Ants and the Arts!

My first blog line is starting to sound repetitive, but my art focus has been on the next commission piece in the queue.  This refrain will be continued over the next couple of months as I work toward completing my next four commissions...

This week I’ve been making more cute vegetables.  The carrots are done and await installment onto the weaving.  The celery stalks are next, made by needle felting the needed shapes from raw wool that I washed and carded this summer.  I need both center cut stalks and pieces closer to the white root section – the ones that are shaped like a paddle.  I now have three of the five naked celery stalks for the piece made, and when I get all of the forms made I will clothe them in celery-green-dyed wool.  And then I’ll be on to tomato completion.  I resumed tomato poking again to create the meaty part of the sliced fruit, which requires a slightly different shade of red from the juicy part.  

 I’ll finalize the slices by creating the seeds from wool that I dyed with the bark of maple trees from Grandma’s house in Michigan.  When that’s done I’ll have five of the ten vegetable piles and I’ll be off on the trail of broccoli florets.  This commission was promised for the middle of December and I’m feeling good about meeting the deadline.  I’m hoping to find just a little window of some warm weather soon to do some more dyeing, though.  I have a couple of large, forest-based commissions pending that I’ll need more of my green mohair boucle to make leaf clumps.  Then I can just huddle down in my art studio and try to weave and stay warm until winter passes and I don’t need to imagine spring greens. 

I did have some measure of closure on a project for my boys and me.  The final “Phantom” performance was Saturday night.  Sunday was tear down morning.  A whole bunch of cast family member volunteers showed up to reduce the set to a nicely organized pile of lumber for the next performance.   

The costumes and materials have been packaged for future performances (go costume clean up crew!), and some key prop pieces borrowed from Cardinal Stage Co  made their way back home.  All in all, it was an exuberant bunch of musical theatre art supporters and I was impressed at how quickly it all went away. 

I did spend some time this week getting ready for the upcoming holiday season.  I assembled a bunch of five packs of note cards, packaging them with ribbons for delivery to local art galleries.   

I’ll bring some along to the upcoming Artisan Guild Show at the Convention Center where I’ll feature my Re-Shirts and weavings.  Of course my ‘Looking at Water’ exhibit will still be up in the adjacent Rogers room, so my framed pieces be well represented.  I did also hold a pop-up exhibition at the Spring Hill Suites downtown.  Ashley organized an evening show for a couple of local artists.  She and the hotel staff did an outstanding job bringing it all together.  There were wonderful champagne aperitifs and beautiful catering—the food was good but the crab cakes were delicious.  

 It was really nice to hang out and chat with both people who came specifically for the show and some hotel-goers who stopped by to see the art. 

Finally, on the horizon is the Opening Reception for the Big-Headed ant exhibit atWonderlab.  Come and join us this Friday (Nov 7, 2014) from 5 - 8:30 pm for art, ants and activities.  Both children and adults are welcome to create their own miniature Big-Headed ants by felting balls of merino noils (thanks, Sheep Street!) for the head and abdomen and using brown pipe cleaner for the appendages.   

Erin from Wonderlab and I made the prototype, and we had a lot of fun doing it.  I’ll be there, hanging around in case anyone wants to talk about ants.  If not, I’ll be poking at vegetables.  I’ll bring all my little veggie piles for people to see.  And speaking of cranberries, Jim made me another cranberry apple pie!  This time he used a whole bag of fresh cranberries.  It had a delightful tart flavor and I’m looking forward to a week of espresso and pie breakfasts.  That, and some leftover Halloween candy should keep me zinging and creating more art!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Great people live in Indianapolis too!

My life in the art studio has been dedicated to commissions.  I’m excited to have so many requested pieces, but now I have to bear down and create the art.  At the top of my queue is my “Summer Salad” revisitation.  Because the composition features a compilation of many small needle felted vegetables, it’s the perfect piece to take along as I patiently wait for the boys at their various activities.  Right now, that means Taekwondo, hip-hop dancing, and voice lessons.  Happily, I now have the full complement of cherry tomatoes, olives, mushrooms and all of the radishes (except for their little white tails).  

 I’ll be finishing those soon when I can wet felt again.  My finger just needs to heal a little more from the cut.

Hmmm.  You might not have heard about my exciting trip to the emergency room at the Bloomington hospital last week.  I was working on part of the set for the “Phantom” performance and I severely cut my left index finger with an Exacto knife.  It took several hours of waiting, but they finally declared me to be functional and glued the wound back together.  They gave me a tetanus shot, patted my bottom and told me to be more careful as they discharged me four hours later at 12:30 a.m.  I’ll be back at full strength shortly. 

Injuries give you a moment to stop and take stock of your life.  As I looked around me, I decided that the color of my current season is orange.  It just feels like there is a wonderful orange glow around the neighborhood right now.  At the farmer’s market I saw lots of orange pumpkins (one of which came home with us), and the orange helped inspire me to work on the orange carrots for the “Summer Salad” piece.  We have had some beautiful sunny weather and the changing leaves are striking—just more orange in my world.  The orange motif was reiterated as I drove to Indianapolis last week on a mission to look for a new camera.  I got to see lots of trees changing color along highway 37.  One of the best parts of that adventure was a long overdue visit to the Indy Upcycle store on Guilford Avenue in Indianapolis. 

 It’s a recycled craft supply store, which is the kind of place where I find all sorts of treasures for my work.  I systematically went through every bin that the proprietor had and found silver cord and thread, green felt and yarns, wire scraps and tiny little objects that will work beautifully in my underground scenes.  I found the cutest little pair of scissors and some scrabble tiles, which seems especially relevant since I spend a fair bit of time playing Scrabble with friends online and Tommie at home.  Yesterday morning developed slowly after a late night due to the cast party for the “Phantom” performance Saturday.  We sat, talked and played scrabble in front of a fire while Jim baked a cranberry/apple pie in the kitchen.  Yum!  Anyway, I had a delightful time in the store and enjoyed interacting with the proprietor.  I was delighted when, on Saturday morning, I received a package in the mail from Indy Upcycle containing two tufts of green feathers!  It was one of the things we searched for, and the person there mailed me some feathers she discovered after I left!  I would say she should move to Bloomington, but I’m glad she’s there when I visit. 

On the drive home from Indy I got into some crazy traffic on 37, which prompted the thought that I should take old 37.  I got into more beautiful oranges on the old highway, and I was able to stop in at Musgrave Orchard.  I reconnected with the orange-haired (!) Hamiltons, whom I haven’t seen in a very long time.  I was amazed at how big the children there had grown while I wasn’t watching!  I picked up four big jugs of apple cider, one of which didn’t survive the day when my boys came home from school.  I also brought home a nice selection of apples and squash for my family.  The whole trip left me feeling very happy. 

My family life has been extraordinarily busy, as usual.  I’ll summarize a bit to say that the Sounds of South performance of “Phantom of the Opera” held their penultimate performance last Saturday night.  Tommie did a stellar job in the chorus and handling the props and stage.  He just handles everything on stage with a quiet professionalism.  I had to smile when Tommie, during the auction scene, bid on the monkey I created using an auction paddle that I also made for the show.  He didn’t get the monkey, but he started the group bidding on the piece—way to support your Mom’s work!  Jacob ran the lighting, as he has for the whole show, and threw in a few of his own creative touches to make the performance richer.  I served as an usher while Jim stayed home and rested after hours of wood cutting and splitting followed by Taekwondo and sparring.  It was great to usher and meet people from all over the community coming together to support the SOS group.  Everyone went away impressed with the extraordinarily high quality of the performance. 

I will be out and about in the community with my art a few times over the next few weeks.  First, I’ll be at Spring Hill Suites on College Avenue on Wednesday the 29^th from 5-7:30 p.m. for ArtNight, a one evening exhibition of my weavings, along with two other artists.   You can see my latest tomato piece with the myriad tomatoes I needle felted over the summer on my travels.  Spring Hill Suites has started carrying my notecards and Sweater Petals as well.   Next, I’ll be present for a reception for the new bigheaded ant exhibit at Wonderlab on November 7^th from 5:00 to 8:30 p.m.   

My final show of the calendar year will be at the combined Artisans Guilds show at the Convention Center on November 14^th and 15^th.  My ‘Looking at Water’ exhibit will still be there in the Rogers room, so stop in to see my new Re-Shirts at the show and my weavings nearby!

 

It’s been a long blog, but I can’t get by without mentioning the delightful Mutsu apple and cranberry pie that Jim made yesterday morning.  The next time he makes it, which better be soon so we can still find more Mutsu apples, he needs to know that the filling needs more cranberries!  I’ll have to do the experiment and see how I like this one a few more times, with espresso, to be sure!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin