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