School is almost over!

The end of another school year is a dominant theme in our household these days.  Jacob has several big projects coming to a conclusion, including Friday’s big extravaganza.  Jacob was Thomas Jefferson.  I came to see all the presentations in the library, and the kids did a fine job with their early American personalities.  I’ve been stopping in to support Mrs. Tamborrino as an algebra tutor some mornings and having a lot of fun with the kids.  I even helped participate in the rocket-building exercise—launch is set for Monday!  To wind down after a long day when Jim was out sparring Wednesday, the boys and I took a nice walk in the neighborhood and played a fun rhyming word game.  Who knew swapping spit with a Russian communist was a ‘Bolshevik lick’? 

On our trip we ran into a big herd of deer roaming the neighborhood.  Depending on your point of view, they were either enriching our lives, eating our flowers, or menacing helpless pet and bicyclists.

Between all my other responsibilities I have slipped off to the art studio to move my projects forward.  I completed all the tree trunks for the foreground of the piece, and I think I have enough branches created for the canopy.   

As school winds down, I’ve been able to pirate a few of the wire from spiral notebooks that are no longer needed at school.  It’s actually a good time of year to collect those.  I warped the loom and started weaving the extended trail through the woods.  The lower layers begin with a sumac weave that will be covered with a dimensional crochet technique that will form the final path.  I’m using up a lot of yarn colors that I don’t normally have a lot of use for.  That includes soft peaches, pale yellows and beiges from my collection. 

Last night we held a meeting of the artists who organized this year’s Open Studio’s Tour.  We gathered in our dining room for a potluck and talk about this year’s successes and what we’d like to do differently next year.  The kitchen became the staging area, with a wonderful collection of foods.  There was even an interesting pie that featured blueberries, mild goat cheese and basil.  Yum!  I think everyone was enthusiastic about the event, and everyone in the group seems to appreciate good food.  As I’m writing this I have a belly full of strawberry shortcake with freshly baked biscuits in my tummy.  Jim is working on a biscuit version that doesn’t have shortening, which I encouraged.   

They haven’t been perfected yet, but they were still really good!  And as I write and think how to finish this week’s blog without a picture of a pie, I’m looking out at the beautiful spring flowers in the garden.  They’ll have to do for now.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

The Open Studios Tour!

The focus of the entire week was getting ready for the Open Studios Tour.  This is the first year for the event and I wanted everything to go well.  Jim and I spent a good chunk of time on the garden, which meant weeding and mulching along the pathway to the front door.  We had lots of nice perennials in bloom, including lilies, bear’s breeches, penstemon, foxglove and astilbe.  We even slipped in some annuals this year for a little more color, which was a nice touch.  Jim has been out watering and applying spray to keep the deer away, at least until after the show.  I love it when a plan comes together! 

  

Of course when you invite all of Southern Indiana into your house you have to do a little cleaning.  Upon a close inspection, I saw the years of handprints the boys invested on the walls.  That took a good morning of scrubbing alone.  I moved the table and our big plants from the dining room into the living room to create space for art.  I set up my display walls all around the room and hung up all the weavings I had and a good number of my Discardia Re-shirts. 

 When a visitor came to the doorway, my son Tommie greeted them, asked them to fill out a brief survey, and showed them the layout of the house open for the tour.  Guests passed from the dining room to the kitchen, where free cookies and lemonade were set out.  They had to pass the T-shirt station, with my “Bike the B-Line” T-shirts and the boy’s new art creations they call T-bands.   

They are made from discarded T-shirts, torn into strips and incorporated into macramé bracelets.  They had some very cool color combinations and the pieces sold very well.  It turns out that Jacob has a real talent for sales.  This is good, because he’s saving money to buy an iPod Touch.  After this weekend he’s well on his way.  I’m proud of his ability to work and save for things he wants to buy.  Anyway, once they got past the kitchen guests came down to my art studio to see a few pieces in progress.

 The weekend itself was a huge success.  We had 173 people visit our house, and I had some absolutely delightful conversations.  There were a lot of people who have seen my work or followed my career and wanted to see the studio and find out how I create the pieces.  I was surprised to meet so many people who weren’t the usual that comes to art fairs so I got to meet a lot of new people.  I think everyone was amazed at my highly organized collection of yarns, felt, fabric, fossils and other found objects in big storage binds downstairs.  I need materials in a broad range of colors so my storage needs get pretty complicated.  Looking back, I was delighted to be able to share my workspace, pieces in progress and strategies for making art with everyone who came.  

 Of course art creation never takes a rest.  I moved the big commission piece forward, creating some more of the leaf clumps I’ll need for the canopy.  I attached the last tree on to the path, so I can tell the project is coming to a close.  It always seems that as one project finishes another lands on my plate.  This week I met with two patrons who want to commission a large piece that features a pathway through a forest, but this time in a landscape format.  It took a lot of planning to re-design the layout.  The focus is usually on the trees, but because it’s a horizontal piece the focus shifts to the path.  It’s interesting how changing the layout of the piece re-orients the focal point and feel of the piece.  The piece started with some sketches I did on the beaches of North Carolina and will come to fruition after the art fairs of the summer. 

And one last bit of family news—Jim and Tommie went to Lake Monroe on Memorial Day Monday and came back with a bucket full of big bluegills.  We had a delightful fish fry on Tuesday.  As if I didn’t get enough good food last week on vacation, Jim also made me a rhubarb pie this week, which lasted until Sunday morning.  Life is good!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Finding stars on the beach

We’re just back from an amazing trip to the outer banks in North Carolina—what a wonderful week we had!  We stayed in Ocean Sands, which is just south of Corolla.  The house we rented had beautiful views of the ocean, with decks that let us sit outside and sip coffee or wine.   

Depending on where you looked, you could watch pelicans cruise the ocean swells or fly over the beach, dolphins patrolling the surf’s edge, or people collecting shells up and down the beach.  I didn’t take any art projects to work on, but I did have lots of time for relaxing and developing ideas for art pieces.  I even did a little sketching on the beach.  As usual, I spent a lot of time beach combing and collecting.  This year as different in that we found lots of horseshoe crab shells on the beach, including a few enormous ones, our first-ever sea stars, and a huge amount of driftwood.   

I also came home with a delightful collection of shells with holes worn in them for weavings.  Sadly, the sea stars didn’t travel as nicely, so don’t look for them in my pieces.  

On our drive from Norfolk to Corolla, we usually stop in at one of the farmer’s markets along the way to stock up on some fruit and veggies for the week.  We decided to visit Miller’s this year, identified by its ice cream churned with a tractor engine.  The ice cream was OK, but the produce was exceptionally fresh.  We ended up with a watermelon (crisp and tasty), a big bag of peaches (eaten within the first day or so), blueberries (which became a breakfast pie on the third and fourth days), 

new potatoes (great boiled with fresh fish), and a bunch of vegetables and lettuce for a salad.  I knew then we were off to a good start.  We stopped in at Carawan’s for seafood and headed home with two pounds of fresh tilefish for dinner.  What a treat!  Even Jacob really liked it, which is saying something.  We also bought black sea bass and sea trout from Carawan’s on this trip, which was also excellent.   

Tommie wanted to try the soft shell crabs this year, which we did.  One has to be pretty trusting to believe that the whole body is edible, but it turns out to be true.  We deep fried them and ate them all.  Jacob preferred the legs while Tommie liked the bodies.  That turned out to be a good trade.  Everybody got something they liked, and we all enjoyed the crabs.  

We spend a lot of time on the beach on our vacation, but we also go off on other adventures.  The boys have been asking to try go-karting for some time, and this year was the first that Jacob was tall enough to go.  Jacob decided at the end that he’d prefer to drive Miss Daisy (Grandma’s golf cart that she uses for watering flowers). 

 We got in a few rounds of mini golf, where the winner buys the ice cream.  Tommie won one day and Jacob and Jim tied the other.  Jim still bought the ice cream, though.  Oh, and we also finally got to try the Titanic at Logan’s.  You get to choose six scoops of ice cream and four toppings.  With hot fudge, peanuts, marshmallow sauce and the chocolate that solidifies on the ice cream it was an ice cream and chocolate lover’s dream.  Four spoons and five minutes later we had sunk the Titanic.  

 On Thursday, Jim and Tommie went thirty miles out on the ocean aboard the Country Girl and fished the reefs for tilefish and black sea bass.  Luckily, the weather cooperated and they came home with a big mess of fish for more lunches and dinners.  We even slipped about seven pounds of filets into our carry-on cooler.  Our first dinner home was fresh tilefish and another big batch went into the freezer. 

The big event in the surf was boogie boarding, followed by racing back to the house to warm up in the hot tub.  The Atlantic in May isn’t exactly a bath, but it was warm enough for all of us to spend some time frolicking in the surf.  Jacob was the real leader on that adventure, going every chance he could.  He can pick the good waves to ride, and with his small frame he can get right on the board and ride it all the way on to the beach.  When Jim and Tommie were off fishing, I even spent an afternoon boarding with Jacob until I was cold all the way through.  The hot tub fixed me right up, though. 

 

The big project awaiting me upon our return was to clean up my art studio for the Open Studios Tour next weekend.  I want to send out a big thanks to Sarah Pierce, my neighbor, and Marcy Neiditz for organizing the inaugural event.  The event runs from 10 am to 4 pm Saturday and Sunday, June 2nd and 3rd.  I’m studio number 4 on the tour.  I’ll have all my art on display, from my weavings to Giclee prints to my Re-shirts.  We’ll have cookies and lemonade for weary travelers.  Jacob is keen to start a project that kids can do when they visit, which will involve creating a version of survival bracelets.  I’m hoping to get a good turnout this year, and I’d like to see it become an annual event.  On the home front, I think Jim is just happy that we don’t have to drive somewhere to set it up! 

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Ocean Sands on Dwellable