Weaving Water and Reclaiming Re-Shirts

I’m working on an exhibition in October called ‘Looking at Water.’  I have been distracted by family projects, such as our trip to North Carolina and a family gathering in Michigan, so the weaving sat unfinished for some time.  I was so excited to get back into my studio earlier this week and start work on it that I released the piece from the loom before I finished weaving the sky.  Argh!  I hate that sinking feeling in your stomach when you know you’ve done something silly that can’t easily be fixed.  When life gives you lemons you have to do something.  Jim has been bugging me to try a wall piece where the background is needle felted instead of woven, and this seems like the perfect compromise.  I’m actually getting excited about it!  The woven part has a lot of movement that really is consistent with water.  The sky will be felted, allowing it to be smooth and softer by contrast.  I’m hoping to add some felted and dimensional clouds to the piece.  I’m excited about trying to pull it all together. 

The new piece will feature a dock.  I’ve stretched the woven part into the frame and I’ve layered on to a mock-up of the wooden structure.  This helps me get the scale right and the paper pieces are a good template for cutting the boards.  

 I’m creating the wooden parts out of the last of Grandpa’s army blanket pieces.  To make them look like sun-bleached wood I’ve been needle felting grey-white wool onto the shaped blanket pieces.  I was pleasantly surprised during the process as the olive green blanket crept through to the surface to make kind of a greeny-brown color.  The color just clicks for me as a good dock material.

And so to back up a little and share some family stories - we spent a few wonderful days visiting with family in Michigan.  Scott and Cathy Drummond flew in from California, Tim and Bobi Drummond came in from New Mexico, and Haley and the new baby Arya from New Mexico were there when we arrived.  Arya is walking with confidence and quite an independent thinker.  Scott introduced the boys to a new game called Boxcars.  They’ve been enjoying that ever since.   

We enjoyed a nice walk through the Bay City craft fair with Aunt Lois, and the boys enjoyed archery and badminton.  They also drove around on Miss Daisy, Grandma’s golf cart, which Arya found very entertaining.  Meal times were big and busy, especially the night we had pizza on the patio with family friends the Gibsons (Ben and Kathey) from next door.  The weather was beautiful—cool with low humidity and very few bugs. 

The drive back from Michigan was a great time for me to felt some tomatoes.  I’m going to revisit a piece I made a few years back called ‘Homegrown Tomatoes’.  It featured sixty-seven individual tomatoes of all varieties, shapes and sizes.  I really liked that piece, and while sixty-seven sounds overwhelming, it isn’t so bad if they’re done a few at a time every few weeks.  I giggled as I placed some of my felted tomatoes on the garden tomato plants in the back yard.  I took a picture and posted it on Facebook.  It seems that I have both skeptical and gullible friends!

Yesterday I did Art Fair on the Square here in Bloomington, which is a delightful regional show.  I decided to do it with my Re-Shirts rather than my large-woven wall pieces.  My shirts were very well received, with lots of people excited about the style and the fact that they were made from reclaimed and recycled fabrics.  I’m pleased to report that many of them went off to new homes.  I also enjoyed watching people’s faces when they realized that I do the three dimensional wall pieces they’ve seen elsewhere.  “Oh, that’s you!” was a phrase I heard many times.  I also had to assure many people that I was not moving away from doing wall pieces, and that making my art clothing was my hobby.   

From a practical artist perspective, I was thrilled that we were packed up and driving home within a half an hour of the show ending.  That’s an absolute, all time record that will never happen with the wall pieces!  At home I was treated to a celebratory dinner of flatbread.  We had cheese treasures from Williams cheese factory in Pinconning Michigan, including beer cheddar spread, along with Bruschetta and aged Gouda from Trader Joe’s that we picked up on the drive home from Michigan.  A bottle of Red Silk shiraz from Australia topped it all off.  This morning I woke up to the smell of baking pie.  It made for a very decadent Sunday lunch with a second cup of coffee!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

From Topsail Island to the Sounds of South

The past two weeks have just been packed.  I spent a lot of time on volunteer work, making skirts for the Sounds of South musical theater group that represents Bloomington South High School.  Tommie is a new participant, and the first performance will be Phantom of the Opera this fall.  A large parent support group is needed to put on the productions.  I’m helping sew costumes.  What landed on my lap was twelve show choir dresses, and I was asked to create seventeen knee-length skirts based on the measurements provided.  I had to rip a lot of seams to get my starting material.  I supplemented what I had with white fabric from the recycle center, old tablecloths and the boy’s old Taekwondo outfits to fill out the blank underskirts.  And the best news is:  they’re all done!  All week long I did nothing but sew, sew, sew.  The weather cooperated, allowing us to have dinner on the veranda.  The dining room was converted to the sewing room and I left all the scraps and tools lying about for the week.  When I laid the seventeen skirts together they make a delightful Jellyfish!

 
Now they hang in the closet until I have to give them up. 

Also this week, Tommie went to Washington, DC with his eighth grade peers.  He had a great time while we followed the events on Facebook.  They visited all the monuments, museums and even hit a dinner cruise and Six Flags amusement park.   

Jacob did a sailing camp on Lake Monroe and had a great time on the water.  Jim’s long-time friend from Michigan, Roger, came to visit this week.  The visit culminated in a dinner out at the Owlery on Friday night.  Jacob took a great picture of us inside (you see his friend Niki and Roger (and their Fedoras) next to the window.  Everyone had a great time, including Jacob, who got to learn some programming from Roger during the week. 

We also fit in our annual family vacation to Topsail Island.  We rented a house right on the beach and indulged ourselves with fresh fish, nice wine and beach activities all week long.  This year we traveled east in our van.  That was nice, especially passing through the Blue Ridge Mountains on the way.  Jacob and I rented beach bikes with huge tires and rode the ten miles or so into Surf City on the sand.  Jim and Tommie went on a deep sea adventure and came back with some nice snapper.  

 They also did some surf fishing, catching bluefish, pinfish and sharks.  Jacob took up skim boarding, zipping along the beach or launching himself over the surf.  We all enjoyed boogie boarding or looking for fossilized shark’s teeth—I think that was Jim’s favorite beach activity this year.  

 Everyone enjoyed the grilled fish we found at Mitchell’s and Surf City Crab seafood markets.  We discovered the joys of match-light charcoal and learned how to get hot coals.  This year we enjoyed tuna, swordfish, grouper, and snapper.  And of course we had to have the dessert that says you’re having a good time, a fresh fruit pie!   

The berries weren’t ready for us because of the cool spring so we ended up having a peach pie.  I can’t wait for the tart cherries to appear at the Farmer’s Market!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

May showers bring rhubarb pie for Mother’s Day

The cool May weather has kept me inside most of the time.  Still, I’ve been having such a great time working on my ants.  I borrowed a giant book about ants from Mike Hogan (thanks Mike!) and I spent most of Mother’s Day sitting on the comfy sofa, examining the fine structural details of big-headed ants.  It is important to me to understand how an organism works to begin to understand which features are most relevant and must be included in the sculpture.  After my session with the book I started working on the major worker ant.  I began needle felting the body, adding lobes and structure, cutting away and molding surfaces that aren’t just right, and honing in on the body I want.  I’m working from 2D images to create a 3D structure, so sometimes it's a struggle to wrap my head around how to synthesize the 3D image from the flat picture.  The next phase is to attach the arms and antennae.  I made the anterior limbs, but the second and third pairs were just too big.  Instead of trying to fix those, I just started over on those features.  The good news is that the large legs I made will be “just right” for the larger supermajor caste that is next on my art agenda.  I still need to create the all the facial features too, but I feel really good about my progress.  If I have any concern, it’s that the number of images available for the supermajor and queen big-headed ant are limited.  I also borrowed the genus resource book from the IU library—I hope that’s enough.  E.O. Wilson, I need you!

I have two other big commissions in the background.  One is on hold as I wait for fabric swatches to arrive to personalize the piece.  But I’m enjoying the wait - I  like sitting next to the piece in the art studio and having it keep me company.  As I work, I get to glance up at the path trailing off into the distance.  Sometimes it’s really good to just let a piece sit and ferment for a while before launching into it again with renewed enthusiasm.   

My other project is a large format commission of fall aspen grove.  I spent much of this week in the studio wrapping aspen tree trunks appropriate for the foreground, background and middle distances.  There is a size and tint gradient for the trunks as they recede into the distance that I try to capture in my tree pieces - that takes special care.  As I got deeper into the canopy construction, I realized that I probably won’t have enough of my hand dyed mohair boucle.  That means the dye pots will come out in the next few weeks.   

On the bright side, I did find some perfect yarn at the event when the Monroe County Civic Theater cleared out two of their storage lockers to downsize their years of collected props and raw materials.  Thanks MCCT!  I had fun sifting through your treasures!!

On the family front, we’ve been having delightful family dinners on the newly cleaned-up veranda, even when it was raining.  I did get the traditional rhubarb pie for Mother’s day last Sunday.  

 This year it was mostly rhubarb with a few strawberries mixed in.  The crust (and pie) was unusually good this year!  Should I hope for another while rhubarb season is still here?  Hmmm. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Anticipating Mother’s Day

Each of my art seasons has a very different feel to it.  May is a transition time, when I plan and prepare for my summer art travel season.  I love working outside on the veranda on warm days, skirting fleece and pulling apart the clumps.  The spring weather is glorious; my art studio still has the cold chill of winter.  My art making activities are devoted to commissions, preparing for summer fairs, and thinking about how I’m going to pull together an October exhibit I agreed to do at the Convention Center. 

Right now I have four major projects that I’m trying hard to move along.  First, I was commissioned by Wonderlab to make a suite of bigheaded ants.  They’re installing a major new exhibit in November that features a colony of the striking creatures.  The ants fall into one of three castes, and I’ll make three of the minor workers, a major worker, a supermajor ant as well as a queen.  The ants are only a few millimeters long, but I’ll create ants to scale that range from six to eighteen inches.  This is a fun project, which means it’s moving along nicely.

I have also made great progress on my large format commissioned piece.  This features a stone path through trees in the foreground and background, and I have now completed and installed all the tree branches and trunks.  I’ve made a lot of progress on the stones for the path.  I make these by needle felting wool on to a chunk of Grandpa’s old army blanket that I cut into pieces.  I laid out in the flagstones in a satisfying pattern and needle felted them onto the path, which makes a huge effect on the weaving.  Next I’ll start creating the flowers and explode colors all around the meadow.  I’m hoping the person who commissioned me will send me some of their wedding chuppah to incorporate into the flowers.  It’s a rich purple and will both look great and make the piece more personal. 

My other projects will come together as I can find time.  I’m still moving all of my washed fleece through the tedious process of preparing it for weavings.  I’ve gone through three more bags since I last wrote but I have seven more to go.  Still, I feel like I’m seeing light at the end of the tunnel.   

The latest patch of dry, warm weather helps pull me out of my studio and onto the veranda to work.  I’m also starting a new commission piece that will feature autumn aspens in a large format.  I put in an order for a custom frame with Tom Bertolacini, my frame maker.  I’ll start moving into the details of that piece as my current projects wind down.  As I mentioned above, I agreed to do an exhibition at the Convention Center built around the concept of looking at water.  I felt really good about my exhibit at City Hall and Meadowood that I called ‘Portraits of Trees’.  Launching on a theme and exploring related ideas led me to pieces I would not otherwise have considered and created, some of which are special to me now.  Water is such an integral part of my life that I thought I would try to create pieces based on the beaches, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls that help me relax and rejuvenate.  I still remember conversations with my father about the two ‘elements’ (water and fire) that are so basic and meditative that I could stare at them for hours.  I’ll try to visit some of those places for the October exhibition. 

I’ll close with just a couple of notes from my non-art world.  Tommie and I spent a Saturday cleaning and spiffing up the veranda and now we've been enjoying meals out there - including bread (made by Tommie) and Canadian cheddar-broccoli soup - yum!   

Jim and I made it to our first farmer’s market Saturday.  Tommie was off at his Academic Superbowl event (his group placed third of fifteen teams in his event—hooray)!  Jacob wanted to sleep in, so we left him home.  We got coffee and hot chocolate to help keep us warm on a cold morning (thanks Marina at Le Petit Café!) as we bought strawberries, asparagus, honey, herbs in pots and a few other necessities.   Oh, and Jim made a delightful apple pie from the transparent apples at Grandma’s house, harvested last summer.  

 I’m hoping that Sunday, which is Mother’s day, will bring the traditional rhubarb pie.  I think that as long as I can get Jim back to the farmer’s market to ‘discover’ some rhubarb things will turn out well. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

More rain comes to Bloomington!

Mid April is a busy season for me.  April brings taxes and the major review of all the slides from almost 400 applicants to the Fourth Street Festival of Art.  I also serve as a reviewer for the Bloomington Arts Commission grants and this year, a juror for the NanoArt exhibit sponsored by Wonderlab.  The latter was something fun and new because I had to look through over 50 beautiful images from microscopes, usually from living things.  When I wasn’t poring over grants, taxes, and images of wee art, I kept my large format commission piece moving forward.  I finished weaving the background while my frame-maker, Tom Bertolacini, came through with the giant frame.  I’ve had some past experiences with the landscape format oak frames bowing from the stretching of the piece.  

 That meant a quick trip out to Kleindorfer’s hardware and some expert advice.  After some conversations with the fellows there, I picked up two slats of steel, six feet long by an inch wide and an eighth of an inch thick.  I cut them to size to reinforce the back of the frame and I drilled holes every six inches to merge steel and wood.  When the rains finally subside and the weather warms up I’ll get outside and paint the frame.  That will allow me to stretch out the background in the frame and move on with completing the piece.  I’ll know when the rains let up because the artesian spring in my art studio will stop flowing so robustly.  I capture most of the water with towels (the rug is rolled back) that I spin out and dry. 

 I decided that while I had a little ‘free’ time I should clean out the veranda.  It becomes a bit of a dumping ground over the fall and winter, and I'm just as guilty as the boys when it comes to stashing stuff out there.  My first big project was dealing with the mountain of fleece I inherited over the past year or so.  The first step is skirting the fleece.  That might sound elegant, but what it really means is that I trim out the sheep poo.  People who think art is full of all glamorous activities have no idea!  After I washed the trimmed fleece I leave it sitting outside in mesh trays.  I systematically pull apart clumps of the fleece to untangle it.  Normally that would be pretty tedious, but the last couple of days have been in the upper seventies with a slight breeze and birds singing.  Playing with the fleece and straightening things up is just a wonderful excuse to sit outside. 

The first fleece that I washed a couple of weeks ago was the darkest fleece.   I used that to create the foreground tree in the commission piece.  I needle felted that tree structure and found dark brown yarns in my collection that I'll use to create the branches for the tree.  I also did all of the crocheting to make the leaf clumps so I feel like pieces of the work are coming together.   

As I’ve described before, I create the inside of trees I’ve been making from Grandpa’s old army blankets.  Sadly, when I began this piece I cut into the last of the supply.  That's a problem because the flagstones that make up the path are also made from old army blankets.  Not to worry though—Karma has been looking out for me.  I have to tell a story to have this make sense, so indulge me for a moment.  A couple of months ago I took some of my pieces to the fifth grade class at Binford Elementary School to show the kids because one of the pieces was inspired by a drawing sketched by one of the kids (Tethered Memories).  During my conversation with them I mentioned that I had one last army blanket for my artwork.  One insightful student asked what I would do for tree trunks when that was gone.  I told her that something would appear—it always seems to.  Fast forward to this week.  I visited the Recycle Center and—lo and behold—what should I find but an army blanket!  I had to complete the circle so I told the teacher when I saw her at the Carnival last Friday.  She is looking forward to telling the students. 

I do have a few other events to report on from the past few weeks.  I have an exhibit up at the Meadowood retirement community that will be up until the end of April.  They invited me to a nice reception where I got to meet a large number of the residents who came to see my art.  I had some delightful conversations as they passed through the gallery and shared their reactions to the art.  That was followed by a lovely dinner on site, hosted by Jeune Baker and attended by some of her friends and my husband Jim.  It was a nice little date with the boys off watching the black belt test of a friend at Monroe County Martial Arts.  Their time to test is coming soon, likely over the summer.  I know life is good because I got another pie—this time it was blackberry from the summer farmer’s market.  The berries froze well and I enjoyed pie and espresso for breakfast for a whole week.  The sad news is that we only have apple pie filling in the freezer now, and I’m more of a ‘berry’ kind of person.  I guess I’ll settle for apple next, although I did see some rhubarb in the grocery story recently.  Maybe there will be some early rhubarb at the Farmer’s market!  A girl can dream.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Summer comes to Meadowood!

This time of year, signs of spring pop in and out of view all over town. On Monday, my ‘Portraits of Trees’ exhibition at City Hall is coming down.  They have to hold on until the Farmer’s Market opens next Saturday for spring to reappear.  If you missed the exhibition, on Tuesday the pieces will resurface at Meadowood Retirement Community for their peek into Summer.   

Meadowood is on the north side of town, on Tamarack trail north of the Unitarian Universalist church.  It will be on display in their gallery for a month, and I’ll be in attendance to enjoy an opening reception and dinner on Friday, April 5th.  

My art focus hasn’t changed much—I’ve been beavering away at a very large format commission piece.  It is a giant weaving featuring a spring path with flowers—hints and bursts of purple, yellow, gold and pink line the path.   

I’m so ready for the full arrival of spring that I have thoroughly enjoyed imagining the grass turning to some shade of green and the colorful flowers to follow.  I sifted through my stores and picked out all of my crunchy green yarns to combine into leaf clumps.  I then dug through my dark brown fleeces to find one that I bought at the Fleece Fair a couple of years ago.  I just washed it and it’s ready to needle felt.  I love the contrast between the crunchy greens and the dark earth tones when I lay my materials out in the art studio.   

 The garden path and the tree trunk contain more of Grandpa’s old army blankets in them.  I just cut into the last of the blankets, but I see it more as a rebirth than the end of an era.  Grandpa’s old treasures that had meaning for him provide a different emotional connection to me as I create my art.  

One aspect of the piece that I’m particularly pleased with is how the green background gradient turned out.  I wanted to have the path fade into paleness in the distance, and you can see a hint of that in the background weave.  The trees in the foreground and background will anchor the piece and bring dimensionality and depth.  Right now I'm waiting for the custom frame to arrive so I can stretch the piece and start combining the dimensional elements. 

Despite my best intentions to get back to a weekly blogging schedule, last week brought spring break and a trip to New Mexico to see Jim’s brother Tim and wife Bobi (and Lucy the dog).  We had an awesome time, featuring a ride up the world’s longest tramway to an elevation of 10,378 feet on Sandia Peak.  

 It was an exciting ride up and even more dramatic coming down with forty mile an hour winds buffeting the tram on the last descent of the day when they deemed it too dangerous to keep transporting people.  We feasted at the restaurant at the peak, watched the ravens take wild rides on the gusts, and enjoyed searching for fossils on the top of the mountain.  Unfortunately, the peak is an old shallow seabed that became limestone, so we found the non-exotic crinoid and geode mix that we find all the time in our back yard.  Rock hounding at the base was more interesting because the formation there is granite.  I collected lots of interesting things at the bottom, including some pretty green travertine that will be moss-covered rocks along a forest path, and some bubbly, chocolate-y lava rocks that seem perfect for cross sections through dirt in some of my pieces. 

 In New Mexico they crunch up the lava rocks for winter traction on the mountain roads instead of sprinkling salt.  Tommie discovered that some cacti have sharp thorns and can pierce leather shoes—ouch!  The whole crew drove to Santa Fe for dinner and shopping—what an amazing place for pottery and jewelry!  Grandma and I had a wonderful time poking around in shops looking at jewelry.  I managed to find a delightful pair of very simple silver earrings.  Most of the work is hugely ornate, which I appreciate but know that it isn’t my style. 

When we returned home, my sister Edita visited for a longer weekend.  That meant more dining, more shopping, more wine and chatting.  It was a great spring break!  I even got a tart cherry pie!  It had been so long that I thought Jim forgot how to bake them!  It was delightful, however.  It was a little piece of summer to get me ready for trips to the Farmer’s Market this year. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Summer comes to City Hall!

My week in a nutshell:  the exhibition is up!  It’s time for a new project.  It feels a little surreal to walk into the Showers building and see the massive body of work I produced over this winter displayed all together.  On Friday Jim and I stopped in around noon for a peek and to make sure all the details survived the transport and hanging process.  The most enjoyable moments came from watching people interacting with the art.  One woman walked down the stairs past the pieces very slowly; she would stop and become completely enveloped by each piece as she came down.  It’s fascinating watching people explore and experience my art.  It will be up at City Hall for the month of March and then it will travel to the Meadowood Retirement Community Art Gallery for the month of April.  I’ll be at the opening reception on the first Friday of April doing a demonstration, enjoying dinner, and talking with the residents. 

Of course I can’t sit still for too long because there is more art to be made!  I did some sketches for my next commission piece and the patron gave the go-ahead to start the piece.  It’s going to be a very large format piece, with outer dimensions of 50 inches tall by 30 inches wide.  I’ve already contacted my frame maker, Tom Bertolacini, to build a special order oak frame.  The weaving itself feels like a light spring piece, with lots of purple, pink, and yellow flowers.  I’m planning on making the stones for the flagstone path from the last bits of my father in law’s old army blanket.  I also talked to the patron about making it more personal by using a piece of her purple chuppah to create some of the flowers.  The loom is warped and I’m off! 

The week has been a juggling act to keep all my peeps on track for all their activities.  Jacob has had extra rehearsals for his hip-hop performance that took place Friday night at the Buskirk-Chumley theater.  He and his troupe, the JayWalkers (formerly Footnotez) did an amazing job as part of the Hip Hop ConnXion ‘Set it Off’ program.  He was cute as a button in his dress shirt and red bowtie and did an awesome job.   

His moves were spot on, his facial expressions showed that he was really into it, and his enthusiasm for dance really came through.  To celebrate we had dinner at the Owlery followed by a chocolate ganache and carrot cakes with cream cheese frosting cake from Bloomingfoods back at home.  I’m so proud of my little pumpkin!

We’ve had several visitors over the past week, both of the two and four-legged variety.  Dr. Bob and Beth just left this morning after a weekend visit to see their son Noah and friend Lita, my sister Edita was here last week, and Zeus, the ginormous black standard poodle, has been here since Wednesday.   He’s been gracing our floor with his magnificence and trying to grace the sofas.  The boys have enjoyed walking him and playing catch with him in the yard.  The whole adventure reminds me how much I like dogs, but it’s also nice to just have them visiting.  The only down notes are that Jim and Tommie both had colds and I didn’t get a pie.  I’m really concerned that Jim won’t bake one before spring break because we have two half cakes in the fridge.  It might be time for drastic measures!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin