Scarfing 2.0, but this time without the pie...

I’ve been on a tear this past week, turning out the scarves for my upcoming gallery and exhibit commitments. I think I’ll be able to get everything done as long as no one gets sick. I’m also not allowed to say ‘yes’ to any other requests for two whole weeks!

As I was working, I realized that I’ve been influenced by the changing fall colors as I made scarves. I’ve been exploring oranges, plums and reds, but I did throw in a few blue scarves for good measure. The fun part has been experimenting with the designs that have been coming together in my mind. The great part about making scarves is that they come together fairly quickly compared to a weaving. Even if turn I out the scarf-world equivalent of a klunker, before I can fret about it I’m off to work on the improved version. Of my more experimental pieces, I’m especially pleased with the ones where I’ve slit the roving into what might be called pencil roving and did some swirling patterns. I sandwiched the pencil roving with a shimmery yarn in between gossamer-thin layers of black merino. The pieces are reminiscent of Jackson Pollack paintings, but he didn’t have the foresight to make scarves. Actually, it’s all about playing with colors and textures and it’s a lot of fun.

My other project this week involved starting a commission piece. I was asked to do a new carrot tapestry, similar to the baby carrots I made a couple of years ago. I pulled out all my delightful oranges, which was easy because I’ve been in an orange frame of mind. Then I pulled an organic carrot out of the refrigerator. I mentally mixed the fleece colors I had to get a good carrot match so I’d know which ones to use. I then pulled out the drum carder owned by the Spinners and Weaver’s Guild, did a little carding and voila! I have a delightful wad of baby carrot orange fleece! That’s not a sentence you’ll read every day.

The big finale of the week was seeing Rent. I saw it years ago, and I enjoyed it so much I was thrilled when I saw that the IU Theater Department was including it in this year’s season. The evening started off by shipping the boys next door for a sleepover. Jim and I headed to the Limestone Grille for a delightful dinner of Indian spice-rubbed corvina (a lot like grouper, we were told) on a bed of steamed greens and accompanied by a cheese risotto. Add to that a pleasant glass of pinot noir and we were on our way to a lovely evening. We had just enough time to stop in at Blu Boy on Kirkwood for a decadent brownie, divided in half, and some decaffeinated Brown County coffee. Yum! We made it to the show in plenty of time and sort of melted into the production. It was an incredible performance, and the caliber of the performers was just amazing. It’s easy to forget these are mostly students. Angel was amazingly talented and funny, and the warm bond between Angel and Tom Collins was so loving and perfect. The manipulative Maureen put on a great performance too. She had the crowd mooing right out of her hand. I should have brought her a carrot!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Scarfing down some fresh apple pie...

I found myself in an all-to-familiar predicament this week. Back in the early summer it seemed like a great idea to commit myself to supplying scarves for both local venues and regional shows. You want twelve scarves for the Holly Market fall festival show? I’d love to! How about a nice scarf-as-art display at the Bloomington Bagel location on Morton? Sure thing! And you want them when? Plus a few more scarves for the holiday season art shows I applied to? Yikes! I’ve got a report on the Fourth Street patron survey to assemble and a grant to write to support our requests for advertising money, both due this week! I planned to devote October to scarf making, and I have. It’s just that a lot of other bits of my life have intruded into the process. On the bright side, over the summer and early fall I stocked up on a ton of scarf making supplies. I stopped in at Sheep Street in Morgantown and Yarns Unlimited here in Bloomington and picked up a lovely collection of fleeces across the color range I intended to explore this season. I also pulled together a beautiful set of non-wool yarns to incorporate into the scarves. I’ve been mentally working through some new designs and ideas I’m excited to try. When October came I was ready to hit the ground felting. That means taking over the dining room table, raising it up about six inches to spare my back as I lay out the scarf design and felt the fleece into submission. One of my ideas was to lay out a bunch of single ply merino wool yarn and try to bring it together with a minimal amount of fleece. It worked! Or at least it held together—the color combination isn’t ideal, but it’s a proof-of-concept piece. It kind of reminds me of a cocoon. It’ll probably end up in the collection of some local avant garde diva. Another idea I had was to incorporate many small holes into the body of the scarf. I realized that I could laminate material to create holes in one layer of the scarf on top of a solid layer. When the scarf dried I thought the concept was pretty interesting. My next attempt will be to laminate two layers, both with holes, into different levels of the scarf. Last year I also created a big ruffled edge look on some scarves that were well received, so I’m working on creating some new pieces on that theme. In all these new designs I’m trying to broaden my color palette. I want to incorporate some more oranges and earthy tones into my scarves. That takes me out of my comfort zone of jewel tones and reds, but I think a lot of people are drawn to scarves with an earthier feel. No matter what, I’m having fun creating new things. Now I just need to step up production!

Too much scarf work, with lots of rolling back and forth in the wet felting process, was pretty hard on my back and neck last week. I went through a bit of acetaminophen to try to get my body back on track. On top of my new morning Zumba workouts I’m getting all the exercise I ever wanted. You’d think that would earn me some kind of reward, and it did! It turned into a pie week. We got a batch of giant Mutsu apples at the farmer’s market last Saturday. There’s a lot less peeling if you buy big apples, I’ve learned. I helped peel the apples and Jim mixed them with a few secret spices and sugar and popped them into a delightful crust. On Wednesday evening, a wonderful fall apple pie emerged from the oven! My breakfasts this week have often been a slice of pie, a cup of coffee and a little whipping cream, all in a quiet spot with the morning paper. Who could ask for anything more?

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Taking the Redeye to Ohio

This was a week when lots of projects came together. First, I finished the red-eyed tree frog piece, and I’m delighted with how it turned out. I think it’s actually cuter than the first version. He has a much more mischievous look about him as he climbs further out on the fern frond. He’s all packaged up and ready to travel to his new home. I’m also pleased that I was able to finish my new ‘Trail to the Clearing” piece. I’ve been taking pictures as the piece progressed, which I’ll share. I began by needle felting the path, which is made out of fleece that I dyed with goldenrod collected in Michigan earlier this summer, a little brown alpaca that I bought at the annual Spinners and Weaver’s guild auction and wool that I dyed using sumac stems that I collected from last year’s overwintered berry clusters. Tommie and I harvested the fading berries and stems on our spring break trip to Michigan waaaaay back in March. I then attached the tree trunks I made last week and I filled out the trees with copper-wire (thanks to our local scrap yard) wrapped branches. I added crocheted leaf clumps that I’ve been making while attending art-related meetings and while watching my boys at their after-school activities. I like the idea that the piece has materials and influences from all over, which is a concept that I can identify with. I embellished the path with some collected materials. I dug into my nifty collection of ‘rocks with holes’, mostly from Jackson Creek in the Yellowwood state forest, and found pieces that matched the path colors. I finished the piece by making the understory plants out of all sorts of green bits and pieces to give it the real feel of an area where

filtered sunlight comes through the forest canopy over a trail. I stitched the whole thing onto the frame and called it done! If you’re in the area you can check out the piece at the Bloomington Bagel Company on Dunn Street.

That reminds me—I have a show currently hanging in town, split over two locations. Half is at the BBC downtown, and that part reflects my bipolar artistic tendencies.

The pieces comprising the left half of the show are quite representational, and they include my forest woodland scenes and summer birches. And on the right the pieces become more whimsical and fun. The other half of the show is hanging at the Bloomington Playwright’s project on Ninth Street. Friday was the opening
reception, so I got to try out my new fancy top and stylish shoes I got in Michigan. Wearing the shoes was fun that night, but my back was a little sore the next day. Age condemns you to sensible shoes, I guess. Anyway, I had some very nice conversations with friends, old and new, and had a pleasant evening at the BPP.

As fall approaches the grand harvest of roots and tubers flood the farmer’s market, an inner signal goes off in me that says it’s time to make soup. When the onion skins cleared I had fourteen meal units of two varieties of soup. The first was a batch of pumpkin-potato-pepper soup that Jim thought was fabulous. We had it for lunch right after the pot came off the stove. At the same time I filled our second stockpot with ‘three sisters’ soup. I got this delightful recipe from a Bloomingfoods flyer, and it too is now a local favorite. It’s basically a corn-butternut squash-bean soup that’s a ‘stick-to-your-ribs’ kind of thick and hearty. Perfect for a cool fall afternoon, which we had in abundance this past week. And while the weavings came together and the soups filled the freezer, it marked an ending to the summer phase of my busy artists schedule. That means new projects and new things to make in the kitchen! Come back next week to see what’s new!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

From Frog Toes to Fall Cooking

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

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

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

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

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Frogs, pockets and soup...

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

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

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

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

My September 11th

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

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

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

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


Until next week…

Martina Celerin

A Record Fourth Street Festival!

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

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

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

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

Until next week…

Martina Celerin