Treasures from the Earth and Travel to Memphis

As the demands of the holiday season fade, I find myself able to spend much more time doing the things I really like—I get to work in my art studio!

I have obviously been channeling a steampunk motif and I like it!  It’s a direction I’ve never explored in my pieces.  The aspect that is the most challenging and fun is dealing with the contrasts that arise.  I’m forced to marry rigidly symmetrical and circular shapes of the metal components with the very organic shapes of the stems and roots of living things.  The metals are hard and shiny, while the yarns are soft and matte.  Bringing everything together in a composition that appears natural is a very interesting challenge. 

I have three compositions in mind.  The first project is my heirloom tomato piece.  I dove into the project and managed to finish the entire cross-section through the ground phase.  I was having so much fun working with the chocolaty browns of the earth that I decided to launch onto a second ‘found object’ piece.  I’m trying to decide whether it will become ‘Biological Clock’ or ‘Thyme’.  The piece will concentrate on small, usually metal mechanisms from clocks or other mechanical devices that I have accumulated.  I owe a big thank you to Becky Delong on this score.  When she was downsizing and cleaning out her closets, she passed along her collection of broken clock parts left over from costume creation on the 2014 ‘Phantom of the Opera’ stage production by Sounds of South.  

When I’m not in my art studio I keep busy on my ‘Fall Stew’ project.  That means when the boys are doing taekwondo, jiu-jitsu, hip-hop, or singing, or when I’m watching an IU basketball game on TV, I get to poke away at vegetables.  This week I finished the green beans and launched into making broccoli.  It’s a big part of our current diet, and especially favored when covered in my homemade sharp cheddar cheese sauce. 

The cheese comes from Linwood, Michigan, on our trips to Grandma’s house when we visit ‘The Cow.’  You can’t miss the Williams Cheese shop with the twelve-foot tall Holstein standing in front.  To make the broccoli I have been crocheting four stands of green cotton chenille in a random clump to make the florets.  To make the stems, I roll narrow strips of army blankets for the fibrous heart then sew the tubes together.  I needle felt the skin using a green fleece that I bought probably ten years ago at the Fleece Fair (now known as The Fiber Event) in Greencastle, Indiana.  I remember buying a pound of uncombed, soft green fleece that I could never imagine consuming, but now I'm down to a tiny fluff that I hope will cover the stem of the third broccoli crown. 

My big travel news is that I’ll be taking my show on the road to Memphis, Tennessee.  I’ll be running a workshop on February 27th and 28th.  If you’re interested in participating, I think there are still a handful of the 20 slots available.  Here is a link to the Memphis Guild of Handloom Weaver and the application should be posted soon, and as well, here is an email address for the guild:
mghw@mghw.org   I’m so looking forward this!  I currently have fifteen looms ready to ship, so I’ll be scrounging around at the Re-Store and other recycling places in town to come up with the materials to build a few more looms.  Mostly I need one-by-twos, finishing nails and L-brackets to give the structures some rigidity. 

If you were worried that I had forgotten about the costumes for Pippin, rest assured that I have not!  I’m moving that project forward on my Monday and Friday visits to South.  I ordered a few things online, such as a funky parrot hat for the Jimmy Buffet scene.  I managed to fit each of the boys into their pre-pants (aka conventional clothing) that I will alter pretty drastically for the stage.  All the girls have been matched with bodices that I will use to make the base of their costumes.  I feel like I’m on track to match boys with jackets and shirts and girls with skirts and pants this coming week.  I’ll be ready for my self-imposed February first deadline for starting the truly creative process of building a cohesive and expressive collection of costumes.  There will be a lot of cutting materials and exploring how things look pinned together before they are passed on to the sewing faeries.  Oh, and hot glue—I ordered twenty five pounds of the indispensible adhesive so we can put our heads down and keep working without the interruption of a trip to Joanne’s once a week for more. 

On the home front, the boys are slogging through school.  After two weeks they are already ready for a break from school. The crazy Indiana weather we’ve been having hasn’t been helping.  We oscillate between fifty degrees and pleasant some days, before it turns rainy and slick and drops down to zero and windy.  It’s like spring is teasing us, then pulling the rug out from underneath.  My summer art fair schedule is coming into focus, with trips to the Des Moines Art Festival and Madison’s Art Fair on the Square, two of my favorite shows.  Throw in a couple summer vacations and the day planner is filling up!  Sadly I’m still waiting for my first post-Christmas pie…but the pretty bouquet of flowers that appeared on the dinning room table almost filled in. Almost.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Getting back on my feet

I got home from my disastrous show in Columbus Ohio last week and set to work assessing the damage. One common problem was dye from the yarns leaching into the silk thread used to stretch out my pieces in their frames. Unfortunately, silk picks up colors beautifully, so I ended up having to restring several pieces. I also found a lot of damage on the frames, although most of it was minor. I’m lucky there, but I will need to re-sand and freshly paint some of them. I did some aluminum frame bending and re-shaping, but for the major structural pieces I just couldn’t trust the integrity of the repaired pieces. I called up a very friendly and helpful artist representing Light Dome Canopies and ordered a few replacement pieces. I also bought some new bars to enhance the strength of the structure and a vinyl repair kit. Things are looking up!

After a couple of days of triage and repair, though, I really felt the need to create some fresh art. I continued working on a piece I decided to call BFF (best friends forever). It features a beet, a carrot and a yellow onion sitting on a cross-section through dirt. That translates into working with my chocolaty brown yarn. The dirt sits beneath a cloudless, rainless, windless blue sky! I spent some time needle felting my friendly veggies for the piece. I had just the right color for the yellow onionskins, a fleece that I dyed using—you guessed it—onionskins! That really made me smile, and onion-dyed onion gives the sense that I’ve completed a circle.

This week marked the end of the school year. That means I need to transition into my summer mode, and I have two friends to play with each day. Yesterday we went to the Monroe County Historical Society’s garage sale, an annual event for the three of us. It’s the biggest garage sale in all of Bloomington and serves as a major fundraiser for them. I go looking for treasures and it never lets me down. My big find this year was a Singer steam press iron that’s in excellent shape. I’ve been eyeing them for a while. I’m thinking that when I needle felt a bunch of leaves I can press them all at once, or I can press my scarves without the ironing board. I can almost hear the big shhhhhhh! as the top comes down and steam pours out! Summer mode also means time at the pool, so I spent time with the boys and their friend Claire at the Bryan Park Pool this afternoon. I swam a little, but I spent most of my time needle felting broccoli florets. I decided that after I sold my ‘Fruit Salad’ piece at Columbus I needed to create a vegetable salad. Broccoli is something new for me, but I’m pleased with how it turned out. All my vegetable creations remind me that I haven’t been able to get to the Farmer’s Market for a while, a problem I hope to resolve Saturday morning bright and early. I read in the paper that it’s blueberry time, and blueberries make a great pie! I bet if I just buy waaay too many to eat and put them in the fridge in front of the milk - Jim will have no choice but to bake me one!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin