Wow, what an incredibly intense week! The annual Fourth Street Art Festival
was scheduled for last week, but the remnants of Hurricane Isaac threatened the
show. The early weather
predictions not only put us in its path, they predicted from 5 to 10 inches of
rain for the weekend. They even
called the chance of rain both days around 100%. As I watched the radar, though, it wasn’t as clear that it
was going to hit us. The system
was moving more slowly and more to the west than the predicted path. Whether or not we should even hold the
show became a tough call, with the thoughts of possibly moving it indoors. If we were clearly going to get hit it
would have been an easy call. The
phone was ringing off the hook with calls from people who wanted to know our plans,
including area newspapers.
My
stress level went through the roof!
To make a long story short, we made our best judgment on the storm’s
path and decided to hold the show outdoors in its usual place. The Friday evening set-up went just
fine, although you could tell that the weather was unstable with a threat in
the air. The streets were marked
in record time as we all raced to get the booths set up and filled with art
while it was dry. When Saturday
dawned the rain was still a state away to the east and moving North, not west
toward us. Hooray! We had an absolutely beautiful Saturday,
with just a couple of light sprinkles.
There were even patches of sun!
I couldn’t have asked for a better day. People came out and bought art and everyone was in a great
mood. The forecast for Sunday was
still pretty ominous. I was still
on high alert, but the day turned out to feature light rain, but no real
threats. No tornadoes, no
lightning and no flooding came our way.
In fact, the rain stopped about two hours before the end of the
show! That gave everyone a dry
pack-up, which in "artspeak" meant the show was perfect. I was positively giddy when I got home
and had a nice dinner with wine.
Fortunately, Jim kept me from posting all the thoughts that ran through
my head on Facebook. In hindsight,
that was probably a good thing.
Oh, and a little known secret—when I got home Saturday night, after
handing out all the official awards to participating artists at the ‘official’
dinner, I came home to find that I had won the ‘Best in Show’ award! There was a freshly-baked raspberry pie
with a little ribbon on it for me.
The berries came from the Farmer’s market and the kitchen still smelled
like baked pie. I’m so glad my
family thinks I always win the best in show!
Over the past week I’ve been catching up on all the projects
I put on hold. I first had to
recover some sense of serenity after dealing with the show. On top of that, a bad cold had settled
into my family (but luckily, not me).
Nobody has slept very well over the past several days.
In the art world, I got more serious
about my large landscape commission piece targeted for completion by month’s
end. That meant dyeing a bunch of
yarn to get the colors I needed.
Fortunately, I just love dyeing yarn!
It’s very rewarding, just like picking fungal spores. At the end of the day you have a whole
pile of stuff to show for your work, and you get to build on all your hard work
later on. The spores yield Petri
plates with germinated fungal mycelia to do more experiments, while the yarn
goes into all sorts of projects, not all of which have even been imagined
yet. Now my yarns are drying on
the veranda. The humidity finally
dropped on Saturday so I’m in pretty good
shape. I pulled out my enormous loom and I’m about to clamp it onto
an easel to warp it. I can’t tell
you how glorious it sounds to have a day when all I have to do is weave,
something else I love to do! And
you’re not going to believe this, but after another trip to the Farmer’s
market, Jim baked me another
raspberry pie! It was so popular
the first time that I didn’t get to enjoy much of it with coffee for
breakfast. And now I have another
one! Oh. My. Gosh. Can life get any better?
Until next week…
Martina Celerin
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