Koi being koi

My goal for this week was to finish at least one of my pieces in progress.  That piece turned out to be my underwater pond scene.  If you’re a Facebook follower, you know I’ve been working on creating two colorful koi.  I first sculpted the fish, and then the fish faces, including the distinctive whisker-like barbels that koi use to taste their surroundings.  When I layered on the patches of skin color I tried to make them appear somewhat random, which turns out to be a challenge.  

Our brains are geared to seeing regular patterns, and the whole idea of random colors violates our sense of comfort in symmetry. 

I next needed to position the koi in between the rocks on the bottom of the weaving and the lily pad layer that defines the water’s surface.  I wrapped some used baling wire with yarns that matched the color of the rocks and then inserted those into the fish on one end and the weaving on the other.  I used two wires per fish to prevent them from swimming in circles.  What I really love about this piece is that it’s my first piece that requires the viewer to move considerably if they want to take in all the details in the piece.  

I decided that this perspective on the art speaks to my experiences making costumes for the theater.  Like the costumes I created, you can’t get the full story face on.  The movement of the actors reveals the full story of the costume, giving the viewer the ability to see all the colors and how together they create the full effect of the outfit.

When one composition comes together I typically have to launch on a new piece, which is in this case was a fun commissioned piece.  It involves six felted tiles that are each 8 by 8 inches.  The first will have lily pads with a small turtle resting on a pad.  

I had a little extra fun with these because I used two blended green fleeces as the base and layered the greens to create the veined patterns that one often observes radiating from the center of the pad.  I also began creating a second tile that will feature two fern fronds and a wee frog.  

I calculated that I need forty-five of the individual pinnae (leaflets), so I’ll make fifty just to be sure.  My little pile is growing and soon I’ll have a frond.

I also did more experimenting with dyeing.  I’ve been reading about dyeing with black beans for years, and now that it’s soup season the moment had arrived.  I was already planning to make a black bean soup and freezing away a few bags of cooked beans, so I soaked about three pounds of black beans.  I ladled off the the black supernatant for dyeing and threw away the last bit of liquid that contains the coagulated bean goo.  

That material is supposed to interfere with color transfer.  I added about eight ounces of freshly washed white fleece to the black supernatant let it sit overnight at room temperature.  That’s a little odd, because I’m used to heating the dye pot.  The experiment yielded a light, almost metallic purple.  I was hoping for a more intense color, so next time I want to try heating to coax out more dye and get a better transfer. I suppose that this week I’m … making fronds and influencing purple. 

On the home front it is wonderful to have Tommie home for a month.  He’s a doing his winter term from Oberlin here at IU working with Carl Bauer.  It warms my heart to know that he is wrangling Eppendorf tubes and popping tips.  It also means that we need to cook twice as much of everything and wash a mountain of laundry!  

Even more fun is going to basketball games with him.  This week we had tickets for the four of us for the Illinois game—we even made it on national television!  Finally, sometime long, long ago I finished my cherry birthday pie.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve had a single pie this year.  Jiiiim!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Colorful Fish in a Drab Pond

I love it when a project comes together! I feel like I’m on the home stretch to completing my pond piece.  A couple of weeks (and blogs) ago I made a set of felted rocks of mottled greens and brown that would feel right at home on a river bottom.  I’m very pleased with how they turned out.  This was lily pad week, and the flat lily pad leaves will define the surface of the water, shading the spawning koi.  I dug into one of my bins of green fleece and pulled out several greens that I thought I could blend into a realistic lily pad color.  I got to cranking with my handy drum carder and produced a color I’m very happy with.  

The next step was to bend some used baling wire into lily pad shapes and connected stems for support.  The base of the lily pads lies behind the actual weaving and allow the lily pad to extend forward and above the fish.  That leaves the fish to complete.  Fortunately, Jacob needed a haircut on Friday, which gave me a chance to start needle felting them.  Of course I get strange looks at places like the barbershop, but that’s never stopped me.  The real challenge is to take a stationary, felted fish and present it as a living fish under the water.  

I want the art piece to capture a snapshot of the movement of the fish, so I’m building curves into the bodies that I’ll build on as the fish come together.  I anticipate using bright orange, black and white colors to make two fish that really stand out against he somewhat drab colors of the underwater scene. 

This week I launched into some of my Christmas shopping, and I found myself scouring Big Lots for some silly gifts.  I noticed they had a big bottle of turmeric for 99 cents!  Don’t they know how valuable that is for dyeing?  

Of course I bought a jar, but I didn’t anticipate using it this week.  I’m also working on a weaving that will feature Mexican sunflowers, and I calculated that I need around 100 petals for my composition.  That will be a tedious task, but it also means I need to create the green pedicels that display the leaves.  I pulled out my box of felted balls for the starting substrate, but I only had teal balls in hand.  Rather than creating a bunch more I tried overdyeing with turmeric.  A quick online search gave me the skeleton for a procedure.  

I created a paste with two tablespoons of turmeric, to which I added a half cup of vinegar and two quarts of water in a dye pot and set it to boil.  I popped in my wetted teal felt balls, and within five minutes they were a beautiful green!  It was so successful I went straight to my store of teal yarn skeins and used the yellow dye in the turmeric to convert them to a very attractive and useful green.  Let’s just say that in the end I used up the entire jar of turmeric and have five skeins of cotton and wool yarns. 

This time of year is also when I start to hear about the applications I made for art fairs.  My first show will be the Ridgeland Art Fair in Mississippi in early April.  I’m excited to trek down there and be able to stay with family.  

I have also finalized a trip to the Garage Sale Art Fair in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Saturday February 24^th.  It will be a fun girls adventure because I’m going with Dawn Adams.  If you’re going to be near either of those places, mark your calendars—I’d love to see you!  I’ll update my blog and website as the rest of my art fair applications are juried. 

This week was a big milestone as my sweetie-pie turned sixty.  He didn’t want a big to-do, so we just had a crackers and cheese dinner in front of the fire with a nice bottle of wine (thanks Steve and Linda Scott!).  

Yes, there was pie—thank you Gwen Witten for her famous derby pie, which was just delightful.  It goes well with wine.  Who knew?  And thank you Cindy Creek, for asking Jim when there would be another fruit pie.  That’s exactly what I was wondering!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin