Des Moines Art Festival, here we come!

My loon piece is complete!  I finished needle felting the loon in Michigan and it was fun to be able to show the piece to my family there, especially Grandma, in real life as opposed to just in pictures.  When we got back from Michigan I needle felted the loon onto the weaving background and decided to add some reflection of the loon on the water. 

 I used very thin, gauzy layers of black and white merino fleece and felted like crazy into the water’s surface.  I made the cattails and leaves earlier, so I stitched them on as soon as the loon was in his place.  I’m delighted with how it turned out!  When we returned from Michigan I leapt into action on my large format ‘trail through the woods’ piece.   

I finished attaching the understory and stitched the background on to the frame.  When we were on vacation at Topsail Island we collected a box full of special beach rocks called mother stones.  I knew when I was collecting them I knew they would be useful for something, and I thought they were perfect for the trail’s edge.   

The piece projects off the wall about twelve inches, and I just love the way it looks when I walk around it.  I have it in the living room where we can all enjoy it before we pack it up for the big trip to the Des Moines Art Festival in Iowa.  Speaking of the trip, I woke up during the night thinking about all the new pieces I created for summer art fairs.  I suddenly had the realization that I don’t have nearly enough protective weaving covers for all the new pieces!   

As my family was watching Apollo 13 on movie night, I was cutting up old pillowcases, tablecloths, bed sheets and some fabric scraps I got from our previous trip to Michigan.  I also love using up scraps, including threads.  This was my opportunity to use all my wound bobbins remnants, which gave me a rainbow palette to sew up my weaving covers.   I now have 18 brand new weaving covers appropriate for my large format pieces.  In the past I just used old pillowcases, but my work has become even more dimensional that I need to create my own protective weaving covers.   

Sewing brings back fond memories for me, since I always think of my step-grandmother the seamstress when I’m sewing.  She used to complain that my lines were not straight enough and compare my sewing to a puppy peeing.  I think she would be pleased with how straight my seams have become, and the fact that I zigzag all my seams. 

In vacation news, our trip to Michigan was wonderful.  We had Haley and the new baby Arya fly in from New Mexico.  Dave and Martha drove up from Mississippi on their ‘visit the family’ tour.  For several days Grandma had a very full house, and it was terrific.  One of the fun things that we did was go on a charter with Captain Dougat Fish Point lodge.  

 Between the lot of us we brought home 17 walleyes.  We released a lot of small fish, many sheepshead and a couple of huge catfish.  We ate well, got plenty of hugs and laughed a lot, so it was mission accomplished for me.  Yesterday morning was the Farmer’s market.  Jim and I managed to slip out together.  It was a delightful morning—it was like a date!   

We picked up some local blueberries, perfectly ripe tart cherries, black raspberries, peaches, cucumbers and some fresh broccoli to come home with us.  The tart cherries are pitted and in the freezer, waiting to become a pie.  This morning, oh my, oh my, I smelled a black raspberry pie!  It looks beautiful and I can’t wait to try it! 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

A loon swam by for a visit…

Right now I’m working at full steam to complete two pieces before the big Des Moines Art Fair at the end of June.  A few weeks back, during the Open Studios Tour, I had created the background for a piece that will feature a loon gliding on the water through cattails.  That was before our visit to North Carolina, and I think I was channeling northern waters when I started it.  Now I’m close to finishing the loon.   

A huge amount of detail work has gone into getting the body shape just right and forming the intricate design on its back.  The level of detail reminds me of the days when I used to do counted cross-stitch.  Luckily, I’ve had a lot of meetings to attend, boys Taekwondo classes, and visits to the doctor  (just checkups!) to give me time to work on the loon.  Just a couple more car trips when Jim drives and I should have it complete!  I do have to be careful when I work on the eyes, though.  I’ve learned from past experience that I should never poke at a creature’s eyes around other people—it just weirds them out, even though it’s wool. 

While the loon piece has taken a while to get back to, my major studio focus has been a large format ‘path’ piece.  I’ve been posting snapshots on Facebook (I have a Dimensional Weavings page, which you’re welcome to visit and‘Like’).   

Recently I attached the tree trunks, added crocheted leaf clumps and branches, and lately I’ve been working on the understory.  Soon I’ll be able to stitch the actual weaving onto the frame and call it done!  I’m excited to have two more new pieces to take on my summer art fair trail.  First it will be Des Moines at the end of June, but this week I also learned that I was invited to participate in the Madison Art Fair on the Square again!  Hooray!  Everybody is excited to do the show, especially since we get to see Wendy and Duane in Hollandale.  I know we’ll eat well and laugh a lot. 

With the summer comes a whole bunch of family activities.  The boys announced that this summer they wanted to learn how to paddle a kayak.  As fortune would have it, we ran into one of their former teachers, Cindy Creek, who is one of the two teachers in the multiage classroom at Rogers elementary (with Mike Love).  She’s also a Zumba person, which is how I ran into her lately.  She’s an avid kayaker and volunteered to get us started.  We rented three kayaks on Friday, a day when the lake’s surface looked like oil. 

 It was flat and just perfect for learning.  We had a great time splashing around all morning.  Also on the boys ‘to do’ list was to ride the zipline in the Brown County.  We had a fabulous time, zipping along at thirty miles an hour, sixty feet over the forest floor.  I think we’re ready for the advanced (longer and faster) lines now.    

Jacob has also gotten into baking this past year.  His class started an ‘Emeril’ cooking project and compiled a cookbook.  He picked up another cookbook in North Carolina and has been baking ever since.  He’s made tiramisu cupcakes, chocolate covered strawberry cupcakes, scones (chocolate chip, then cranberry), and a peanut butter brownie sort of a dessert.  

 And finally, we found tart cherries at the farmer’s market on Saturday.  Of course you know what that means—pie!  Jim made a delightful pie.  He and Jacob thought it was too tart.  Tommie and I disagreed.  It was so flavorful, though, that we went back to the Tuesday night market and got more cherries.  They were pitted last night and popped into the freezer for the next time I need a pie fix.  This time it will be a mix of tart and sweet cherries, so hopefully the whole family will like it more.   

Although, if I love it and they don’t, hmmm... more for me? 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Snead’s Ferry is the place for fresh fish

We’re back in Indiana after a glorious week on the beach on Topsail Island, North Carolina.  It was awesome!  Though we have traveled to the Outer Banks in the past, this year was a new adventure for us.  We went to southern North Carolina and rented a house on the beach of North Topsail Island.  

 That meant that the ocean temperature was warm enough for even me to venture in several times.  I spent a record amount of time hanging out at the beach, boogie boarding, and collecting treasures that had washed up on shore.  I didn’t take any work with me, as in no fibers except the clothes I wore.  I did take along my pencil crayons and a sketchbook and had some wonderful opportunities for plein air sketching. 

Of course thoughts of art are never far away.  I did find a couple of types of beach rock that are going to be perfect for artwork.  One type is known locally as mother stones.  These are rocks with many smooth holes in them.  We collected them before we knew what they were, but we learned all about them on our visit to the Missiles and More Museum.  We had a delightful and informative chat about the local beach artifacts with the two curators.   

We learned that the stones were revered by ancient cultures as a talisman of fertility.  From my perspective, they’re awesome ‘beads’ to use in weavings.  We also collected Precambrian quartz discs, washed smooth by the ocean like sturdy beach class.  Some of them were almost transparent while some possessed oxidized or reduced iron that tinged them red or grey.   

I’m not sure what I’m going to use these for, but rest assured I’ll find something.  We also learned about fossilized shark’s teeth that are common the island.  They’re black, sharp and shiny.  Once we knew to look for them, though, we found them all over.

One of the things I really looked forward to was being able to buy fish right off the fishing boats in the neighboring town of Snead’s Ferry.  What a great name for a town!  We discovered Mitchell’s, and like the seagulls, we leaned to come when the boats were returning with fresh fish and shrimp around nine in the morning.   

We got to see the shrimp unloaded and learned how to clean and prepare them.  They were amazing sautéed in butter and garlic, tasting more like lobster than shrimp.  We got to pick out the fish we wanted from the laundry baskets full of ice most days.  

 Even when it didn’t come from the boat, we had amazing fresh fish every day!  We tried redfish, mullet, sea trout, pompano, croaker, spot, flounder, bluefish, redfish and a big black drum on the last night that Jacob declared as his favorite.   

The pompano was a huge hit in our only fish fry—mmm, was that ever good!  Jim and Tommie caught spot and croaker off the pier, then bluefish, flounder and sharks in the surf.  If I ever retire from Bloomington I want to move to Snead’s Ferry.  Even the name just says it all.  Our whole north Topsail Island vacation played out at a slower pace than our trips to the Outer Banks around Corolla.  

 The houses don’t have pools and rarely have hot tubs, and the people we interacted with were more down-to-earth than the more tourist-oriented folks on the Outer Banks.   I’d like to say it’s good to be back in Bloomington, but I wouldn’t mind still being in North Carolina! 

Now that I’m back in town and settled in, my focus is on finishing some pieces for the Des Moines show in late June.  High on my list is my large format piece that features a path through the woods piece.  I’ve been crocheting the dimensional portion of the path to create the base, which projects forward about ten inches to support my tree trunks.  

 Next I’ll needle felt the path on top of the base.  At that point I’ll be ready to assemble the piece—I already have the tree trunks, branches and crocheted leaf clumps waiting to become trees.  I’ll be glad to pack that one up for art fairs and ultimately off to a good home. 

This week features more family news than art news.  Still, I need mention a couple of other things.  We did find fresh local blueberries at a roadside farmstand.  That means I got a pie!  There was no pie dish, so it ended up in a small casserole dish.  There was a lot of filling and not so much crust, which I liked.  Jacob got into baking on the trip, thanks to Mrs. Tamborrino’s Emeril cooking project.  Jacob came with a book full of class favorite recipes. 

 He made gulab jamun (little deep fried milk and butter balls, soaked in cardamom-flavoured sugar syrup).  Yum!  At the end of the trip I made ‘Low Tide’ cookies to use up all the left over baking supplies.  They were just perfect as a snack food on our trip home.  All the flights were on time, our luggage followed us, and we got home at a reasonable hour.  Let the summer begin!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

School is almost over!

The end of another school year is a dominant theme in our household these days.  Jacob has several big projects coming to a conclusion, including Friday’s big extravaganza.  Jacob was Thomas Jefferson.  I came to see all the presentations in the library, and the kids did a fine job with their early American personalities.  I’ve been stopping in to support Mrs. Tamborrino as an algebra tutor some mornings and having a lot of fun with the kids.  I even helped participate in the rocket-building exercise—launch is set for Monday!  To wind down after a long day when Jim was out sparring Wednesday, the boys and I took a nice walk in the neighborhood and played a fun rhyming word game.  Who knew swapping spit with a Russian communist was a ‘Bolshevik lick’? 

On our trip we ran into a big herd of deer roaming the neighborhood.  Depending on your point of view, they were either enriching our lives, eating our flowers, or menacing helpless pet and bicyclists.

Between all my other responsibilities I have slipped off to the art studio to move my projects forward.  I completed all the tree trunks for the foreground of the piece, and I think I have enough branches created for the canopy.   

As school winds down, I’ve been able to pirate a few of the wire from spiral notebooks that are no longer needed at school.  It’s actually a good time of year to collect those.  I warped the loom and started weaving the extended trail through the woods.  The lower layers begin with a sumac weave that will be covered with a dimensional crochet technique that will form the final path.  I’m using up a lot of yarn colors that I don’t normally have a lot of use for.  That includes soft peaches, pale yellows and beiges from my collection. 

Last night we held a meeting of the artists who organized this year’s Open Studio’s Tour.  We gathered in our dining room for a potluck and talk about this year’s successes and what we’d like to do differently next year.  The kitchen became the staging area, with a wonderful collection of foods.  There was even an interesting pie that featured blueberries, mild goat cheese and basil.  Yum!  I think everyone was enthusiastic about the event, and everyone in the group seems to appreciate good food.  As I’m writing this I have a belly full of strawberry shortcake with freshly baked biscuits in my tummy.  Jim is working on a biscuit version that doesn’t have shortening, which I encouraged.   

They haven’t been perfected yet, but they were still really good!  And as I write and think how to finish this week’s blog without a picture of a pie, I’m looking out at the beautiful spring flowers in the garden.  They’ll have to do for now.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Three weeks full of art excitement!

My life certainly has been full!  I’m afraid it has gotten in the way of blogging.  The good news is that I have three weeks chock full of art news to relate.  Two weekends ago we opened up our house for the Open Studios tour.  I hosted Talia Halliday as a guest artist and my two boys supported the operation as doormen and greeters.  Talia does beautiful work with recycled materials to create art books. 

She took over part of the living room and hallway, while I displayed my work in the dining area.  Anyone who wanted to see my studio came downstairs to see my latest loon piece at an early stage.  We had a few familiar faces come through, but there were a huge number of new faces among the eighty-six visitors on Saturday and fifty-six on Sunday.  I enjoyed showing them the space.  Generally new visitors are amazed at how much material I have stored downstairs.  I often use between fifty and one hundred different yarns in any given piece to get the intermediate tones I want for each element and the color gradients I use for the backgrounds.  I have boxes and boxes of raw materials I’ve purchased, inherited, traded, or recycled from one source or another.  Anyway, the show came off without a hitch.  People commented on my polite and well-dressed doormen.  On the slow times, Jacob and Talia even collaborated on a book, so the freshest art was always on display.

I currently have two elaborate pieces that I’m trying to bring together before my first summer art fairs.  The first will feature a loon on the water, which was in progress during the Open Studios Tour.  I have since finished the water and I’m well into the cattails.  I haven’t completely decided whether there will be one loon or two just yet.  Right now I’m leaning toward one and calling the piece ‘Where is She?’  I’ll have to see what feels right when I get farther into the first loon.  I’m also working on a large format piece featuring a trail through the woods.  It is similar to a commission I did last year that I really liked.  I hope to have it completed in time for the Des Moines show at the end of June, and I’d like to find it a home in Iowa!  

 Right now I’m working away on the large tree trunks, tree branches, and mountains of leaf clumps I need.  The leaf clumps I’ve been making out of the mountains of green yarn I dyed last month and blogged about.  I do have two and a half gallon bags of leaf clumps completed, but last time I remember I thought I had enough, but I seriously underestimated how clumps I needed.  The tree trunks I need are coming along nicely too.  I make these out of Grandpa’s old army blankets.  I cut up the blanket and wrap pieces (triangles, actually) around some used baling wire before stitching it all together.  Of course the blankets are wool, so I’ve been felting them by sending them through the washer and dryer.  Speaking of the washer, I’m on a pause right now because it isn’t spinning, leaving me with a load of clean but very wet clothes. 

The helpful fellow from Morrison’s Appliance should be here this morning to have a look at the beast for me.  Between the washer, the roof leaking again, and Jacob’s trips to the eye doctor after getting bashed with balls on two separate occasions (he’s fine!), my life has been pretty full—even hectic!  And just when I thought my art was on a good trajectory for my Des Moines show, I mentioned to an art friend (she owns the Hidden Closet) that I wasn’t doing any art shows until June.  She burst by bubble by pointing out that June is next month!  And only three weeks away!  A big flurry of art has to happen between now and then. 

Looking back over the last few weeks, there have been some great times and big rewards.  I’ve been up early to do Bollywood at nine most Saturdays, which cuts into Farmer’s Market time.  Last week I was up at seven and bounced downstairs, ready to go.  I persuaded my boys that we needed to go to the market and off we went.  The bad news was that it wasn’t officially opened at seven.  The good news is that they sold us strawberries and rhubarb anyway!  We initially bought two pounds (rhubarb) and two quarts (strawberries), but the berries were about a third gone (thanks to Tommie) before we got very far. 

We picked up two more quarts for shortcake and eating at home.  They didn’t last more than a day.  The rhubarb wasn’t enough for my big pie plate (lovingly made by Jan Arborgast), so Jim was forced to make a delightful strawberry-rhubarb pie .  Mmm, was that ever good!  Jim baked some biscuits for strawberry shortcake too (Jacob doesn’t like rhubarb-based pie), so everyone was happy.  Tommie then took over making biscuits, a new skill he learned in Home Ec class in middle school.  That’s the first useful skill he’s learned—I’m sorry, I can’t count making microwave brownies as a life skill!  The pie lasted until about Tuesday, and Sunday was Mother’s day, so of course we needed to fulfill the rhubarb-pie-on-Mother’s-Day tradition.  Jim got busy again, this time with three pounds of rhubarb (last Saturday’s trip to the Farmers Market).  This one was great too, but I think I prefer the one with strawberries mixed in.  It has a richer flavor, a little more color and some different textures.  But I’m not complaining!  I’ll take two pies in two weeks any time!  For Mother’s Day Tommie made some more fresh biscuits that we had with jam for breakfast (do you get the idea that I’ve been eating well lately?), Jacob made me a beautiful card, and Jim made me the pie.  Unfortunately, someone gave me a cold too, so I wasn’t at my top form.  Still, my loving family helped me through.  What more could I ask for?

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Beach Dreams

In my last blog posting I set out on my ‘North Carolina beaches’ daydream.  This week I continued down the same sandy trail to the beach.  I moved along more beach piece themes, including finishing the background weaving for my ‘Sally Sells Seashells’ reprise.  Over the winter someone gave me some sea stars, which I’ve never incorporated into a weaving before.  In the background I also included sand dollars and a wealth of shells, which creates a movement in the piece that I like.  I make sandy frames for my beach pieces, and I created one before the rains came this week.  Unfortunately, the high humidity and low temperatures have prevented me from completing the polyurethane seal on the frame.  I’m hoping I can get to that project later in the day, but I’ve got a lot going on!  

 It’s the Trashion-Refashion show at the Buskirk Chumley theater tonight.  There will be a Discardia pop-up store where I’ll show my latest Re-Shirts and new spring Sweater Petals.  I’m really looking forward to seeing the designs, which are a tightly kept secret before the actual show.  It’s quite the challenge to keep the designers from leaking images of their work on the web before the show, because everyone is excited about their contributions—but happily, they have. 

My life took me to some interesting venues last week.  I watched the boy’s first lacrosse practice last Sunday, which went well.  On Monday was the Spinner’s and Weaver’s Guild auction.  It’s such a funny group, and we haggle and negotiate over all the yarns.  Most of them create wearable pieces, so their yarn needs to be soft and cozy.  They know if there’s a hideous green, scratchy fiber I’ll probably want it—which is true!  I need a diversity of colors and textures, and it can be hard to find the perfect yarn for grasses and vegetation.  On Wednesday I did an interview with a fellow from WIUX.  He and I met at my History Center show and we talked about the art and life in general.  I cancelled a 4^th Street Festival meeting on Thursday night due to predicted weather that never really materialized, so I did have one quiet evening at home.  

 Friday, however, I went to the FiberFair in Greencastle with my friend Ruth Rives.  It’s our yearly adventure, which always seems to be horribly cold and often wet.  Because of the rain I wore my rubber boots, which led to two frozen feet before we had gotten too far.  One of the vendors was selling alpaca felted boot liners.  I bought a pair and, oh-my-gosh, they were amazing!  Ruth of course said she could have made me felted wool liners, but I needed them right then.  I picked up lots of green fleece and yarns, as well as some dried yellow and oranges.  I depleted my stocks considerably when I completed my pepper piece late last year.  The Fiber Fair is a good venue to re-stock and interact with the vendors I only see once a year over the past ten years or so.  All in all, it was another great week!  But…   no pie!  Shouldn’t the rhubarb be up by now? 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Channeling North Carolina

It has been a long and very busy winter, which means I’m starting to have thoughts of vacations to North Carolina beaches.  The weather did become delightful over the weekend, but whenever I’m stressed and need to get through a difficult patch I channel the beach.  I remember the surf, sand and seashells that Tommie and I find when we walk along the beach.  I like watching the birds as they run in and out with the surf—the whole atmosphere is very calming to me.  Those are the images that have been running around in my mind, and it has come out in my art.  The beach piece I’ve been working on is a variation on a piece I’ve made before called "Low Tide."  The seashells incorporated into the piece are ones we collected on the outer banks in North Carolina.  The driftwood is from the beach in the Tawas State Park in Michigan.  The sand dollars come from beaches in Florida, brought back by my friend Dawn.  Oh, and a few of the shells come from friends on their trips to beaches.  The whole piece brings back a lot of memories and warm feelings.  

I always have several projects moving forward.  I made sweater petals this week and I’m transitioning to Re-Shirts.  The sweater petals are a good project for busy work when I’m watching the boys and their activities.  The Re-shirts will soak up a big block of my time this week.  To get ready, I brought out Grandma’s sewing machine.  I’m also going to take my back-up machine to Klaiber’s—they did a nice job refurbishing my main machine, so if that fails I’ll have a backup.  My Garden Walk show is hanging at the History Center.  Today I was delighted to see a picture of one of my bicycle pieces in the Herald-Times.  It’s always exciting to open up the paper and see one of my pieces in color.

In addition to my mainstream art projects, I did some volunteer work for a project at my son’s school.  Binford has a “Recycling and More” group, and we have been trying to draw attention to the recycling bins that most of the students ignore.  I was inspired by a vision of my son Tommie when he first started playing Minecraft, his current game of choice.  He created a virtual house but kept losing track of where it was.  He built a giant yellow arrow pointing down on his house so he could always find it from a distance, which I thought was brilliant.  I took the concept and applied it to the situation at hand with the underused recycling bins.  I created five giant arrows built from cardboard from recovered from hh gregg (they don’t capitalize the letters, so I won’t for them).  I decorated them with plastic bottles and cans from people involved in the recycling project, attached with my trusty glue gun.  I hoisted them on square dowels I purchased from Bender Lumber in town.  They were really just eight foot long 1 by 2’s that they ripped in half for me.  I used bunjee cords to attach the whole thing to the bases I use for my card racks and set them up around Binford for the big Carnival event.  The school is going to store them for future events, so I feel good about their continued usefulness.   And while I didn’t get a pie this week, the boys did win a couple of cakes at the cakewalk event.  The angel food cake went into the freezer, while the caramel-pecan covered monkey bread went into the refrigerator for breakfast.  I’ve been enjoying pieces for breakfast, warmed in the toaster oven and served with an espresso. 

The rest of my week’s events were all odds and ends.  The taxes are filed, the last of the firewood kept us warm on a cool weekday evening, and I’m gearing up for another seashell piece this week as I work on Re-shirts.  The boys went to a birthday part on Saturday evening, so Jim and I got out to dinner at the Owlery.  That’s a really nice vegetarian/vegan restaurant on the square that we don’t get to enough.  I ordered the poutine, which took me back to skiing on a mountain and warming up and filling my belly at the chalet.  Yum!  Maybe I can hold off for another week with out the pie.  Maybe. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin