I’m hoping to make some good progress on that piece this week.  I’ll just have to see what else life sends my way!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Hard work pays off!

This week was full of weaving like a madwoman, which resulted in a couple of completed pieces.  I have been juggling five ‘in progress’ pieces.  I didn’t have any evening meetings this week, which gave me lots of weaving and needle felting time.  Plus, both boys were healthy, so I really got to focus on my projects in the art studio, pushing projects forward.  I completed the last of my commission pieces, which was a revisitation of ‘Winter Birches’.  That piece is complete and on its way to Chicago.  I turned my attention to my ‘Spring Treasures’ piece.  It features a crocus bulb and a clump of emerging flowers, which are now planted in their new home.  Buoyed by my successes, I put the finishing touches on the feature piece for my upcoming garden walk show. 

As I was working on the piece, I was reminded of some advice I got from Mary Hambly, a local paper quilter I met when I was starting into my art career.  She wanted me to think carefully about the relevance of materials that went into the art, choosing fabrics for their relevance to each piece.  The ‘Garden Walk’ piece features a flagstone path made from fragments of Grandpa’s army blanket.  I needle felted raw washed wool over the blanket to create the stones.  This was my first synthetic stone piece, because I usually enlist my family to find stones for my weavings.  Grandpa’s blanket opened up a whole new path for me, and like so many other materials in my creations, will always have fond memories for me when I think of them in my art.  I also really enjoyed making all the flowers along the path.  I was channeling some of our still-sleeping garden beds, especially the color combinations.  We have some beautiful tradescantia, with their vibrant purples over blue-green foliate.  I was imagining deep red roses, which we don’t have because the Japanese beetles eat them, over intense, dark, rich green foliage.  Nobody eats that, so I have plenty to channel.  The tree in the piece was actually a leftover from a previous commission.  It turned out that I had one too many trunks and it seemed to fit perfectly here.  The whole composition was a very organic process that just came together beautifully at the end. 

I still have some other works that will come along shortly, but the upcoming week is Re-shirt week.  The Bloom artist showcase is coming up on the twenty-fourth of February.  I want to have plenty of shirts for that show, and I promised some new ones to people who said they’d visit the show.  The Garden Walk show, which will hang at the Monroe County History Center, will go up on April first.  That’s my big wall art push, to have all the garden-themed pieces ready.  I also want to give a shout out to my gallery out in Laramie Wyoming.  It’s called JenyOriginals, and they have a new website and will be carrying my Sweater Petals.

The rest of the week’s news is all family-oriented.  The boys earned their red-with-a

-white-stripe belt in Tae Kwon Do on Friday.  I like to think of it as the Canadian belt.  After illnesses the previous week, they puffed a little but got through it just fine.  Oh, and I must be doing something right—a peach pie appeared on Monday and I had slices for breakfast all the way through Friday.  Yippee! 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Lemons in the Snow

When life gives you lemons, mail them to Massachusetts!  According to the UPS, the lemon piece has touched down in Massachusetts at its new home.  As promised, here’s the image of the final piece.  Every end turns into a new beginning, or at least a reminder that it’s time to get back to the other projects you’ve ignored along the way.  To that end I’ve been chugging away at my Winter Birches commission.  I’m pleased to report that I have all of the tree trunks made for the piece, as well as the branches. 

 If all goes well this coming week I should assemble the piece and send it off to its new home in Chicago.  The caveat stems from fact that my weekly schedule was rather disjointed because Tommie was sick.  I think it’s that stinking flu going around.  He’s much better now and was able to go back to school on Thursday.  Fortunately, the illness was isolated to Tommie, at least so far. 

Unfortunately, it meant that my art making was a little of this and a little of that.  I did launch into another piece for the garden show.  It’s the fifth piece I have in progress at one time, which is a record for me.  The piece will be titled “Washing the Harvest” and will feature an outstretched hand holding a radish under a water faucet emerging from a stone wall.  This week I managed to weave the wall and I got a good start on the hand. 

 I have a thumb and one finger, perfect for picking things up.  My hope is to add more fingers this evening during the IU-Michigan game, but I’m worried that it’s going to be too exciting.  I just can’t safely poke with a needle when I have to keep looking up at the game.  When I transitioned into art, I never imagined that college basketball games would slow down progress. 

 

 My goal for the upcoming week is to keep making progress on weavings, but the following week I will pull out the sewing machine to make Re-Shirts.  They were well received at the Unitarian Universalist Art Fair in December of last year, and I promised people that I would make more for this event.  They were so popular that I sold the one I was wearing three times, so I need to make myself one as well!  The Bloom Artists’ Showcase is coming up on Sunday February 24^th, and will run from noon to 5:30 at the Bloomington Convention Center. I found this pic from last year's event on Bloom's web site.  Fortunately, I spent a little time over the holidays cutting out the actual Re-Shirt fabrics, which come from old clothing, curtains, tablecloths and random fabric scraps.  That means I’m ready to put Grandma’s sewing machine into high gear for about a week.  It’s called the Jeans Machine, and it’s a real workhorse.  On my old machine the zigzags would skip a few stitches when I put the petal to the metal, but this machine just hums along perfectly, even at “Interstate speed.”  I like that.  

 

After a long week of poor sleep and tired days, last night we celebrated with a delightful fish dinner.  Jim prepared his now famous orange-ginger-glazed salmon and jasmine rice.  The dish was accompanied by steamed broccoli, for which Jacob requested a cheese sauce - so out came my trusty old Fanny Farmer.  That sauce increased his broccoli consumption about five-fold, so I plan to make that again.  The adults added a delightful bottle of wine—the tempranillo with the pig on the label.  It’s actually a super inexpensive wine from Trader Joe’s, but when you just need a reliable tipple it does a fine job.  I wonder how it goes with peach pie.  Is anybody listening? 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin