Sunday, April 28, 2019

Full speed ahead on art ideas!

It’s been a wonderful week to be home working in my studio.  The weather cooperated by not being too nice, so I was ready to get busy and begin a bunch of new pieces.  I love carrying ideas for weaving compositions around in my head.  There I can modify my designs as I think through technical aspects about which materials might work best and how to achieve the end product.  At some point I’m ready and eager to launch on creating the weaving, and that was certainly true of my piece called Barbershop Quartet. I dug out my big container of barbershop related paraphernalia and began laying out the composition I imagined. When I was happy with the layer of tools and barber supplies I pulled out all of my barbicide blue yarns and started the background weaving.  
Completing the background brought me to a resting point where I now need to needle felt the four goldfinches.  I can do that task on the move, so I’ll probably save the felting aspect until we’re driving somewhere.  I was still in full design layout and background mode, so I plowed ahead on completing the backdrop for my piece called Charging Station.  Just like the missing goldfinches on my Barbershop Quartet, I’ll adorn the piece with three fireflies with glow-in-the-dark bottoms.  I can work on them as I travel too, but I’m finding much less time than I used to for felting projects now that Jacob can drive himself to his activities.  For the background on this piece I had a lot of fun creating and gussying up the electrical outlet covers.  I also incorporated all kinds of jewelry bits, drywall tape, beaded pull chains for lights and other odds and ends in the background.  I find it amazing what paint can do to transform an object from something you recognize instantly into a component that blends well into a textured surface. 

I still had another piece in my mind ready to launch, and that was a composition called Changing Gears.  It will have a steampunk feel to it with lots of metal gears and gear-like objects that I’ve been harvesting by tearing apart blenders and mixers and pulling brass gears from old clocks.  Thursday I spent a little quality time arranging the composition and I’m pretty excited about putting it all together.  I’m contrasting the hard metal gears with a helpful grackle in the foreground that will present an alan key in its beak.  The timing for this piece and the grackle was perfect because I went to the Fleece Fair last week on Friday and picked up some iridescent green-purple Angelina fibers.  I plan to blend them in to the black wool to create that sheen that grackles around their heads.  I know that most people are not grackle fans because they steal bird seed and grain in the fields, but I see them as resourceful individuals and kindred spirits in some ways.  I’ll certainly post pictures as I make progress on each of these pieces. 

Last Sunday Jim and I went to Lake Monroe to try our hand at crappie fishing.  We caught enough fish to enjoy the fruits of our labors as fish tacos on Tuesday.  It was a wonderful adventure, made challenging by the lake being so high that we needed to paddle the canoe out to a dock that we would normally walk out to.  We spent a few hours finding small flocks of fish and getting a mild sunburn in the middle of April.  I made charred corn salsa and chili lime aeoli, which combined with fresh fish and arugula on white corn torillas made for a delightful dinner.  Oooh, yum!  Speaking of food, it was a pie day, but it was a pizza pie on Friday.  Jim has perfected the thin crust, whole wheat pizza which he generously covered with vegetables and cheese mixtures.  It was really good, but I now have a hankering for something sweet and fruity.  Maybe a …   pie?  Hoo boy—I can’t leave the kitchen for a minute!  I went on an afternoon visit with Dawn and Cinny to Indianapolis and I came back to find a blueberry pie!  Perfect!


Until next week,

Martina Celerin

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