The first veggies of spring: eggplants and zucchini

It’s been a full week of vegetable creation, yet again. This is probably how Mother Nature got her start. My specialties were eggplant and zucchini, and I was focused on getting the surfaces just right. To complete the eggplant cubes I first stitched a felt surface on to the wool cubes I created last week. I used white and purple material to create a foundation for the deep purple carded fleece I created.

One of the joys of creating vegetables out of wool, at least to a former scientist, is the ability to look at the core structure with fresh eyes. I’ve sliced up a lot of vegetables in my day, and I funneled a lot of zucchini into summer sweet bread. But this time I really paid attention to the smallest details. I noticed that the eggplant has a thin green gradient at the periphery. This might be because it’s a young plant, so I’ll have to buy a few more mature eggplants to check. The eggplant model from Bloomingfoods eventually made its way into a delightful eggplant and quinoa stew. I’ll definitely need more eggplant recipes! The green transitions into a heterogeneous brown color, which almost looks like a cream cappuccino that isn’t fully mixed. I managed to capture the colors I needed using wools that I dyed last summer using natural materials. I remember having such a great time cutting flowers and other plant parts and experimenting with the dyeing conditions, but I never thought I’d be able to use the fairly drab colors I got in return. Now I’m really looking forward this summer!

I made progress on the zucchini from last week as well. I created a series of circle and half moon shapes, and of course I had to translate these into realistic zucchini colors. The sliced edges are kind of a minty green gradient, which quickly transitions into the buttery, creamy ring that people associate with zucchini. The center circle is a less dense, fibrous material that has more of a grey-beige translucent appearance. It’s all those subtle color zones in the middle that warn you off when you reach for a slice to eat, thinking it’s a tasty cucumber.

The thoughts of subtle greens have me thinking about spring in Bloomington. December started off with a couple of unusually heavy snowfalls. It was nice to have a white Christmas, but it feels like winter has been here forever with the cold snap in early March. Everyone in my family is chomping at the bit to welcome spring. I’ve given up trusting the robins to tell me it’s spring, since they seem to stay put most of the winter in Bloomington. You wouldn’t catch those robins out in Ontario in February! My favorite harbinger of spring is the purple iris reticulate that you’ll find along the walkway to our house. I’m including a picture of a sweet little one that made me smile.

Looking ahead, my ‘Small Squares’ display is still up in Fort Wayne. The Trashion-Refashion Show is coming up in a couple of weeks. I’ll be in the audience, even though I won’t have any dresses on display. I was very excited about a cool idea I had to make a dress out of Barbie doll legs. I collected and collected, and I had my boys ripping legs off of dolls for money. Unfortunately, the legs made the dress too heavy and I had to abandon the effort. This year I’ll just enjoy the show as a patron of the arts. I’ve seen some of the images of the work and I think it’s going to be incredibly interesting and diverse.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

The secret to slicing onions

I have the skinny on everything this week. First, it was the week of the onion rings, which I completed by adding the skins. I poked at them all week long without any tears, except when I jammed the felting needle into my finger. Ow! I also added the skin to my tomatoes. There’s still a huge amount of detail work needed to complete them. I have to get all the internal structure right and get the seeds in place, so I’m sure I’ll stop in at Bloomingfoods to pick up a few models. Finally, my epiphany of the week: after hours and hours of felting while the boys were at school taking their ISTEP tests, I’ve concluded that there is absolutely nothing on daytime TV worth watching.

My sense of being locked in the house was amplified this week by the near constant rains. A lake forms in our back yard (Celerin Lake), which is drained through the fence into a small tributary (Drummond Creek) when the rains are heavy. Both sump pumps in the basement were cranking water out to the road. Water even started leaking up through the crack in my art studio floor. I’ve come to accept this as ‘the devil I know’. Instead of trying to repair it and have water come in through some other crack, I just keep a towel system over it that I change regularly. That will dry up soon and stay dry for most of the year, so it’s just another charm to living in our house.

I did give myself permission to leave the house for two trips into the soggy spring. My highlight was going to the Heritage Quilt Show on Thursday. As usual, I really enjoyed seeing all the quilts. Seeing the creative designs and new color combinations always inspires me. My only disappointment this year stemmed from the drop in non-traditional patterns. I’m especially drawn to the free form quilts. During my travels in town I met with Chad, the artistic director for the Bloomington Playwrights Project. He’s going to take over running the Art Fair on the Square, a one-day show in downtown Bloomington. I stopped doing the show a few years ago, but I know Chad is a creative juggernaut and a marketing machine. I feel like it’s going to be well worth participating again this year.

The last thing on my mind is how pleased I am with my new drum carder. I used to borrow the Spinner’s and Weaver’s Guild carder, but I reached the point where I just needed my own. It’s an expensive tool, so I debated buying it for a long time. I just felt I was being extravagant by wanting to have my own. But as I was cranking out mounds of eggplant purple fleece last night, I realized how much I appreciated having it. I don’t know how I could have completed my giant ratatouille piece without it. And it’s fun to use.

What else is there to say, except for the obvious? When’s the next pie? And what kind will it be?

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Veggies are high in fiber...

I was in major vegetable construction mode this week. I have been working on the big ratatouille piece this week, and I completed all the structural elements needed for the vegetables. I even laid them out on the woven background. To my great relief I see that the design will work! The scale is right and the number of pieces is right. I still need to create the herbs to season it, which means felting some basil leaves and thyme branches to fill it out. For now, I just feel really good about completing all the ingredients. The art construction parallels preparing ratatouille, where the secret to success is sautéing each of the ingredients separately. Combining them as the final step ensures that the veggies retain their crispness and individual flavors.

My plan for creating the vegetables was based on an art piece I saw on a recycled art website. It was a table made out of cardboard, created by cutting and combining circles with increasing diameters to sculpt the 3D shape. For my vegetables I harvested cereal boxes out of the recycle bin and cut out the shapes I wanted. I used these as templates to cut layers out of wool blankets and old sweaters. These were stacked and stitched together to create the vegetable slices and cubes. I’ve needle felted a skin layer to the zucchini slices and have launched into skinning my tomatoes. The last phase is to get the intricate design and color palette right for the interiors. I’ve gone through three different zucchini models from Bloomingfoods, each of which went into a family meal. I carded and created three different colors of fleece for each of the inner colour regions of the zucchini, and so I’m ready to start needle felting the patterns. A ripe red tomato sits frightened in the fridge, ready to be dissected for its internal color and design.

Monday was the Spinners and Weavers Guild meeting. They’re trying something new, which might become an annual event—the paper bag exchange. Each person puts four ounces of a fiber, yarn, wool or roving into a bag. The bags are exchanged, and you have until September to create something out of the material and return it to its original owner. You can add materials as needed, but the base of the piece is the exchanged fiber. I’m excited to see how the person uses the yarn I contributed, and I’m always up for a challenge to see what I can do with the beautiful deep blue-green roving I received. Unfortunately it’s a superwash material so I can’t wet felt with it, but I like the fact that it pushes me out of comfort zone into new creative directions. I’m thinking a needle felted bowl…

In other news of the week I have a new show going up at the Orchard Gallery in Fort Wayne. It’s called Small Squares, and I contributed some of my felted tile pieces. I’m excited to see all the pieces together. The opening is this Friday, and I’ve heard the opening reception is nice. The postcard for the show makes me think it will be quite eclectic. I love Cappi’s mosaic chicken tile.

In local news, after the warm days this week I’ve noticed that the tulips leaves are peeking out. The first snowdrops and eranthus are appearing in the garden beds, which is a sure sign of spring. As the spring comes on I’m hoping there’s a rhubarb pie in my near future. There’s a tradition that we have rhubarb pie on Mother’s day, but I’ve decided that when you’re a princess and a mom you can have pie when you want it. I’m on the lookout!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin