Spring rains like my art studio…

The heavy rain continued this week.  Unfortunately, some of it wanted a tour of my art studio.  This happens all too often for me, usually after the ground is saturated and rain keeps coming down.  I even had rain running in through blocked up windows in my storage area.  That created a whole new problem.  The good news is that none of my weavings were affected.  I like to turn adversity into a positive, so I took the opportunity to review all the treasures in my studio that came upstairs to evade the water and purge the items that have sat around for years.  I’ll find them some new, dry homes. 

Before the rains, I had been making some good progress, finishing the background weaving for my latest commission.  I stretched it out on its frame, and next I’ll launch into the dimensional crochet component where I build the foreground further forward.  I’ve already wrapped a mountain of reeds and cattail leaves while watching the final episode of Face Off, one of my few television guilty pleasures.  The contestants create dimensional make-up, prosthetics and costumes that stretch the imagination.  I love the program because of the creative problem solving and challenges in the art making.  I’m just a sponge for new techniques. You just never know when some technique will be useful, which is how I look at my big supply of yarns and materials. 

The boys have been on their usual after school circuit, so this week I have been needle felting cherry tomatoes.  I think they’re just adorable little plump balls of sugar, and I’m looking forward to completing enough ingredients to create my Salsa weaving.  Speaking of tomatoes, I have been making more beefsteak tomato slices for my felted tiles.  I’m looking forward to showing them for the first time in Madison Wisconsin at the Art Fair on the Square, July 8^th and 9th.  

And speaking of dates, next weekend I will be in Toledo Ohio doing a two-day workshop and giving a talk and trunk show for the Fiber of Our Being felting guild.  I will pack up about a dozen of my weavings, along with a load of my felted tiles, most of my re-shirts, some felted sweater petals, and about a dozen of my costumes from Beauty and the Beast to display at the trunk show.  That will happens on the Monday night, the 15^th of May.  It’s going to be a lot of fun to see all my work displayed together.  I’m especially looking forward to sharing my work with an audience that hasn’t seen my work live. 

I spent a little time this week reorganizing the costume studio at South.  I was ready for a change after finishing up the 34 girls’ chorus costumes.  I gleefully launched into creating the principal’s costumes for Hello Dolly.  At the top of my agenda was creating Dolly’s opening number costume, and so I pulled out all of the clothes, fabric scraps and trims that I had accumulated over this past year in the color story that I was imagining.  

I hung them on the closet doors of the costume studio and just spent a little time taking everything in.  From there I started designing and I have pieced together the design for the dress.  I hope that this week I can pull all the elements together and watch the talented sewing faeries take over and turn it into a beautiful costume.  I really love and depend on my faeries, who bring my costume designs to life and fit them on the cast. 

On the family front, yesterday morning we made a delightful but slightly damp trip to the farmer’s market.  We arrived a little late in the morning, but the weather kept away a lot of people so we got our strawberries.  Poor Tommie missed the trip because he was taking the SAT test, but he got some strawberries at home.  On Friday he took an AP test in US history, and next week are the AP tests in English and calculus.  We are all looking forward to the end of the school year and the start of the family vacation!  

Oh, and my last lonely solitary slice of pie was consumed this morning.  It was a wonderful apple cranberry pie that appeared on Monday, but now it’s gone.  I do hope the next one appears in time for Mother’s day.  If anyone is listening, it would be better for it to appear around Tuesday when I get back! 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Back to the studio…

I spent a feverishly productive month in January costuming for the fall production of Hello Dolly put on by Sounds of South.  I’ll share some images later, but I want to begin with my February efforts in the art studio.  The reality of all my commitments is settling in with a couple of deadlines looming.  One big project is to assemble pieces for an exhibit called “Feast your Eyes” at the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  I will be shipping several pieces, including a collection of six felted tiles featuring southern fruits.  I have some citrus pieces that I made before, but I challenged myself to create a peach.  The flesh and skin of the peach is much like that of an apple, but the colors are very different.  I blended deep yellows with almost maroon fleece to develop the mottled streaky texture of a peach skin.  The real challenge, though, was making the pit. 

The texture is so obviously distinctive and interesting.  I used fleece that I dyed intensely with onion skins where the color came out so dark that seemed perfect for a peach pit.  Different fleeces take up different amounts of the dye, and I find that the lighter materials are actually perfect for creating felted onion skins.  The pit features concavities in the surface, but I then forced the shadowing by using a natural very dark brown, almost black fleece.  I’m really pleased with how it all came out! 

After the peach construction, I still needed one final traditional fruit for South Carolina.  I chose figs because my cousin in Mississippi, Martha, always talked about making fig preserves.  Several years ago I finally had a chance to try some real southern preserves when she brought some to Michigan and they were amazing.  Of course we needed our own.  We were inspired to plant a Midwest-hardy fig tree and each year we get a few more figs but still not enough for a preserves.  Clearly figs are a more southern thing and are plentiful there, although evidently they are becoming harder to find, even in the south.  The commercial jams that we can buy here are OK, but they are nothing like the preserves that Martha brought.  Anyway, my experiences led me to felt some figs for the project.  I will also ship “My Roots” to fill out the exhibit, which opens June 10 and runs until September 17th. 

In other fun news, I received an unexpected call from the editor of Bloom Magazine.  It seems that the editor, Malcolm Abrams, found my exhibit (Nature to Nurture) at the Bloomington Bagel Company on the east side of town.  He offered to write a story about my art and the exhibit for the April/May issue of Bloom.  I stopped in to the Bloom offices for a photo shoot the next day and I anticipate that it will turn it into a nice story—I’ll let you know when it’s out!  

With the teasingly warm weather I’m of course starting to think of the glorious days of summer and hanging out by the water.  That inspired me to complete a couple of water pieces that I started late last year.  I’m channeling the inner birches of my childhood, and I have woven some grasses for the background and should be attaching birches later this week.  For now, I’ve hung the unfinished piece at a prominent spot in my studio so I can stare at the water and enjoy the calming waves as I collect my thoughts for future pieces. 

Just to tease you with an update and a few pictures from the Hello Dolly costuming, I have all of the current member girls Sunday best costumes designed.  Many moms have spent lots of time attaching all of the bits and pieces that I have pinned together on the mannequins to create each costume.  I usually have about five mannequins in progress and I just move from one to the next while my sewing and gluing faeries capably bring the costumes to life. 

In family news we are screaming up to the boy’s second degree black belt test.  It will take place on March 4 at 2:30 pm at Monroe County Martial Arts.  If you’re in the area, please stop by to cheer them on!  We’ll have a reception afterwards catered by the Owlery.  I’m expecting lots of whooping and hollering and hugs all around when the kicking stops and the sweat settles into the carpet.  Also looking forward, tonight Jacob and I have tickets to Georgia McBride, put on by the Cardinal stage company.  I’m told it’s the story of an Elvis impersonator that reinvents himself as a drag queen.  And I’m told that the costumes are amazing!  I can’t wait.  

 I think we’ll combine the show with a fancy schmancy dinner and call it a night on the town. 
On the pie front I am barely surviving.  I can’t even remember the last pie.  I’ll have to check my phone for the last pie pictures to see how long the drought has been!  Oh wait, I guess I did have a very nice tart cherry pie the last time I was in a pie drought.  Oh, and I guess there was a very nice peach pie a couple less than two weeks later.  It just feels like its been months!  That’s good enough for me—I need another pie!  We haven’t had blueberry or apple yet this year.  Just sayin’.    

Until next week

Martina Celerin