One Potato, Two Potato…

Three potato more.  I’ve been making potatoes!  Needle felting sweet potatoes, Yukon gold, and redskins pretty much filled up my week. We spent the first part of spring break in Michigan, which gave me hours to needle felt along the drives to and fro.  I’m assembling components for my weaving ‘My Roots’, so I’ve been thinking about all the root vegetables that are part of my life.  

 Sweet potatoes are back in our life after a long hiatus.  They left our diet when the boys came along, but as they have gotten older, new flavors are creeping past their selective palates.  A couple of years ago, baked sweet potatoes finally made the cut.  Now sweet potatoes are a pretty consistent part of our dinners, including when we go out to our favorite restaurant, the Owlery.  Sweet potato fries are the side of choice, and hands down they have the best fries in town. 

From an artistic perspective, I’m still pretty excited about figuring out how to do potato skin surfaces.  The secret is something I picked up from a video series about Mark Rothko’s strategy of layering translucent paint colors to create glowing effects.  I have embraced that concept in my medium to make lifelike potato surfaces using dyed fleece.  The sweet potato under color is fleece dyed with onion skins and the over layer is a hot chocolate brown that I bought a few years ago at The Fiber Event in Greencastle.  Together the fleece combinations produce an effect that I’m very happy with to replicate the skins of root vegetables.

Speaking of Michigan, we had a wonderful visit with Grandma.  We also got to spend some time with Ben and Kathey Gibson and Great Aunt Lois.  At Grandma’s house the rules are always a little different, especially with our diet.  The boys get delightful things such as ice cream and whipped cream on their cereal for breakfast.  We tried on a new tradition for happy hour by baking some of cousin Martha’s very southern crispy cheese snaps to enjoy with a glass of wine.  They were very good, but when I make them again I’ll need to add a Czech twist and include a little garlic. 

While in Michigan we did our usual rounds to stores where we bulk up on supplies.  We stopped at Williams Cheese Factory in Linwood, aka ‘The Cow’ to stock up on cheeses and spreads.  We visited Northwood’s Outlet to stock up on things I don’t know I need yet, but look as if they could be useful in a weaving.  The Cat’s Meow is also on my rounds, where I get my big pink bag to fill for seven dollars.  I secured a big load of pre-costumes for the incoming freshmen in Sounds of South to make their circus costumes.  Overall, the visit was intended to be low key, but my health didn’t get the memo.  I left Bloomington with a runny nose and came home with pneumonia.  Fortunately, I think I’m back on the mend, although I’m supposed to take it easy.  The Indiana basketball games were my only source of excitement this weekend, and last night’s defeat of Kentucky was truly awesome!

Finally, I think Jim felt sorry for me and made a delightful raspberry pie on Saturday morning.  I just had some for my breakfast, along with an espresso.  I’m ready to face the world again! 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

I’ve Got Parsnips!

Traveling has been a big part of my world these days.  When I have to sit and wait in the airport, or travel as a passenger in a car, I have a need to keep producing art.  I really enjoy the process of needle felting, which is especially portable and well-suited to my waiting times.  Lately I’ve spent most of my time creating needle felted vegetables.  My current harvest will be incorporated into a piece called “My Roots”, which will be full of root vegetables.  The piece is really an offshoot of my “Fall Stew” piece.  I had so much fun making the vegetables for that piece I decided to develop a new composition that could feature only my felted roots. 

I need to step back for a little context.  The “My Roots” composition speaks to the intersection of three major parts of my life.  First, I’m preparing for a November exhibit entitled:  “From the Earth”.  I’m developing a family of weavings ideas for the project, and “My Roots” fits in perfectly.  Second, the piece speaks to my transplantation to Bloomington.  I was born in the Czech Republic and raised in Canada, but now Bloomington feels like home—my roots are really here now.  Third, much like the “Fall Stew” piece, it brings back such fond memories of my experiences at the local Farmer’s Market.  Autumn brings the bountiful harvest of roots that have been hidden and developing all summer.  Now the root vegetables are all laid out in rows on tables for anyone to buy.  I like the veggies, but I love looking at all the colors and variations on display. Plus I get to slip them into our fall meals. 

For the weaving background underneath my lovely colorful roots I need a green gradient background.  That’s coming along, encouraged by the emerging greens of spring.  Our first daffodils are complementing the crocuses and snowdrops in the yard, and poke up through the brown leaves as rich green foliage before the yellow flowers bloom.  Greens aren’t on the trees yet, but the world is coming back to life around me, and I’m channeling the rich colors into my art again.   

Of course my art life has many other demands that take me away from weaving.  This time of year means business taxes need to be completed.  I sit at the computer and sift through my year’s receipts, translating dollars into tallied categories in a big spreadsheet.  It’s a huge project that I’m delighted to have behind me now.  My costume work for Pippin is on hold for March while I get my life back on track, but April will find me back fitting the new Sounds of South members for their circus chorus costumes.   

This week I also spent some time making looms for my next workshop on June 6-7 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, at the Artful Dimensions Gallery.  Finding wood and brackets for the looms gave me the perfect excuse to visit the new Re-Storelocation in Bloomington.  They moved to a bigger site that, helpfully, is closer to me!  I found some paint covered 1x2s that are perfect for looms.  Of course the patina got me thinking about their previous life, because I get a lot of satisfaction knowing the histories of all the materials in the pieces I create.  Oh, and I even picked up a cheesy Hawaiian shirt that will be perfect for the Jimmy Buffet scene in Pippin!  You never know when you’re going to find just the right wacky thing you need. 

Finally, I managed to space out my cherry pie breakfasts all the way until yesterday morning.  I’m prompted to write my blog because yes, again, I’m without pie for breakfast.  Like a cat who knows there is fresh fish in the fridge, I KNOW there are bags of pie filling in the freezer.  Soon it will be the summer Farmer’s Market, with fresh rhubarb and strawberries for pies.  We can’t let local berries go to waste! 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Travelling Carrots

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I had wonderful adventures in Tennessee and Mississippi last week.  My trip started off a little rocky with winter weather messing up my flights.  I ended up spending some quality time in the Detroit air port waiting to fly into Memphis.  To make matters worse, I had been routed to Minneapolis and was walking down the entryway to the plane when I heard my name faintly called, rescuing me from a few more unwanted hours in transit.  The good news was that I decided to see about checking in my needle felting materials on the TSA sites before I left and learned that they were acceptable as part of my carry-on stash, along with with some snacks.  I sat in Detroit and poking away at carrots.  There’s always a bright side and my progress was good, although I suppose I got a few interested looks.

At the end of my expedition I found the welcoming arms of the the Memphis Guild of Handloom Weavers.  They had invited me to do a workshop for their group and fourteen people signed up.  That’s a good size and they comprised an incredibly enthusiastic bunch with varied experiences.  

 Some had been doing tapestry weaving for years, while others were learning to distinguish the warp and weft.  We all held hands and worked through the process together.  I was well supplied with yarns and materials for inclusion into the weavings.  I had shipped three big boxes of supplies, plus I jam-packed a checked suitcase full of more recycled weaving materials.  Off we went!

I always start my workshops with a little history of who I am and how I got to the point of my fiber art career.  It’s fun to watch people’s faces when they hear about my path to my fiber artist career.  I have a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario in the Plant Sciences department doing molecular genetics.  

 I enjoy trying to convince people that creating fiber art and planning a genetic screen are both very creative processes that depend heavily on planning, creative thinking and problem solving. 

I’ve done a lot of workshops, and I always enjoy traveling to meet new people and put them on.  In part, I think that’s because I don’t do cookie-cutter workshops.  I don’t want everyone to have the same object to compare at the end.  Each person is encouraged to delve into their own creative abilities and create something that truly reflects them.  

 Some people come to workshops with a photo, and one in particular this time brought a beautiful image from a trip to China.  The colors of orangey-red branches on a tree that I think was in the birch family stood in the foreground with fabulous teal blue water and shore in the background.  In the mid ground there were reticulated white branches, which came together in a beautiful composition.  That’s what she wanted to emulate, and she did!  

 I’m looking forward to getting an image of the completed piece.  Another person traveled a fair distance to attend the workshop and must have woven all night in the hotel room to create the art that came together over the weekend.  She had a very clear vision of where she was going with her piece.  Others very very happy to just do samplers and experience all of the varied techniques that I introduce and explore using the mountain of materials and colors available for their compositions. 

In so many ways my workshops prove to be a starting point for the participants.  I give them permission to be creative without all the rules and structure they have embraced in the past.  It’s a lot of fun to look at the weavings and watch how tight and rigid and consistent the first few rows appear.  The emerging rows tell a temporal story, with the highest rows revealing the most relaxed and undulating structures.   

The emerging artwork parallels my relationship with the participants as we become more relaxed with each other and are able to share our experiences.  I feel that I come home with mountains of new ideas.  It’s hard to say goodbye to all of my new friends. 

I need to mention my side excursion that accompanied my trip to Memphis, which was a visit with relatives in Oxford Mississippi.  They told me that their house was only an hour or so from Memphis, and they volunteered to host me for a couple of days outside of the workshop.  It was so much fun to see all of the places and people connected with the family stories I’ve heard over the years.  Now when Martha talks about the basketball arena and her seats I’ll know exactly where she is.  When they talk about McEwen’s restaurant downtown I can remember our table, which is right in the middle of the website picture.  We stopped into Martha’s daughter’s store, Amy Head Cosmetics, and I had a wonderful visit with the store manager.  She turned out to be a fiber artist and we bonded immediately. 

When I got home I hit the ground running on my suspended projects in Bloomington.  Friday was the opening reception at the Blueline Gallery for a subset of my Beauty and the Beast costumes.  They were paired with sketches of fashion from the fifties, which was beautiful artwork from the grandmother of the owners of Blueline.  The exhibit is called Fashion and Fantasy.  It was great fun to revisit with all of my costumes. 

 Distance does make the heart grow fonder, and I haven’t seen them since November.  I love the way that Jim Andrews has curated the exhibit—there is a flow and a logic to the interactions and a color story so it feels very natural.  The exhibit will be up until April 29^th and there will be a second reception on the first Friday in April.  Come visit if you’re in town. 

While it was wonderful to visit with family and to make new friends, there’s no place like home.  I found a bouquet of roses and a delightful fish dinner with wine when I got home, and I relished sleeping in my own bed.  Best of all, on Saturday morning a tart cherry pie appeared!  I’m going to have to travel more often! 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Seventy Degrees and Summer Beckons!

After a heavy focus on making costumes, this week I launched back into making pieces for the summer art fair circuit.  Yesterday the thermometer reached seventy and the day was sunny.  Eranthis, snowdrops and crocuses started flowering across the yard, filling it up with fresh colors.  The weather seduced my mind with thoughts of summer, so off I went to make some summer birches by a stony lake shore.  I picked up some florist wire remnants and have been wrapping them with yarn from alpacas that I buy at the summer farmer’s market.   

My friend Cathy Crosson of RedRosa farm raises alpacas and sells a yarn, spun from a particular color of charcoal grey alpaca that work well for me.  The wrapped wires contribute the narrow diameter branches of the birches, and I can bend them as I like to make natural tree pieces that hold their shape.  I wove the background for the piece about a month ago, but other responsibilities prevented me from advancing the piece.  I stretched out the weaving in one of the oak frames that Thom Bertolacini builds for me, so now I’m ready to build forward the background using a dimensional crochet technique.  When everything is in place I’ll attach the birch trees and start listening for the waves splashing up on the rocky shore. 

Friday marked a milestone in my other major focus, making circus costumes for the current Sounds of South members in the upcoming production of ‘Pippin’.  I’ll share a few individual pictures, but I think the image I like best shows the two racks jam packed and bursting with purples, blues and greens.  I even threw in some black, silver and white for good measure.  That was a good stopping point for my costuming, which allowed me to go back to creating weavings.  I’ll use the next month to focus on making art to travel to summer fairs.  

 I also need to develop pieces for a fall exhibit I’m working on titled ‘Treasures from the Earth’.  In April I’ll go back to Bloomington South and making circus costumes after the freshmen class has been selected and measured.  I’ll continue collecting used clothing in the color palette for the show until then to draw on for the new costumes. 

Speaking of costumes, yesterday I delivered twelve mannequins (a big thank you to Deb Christiansen from IU!) to the Blue LineGallery.  These will support my costumes from last fall’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ production.  

 The gallery will host a joint exhibit with a fashion designer that will take you behind the scenes a little bit.  I’ll share my rough sketches for the costumes so people can see the thought process that connects the conception with costume building and leads to the final, wearable product.  Jim Andrews is curating the exhibit so I’m looking forward to getting a list from him describing which characters he would like to include.  I know he’s partial to the grater, the whisk and the potato mashers.  Mark your calendars and come out on March 4^th for the opening reception, although the show will be up for a couple of months. 

In travel news, I’m packing for a workshop in Memphis,Tennessee next weekend.  I do know that my three big boxes with fifteen looms and mountains of colorful yarn have arrived.  That helps give me confidence that everything will go smoothly when I get there.  I’m looking forward to the explosion of color when they come out.  I just need to remember to pack my Swiss army knife in my suitcase and not my carry on when I travel!  

 I probably won’t be able to write a blog next weekend, but I should have lots of news and pictures when I write again on March 5^th.   On the home front, Jim surprised me with a cherry pie on Saturday morning.  Hooray, my favorite!  I think he knew that.  We definitely need to pack more fresh farmer’s market cherries into the freezer for the cold months.  I’m going to have to muddle through on blueberry and raspberry pies until May.  

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Fall Stew is Finished!

It feels great when I can bring a piece to completion, especially when I have been plugging away for so long to make each of the components.  My vegetable piece has finally come together and I love-love-love how it looks!  The warm wool evokes comforting feelings that mirror the intent of the composition—a fall stew as warm comfort food.  As I look at all the vegetables I’m still trying to decide which is my favorite.  I’m sure when the piece hangs on the wall in my booth I’ll hear lots of personal stories about vegetables and cooking that will just add to my delight in the final composition. 

Finishing one piece built around needle felting means that I need to start another to fill my sit-and-wait times between the boys’ activities.  Now I’m crocheting leaf clumps to fill a forest canopy.  I combine a lot of the crispy bright green yarns I dyed last summer with some commercial yarns that fill out the color story I want to create.  I typically crochet six or eight strands of yarn together into random clumps.  I find it amusing when people sitting near me key in on what I’m doing.  The furrowed brows and puzzled looks precede the first questions, which boil down to “What are you doing”?  My words rarely dispel the puzzled looks, so I whip out my phone and show a weaving with a fully leafed out tree.  Then they connect to the activity and I get the drawn out “Oohhhhh”! 

Thinking of tree pieces with leaf clumps, I made a video a couple of months ago showing my current exhibit hanging at the Bloomington Bagel Company at the Shoppes.  I posted it on Facebook and got a lot of interest.  I recently checked back in because a lot of people were sharing the video.  I was pleasantly shocked to see that I have over forty thousand views!  Here is a link if you haven’t seen it yet and want to contribute to my swelling pride.  People all over the world have been viewing it, which leaves me amazed by the technology that connects us.  I can imagine someone in their jammies and fuzzy bunny slippers, sipping a coffee in Bulgaria checking out my weavings in the bagel shop here in Bloomington, Indiana. 

Right now my main focus is on two upcoming events that needed timely intervention.  First, my fiber world primarily involves costume design and creation for next year’s performance of Pippin by Sounds of South.  I’m focusing on the chorus costumes and the theme is vintage circus.  My color palate is purple, blue and green, not tints or shades, just the pure colors.  I’m being a little fussy on that because I want the colors to be strong but tight.  The neutrals are black and silver.  They will contrast with the principals, whom I’ll dress in strong bright reds so they pop out against the sixty-five or so kids in the chorus.  In my mind the design is perfect—I just hope it will translate to the stage!   

Anyway, the project is coming along beautifully.  I have all of the costumes for boys who are current members and all of the girl’s costumes up through “L” in the alphabet.  My sewing and sounding board faeries, mainly Nancy Riggert and Misty Hayes, have been terrific and fun to work with.  Of course the spring auditions for next year’s members haven’t taken place, though, so Gwen is likely to bring along another fifteen or so kids who’ll need chorus costumes.  I’m setting that thought aside and trying to focus on my accomplishments.  To give you an idea what I’m doing, here are a few pictures of the completed costumes for the female members.

The wild card in my work schedule is travel to put on workshops.  I have two finalized events this year and two more in the works.  Next up is Memphis in about ten days, which means I need to construct some new looms for the participants.  Last summer we cleaned out the shed and I rediscovered wood that had been stored there.  I found tomato plant stakes, wood from the huppah when my friend Sonia got married in the back yard, and slats from the walk-in cellar door cover that Grandpa assembled to keep water out of the basement.  I’m all about recycling materials, and each of those pieces have good karma.  The same holds for the 1x2s I picked up from the Re-store to support Habitat for Humanity in town.  I chopped them all up and sanded the wood to make looms that I’ll ship to Memphis on Monday.  The screws that hold the L-brackets together are all recycled so it’s a mismatch of colors that’s fun to look at—it reminds me of a crazy quilt.

There’s not much more to add, other than the fact that there’s still no pie.  I think Jim knows I bought a bunch of Valentine’s day chocolate and didn’t want to have a sugar overload today.  Sometimes I just can’t fathom what he’s thinking, but if makes a nice dinner I suppose I can wait another few days for a pie.  Not silently, mind you, but I’ll pull through.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Basket Full of Veggies!

Melt some butter and get out the garlic press—this week I have been making what I’m confident are the last two vegetables for my "Fall Stew" piece.  Yes, it has been a long, drawn-out process, but the slow process of making all the vegetables means I get to savor each contribution.  I got to thinking about Amy Hamilton from the Core Farms CSA.  We used to travel to Musgrave Orchard each week to pick up our basket of summer vegetables before our schedule just became to erratic to be able to plan on receiving vegetables each week.  Now we rely on the Bloomington Community Farmer’s Market.  Anyway, I remember how much she enjoyed describing the different characteristics of each garlic variety they grew.  

 I learned that there were many varieties and that they were either soft or hard necked, which helped guide my design.  I prefer the hard neck varieties over the grocery-story soft neck versions.  The hard neck garlic heads don’t store as well, but they are more flavorful and complex, just like a nice red wine.  They feature a single row of toes around a central core, as opposed to the jumbled toes of the soft neck variety.  I made three heads by first making small felted balls.  I stuffed small clumps of sheep’s wool that I got from Gale Hale (but I think she got it from Nancy Kreuger).  Last summer I invested a huge amount of time washing and cleaning and now I’m able to use the beautiful white fleece.  I stuff clumps into Grandma’s old nylons (the ones with holes) and tie knots off between the clumps.  A trip through the washer and dryer and a snip next to each clump releases a soft felted ball about an inch in diameter.  I needle felted the balls into toes and shaped them into the garlic head.  I’m really pleased with how they turned out!

My final choice for vegetable to fill the last space on the piece was inspired by a birthday party I went to last week.  My friend Cinny had her sixtieth birthday party at her home in Brown County, and Dawn Adams gave me a tour of the property.  I was struck by the sea of purple turnip tops that act as a cover crop to retain soil and nutrients.  The richly colored tops were shielded a tiny bit of green that survived the ravages of the cold snap we had in early January.  I couldn’t see the white bottoms, but I knew they were there, drawing from the deep tap roots that stabilized the soil.  I’m always up for a sign from the universe, so when I needed my own cover crop to fill in the last space in my weaving I knew it had to be turnips!  I can’t tell you how happy I will be attach my bushel basket of vegetables to the weaving and call it done!

The other project that has been keeping me busy for most of the week was working on costumes for Sounds of South.  This was my first full week of going into the costume studio every day.  With the help of my sewing and glueing faeries, Nancy Riggert and Misti Hays, we have made great strides on the boy’s vintage circus costumes.  As of Friday I have designed twenty of the twenty-five male costumes in the current SOS group.  I fully understand that there will be a new crop of freshman joining in the spring, but for now I’m looking forward to celebrating the complete set of the male costumes by the end of the coming week.  I should even have made a pretty good dent in the girl’s costumes too.  I’ll post the images of some of my favorite costumes next time.

It has been a good week, but I ran out of pie around midweek and have gone three days now without pie.  I think I need Werner Herzog to narrate a documentary on my pie struggles.  On the bright side, we’re one trimester away from a summer vacation!  

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Parsnips, Pie and ISSMA Gold

This week’s vegetable is parsnip.  At least that’s the felted vegetable I’m making for my piece in progress called ‘Fall Stew’.  I grew up with parsnips as a big part of our diet.  It’s a key ingredient in svíčková omáčka.  Every family makes it a little differently.  My father always prepared it with a meat roast surrounded by carrots, onions, parsnips and celeriac.  The key spices are peppercorns, bay leaves and juniper berries.  We used to collect the juniper berries, illegally I’m sure, at the Pinery Provincial Park during summertime visits.  That kept us in dried berries through the year.  After baking, the ingredients were combined with sour cream and milk and pureed.  This was an event where he always wore an apron because he managed to splatter the omáčka everywhere.  The sauce was then poured back over the meat and big knedlicky (big dumplings).  There was lots of sour cream to make it good and a little vinegar for flavor.  The carrots and parsnips were important to add a sweetness.  Many families have different versions, but that’s the basic recipe. 

As I was making the parsnips, which I always tried to sneak into my fall stew, I realized that most people aren’t familiar with the shape.  People around me who watch as I needle felt ask if I’m making albino carrots.  They’re probably the same people who can’t tell a loon from a duck.  It doesn’t matter, though—I know what they are. Next I’ll add to the composition a little garlic as my next ‘vegetable.'  You can’t really have a stew without garlic, can you?

I have a lot of art fairs on my summer schedule that I’m excited about doing.  That means I need to hide away in my studio and weave.  I always forget how much I enjoy weaving!  My frame maker, Tom Bertolacini, has been busy as well. He is a woodworker and photographer who lives out in Greene County and makes my frames from locally sourced oak.  He has been busy making seventeen new frames for me that he delivered on Friday.  I know I’m getting off track a little, but that was an incredibly busy day.  I have been going into South to work on the costumes for Pippin on Mondays and Fridays.  This particular Friday, the 29th, is exactly one month since my birthday.  I had lost track of that, but as it turns out, my husband and the SOS director (Gwen Witten) hadn’t.  As I was coming out of the costume studio into the big choir room to measure one of the girls for a skirt waistband, the spotlight fell on me and Gwen announced that it was my birthday!  Four big boxes of cookies came into the room from Baked in Bloomington, still warm and full of wafty smells to share with the room. It’s pretty amazing to have sixty-five vocally gifted kids singing happy birthday to you in perfect tune, all staring at you and smiling.  It was a little overwhelming.  My son Tommie was among the 65, but my husband and younger son Jacob walked in to be part of the experience.  I even got a present—a Kuerig coffee machine that will stay in the costume studio.  What a perfect gift and a wonderful surprise! It’s almost as good as the Bahamas!  Almost. 

Saturday turned out to be pretty intense too.  Both boys participated in the ISSMA (Indiana State School Music Association) voice competition.  Jacob was in Division 2 and Tommie in Division 1, and both received gold medals.  Tommie will be competing in the state competition on February 20th.  I’m so incredibly proud of them!  They are both gifted in many many ways. They sang with confidence and poise and passion.  When I sat in the audience and they opened their mouths and this beautiful sound came out of their mouths I had a moment of ‘who is this kid?’  We went from there to a 60th birthday party for a friend of mine who lives on a beautiful property in Brown County.  I saw an impressive field of turnips planted for ground cover, which got me thinking about Fall Stew again.  Sunday was my actual birthday party, with conch fritters, baked salmon and boca negra, a delightful flourless cake from Julia Childs.  

 Oh, and so much happened that I almost forgot to mention that it was a pie week!  Blueberry, yum!  I still have blueberry pie and chocolate cake in the fridge.  My life is complete.  At least for the moment.  I’ll probably want another pie by Wednesday.  

Until next week,

Martina Celerin