Frogs, pockets and soup...

My big project of the week was to finish the home for my red-eyed tree frog. I thought I had finished all the fern leaflets I could possibly want. I made a huge pile and started attaching them on to the veins to create fern fronds for him to hide in. Unfortunately, when the more I attached the smaller the pile got, and soon I was left with one unfinished vein. Back to the art studio I went, cut up eighty more leaflets out of brass flashing and started to wrap them. Happily, I had plenty of the yarn stock that I dyed for the project. It would have been a nightmare to have to try to match the colors. I love the colors I get when I dye, but it isn’t an exact art and I just don’t think I could re-create the same colors. I attached all the completed fern fronds to my woven green background and all is good in my world. Now I’m working on completing the frog. This is a fun needle-felting project with a lot of detail work, but there are some limitations. For example, I do a lot of work at the Monroe County Martial Arts school and at art-related meetings I attend. I’m just now putting in the eyes of the frog, but I’ve learned that most people are a little freaked out by the repetitive poking with the needle around the eyes. In my mind it makes no difference which part of the animal I’m working on, whether it’s the skin, eye or tail, but I can see why that might be a little hard to watch. So I slip down into my art studio when the kids are in school for those parts. I wear black leather and put on creepy music to set the mood, too. Not really! I’m just kidding!

In addition to the usual constraints on my time this week, a new project fell into my lap. The schools are having a fundraiser that I think is just fabulous. Instead of getting friends and relatives (and parents) to buy stuff they probably don’t need to send some proceeds back the school, last year they started running a read-a-thon. You pledge money for pages read, and the kids go to town reading whatever chapter books interest them. The competitive aspect gets a lot of people reading more, which is great. To kick off the events, though, they have a style show where kids dress up as their favorite literature character. Jacob decided he wanted to participate as a Yu-Gi-Oh duelist (sounds like a Japanese alcohol-free beer). That meant he needed a slick white jacket with pockets for one hundred dueling decks on the inside. Kind of like the shirts where illicit street vendors open up their coats and try to sell you knock-off watches. I leapt into action and repurposed one of Jim’s old dress shirts (I hope he’s not reading this!). The pockets had to hold the decks, so I did some fancy darting to create 12 pockets for decks. He filled them up, put it on and added his duelist arm gear and voila! He was ready to go. The best news is that I persuaded him that it would also be a great Halloween costume. That’s like feeding two birds with one loaf of bread.

My last bit of news comes from the dyeing world. I pulled out the last bag of frozen plant material from my summer trip to Michigan. I collected a bunch of purple loosestrife that I had high hopes for. It’s a beautiful flower, but it’s an invasive weed that chokes out native wetland plants. I chopped it up and boiled it like a weed I didn’t much care for, but not much purple came of it. Off to the compost pile it went. On the other hand, it did inspire me to get out my stockpots for soup. I recently stopped by the By Hand gallery and was chatting with Joan, and she offered me the last of this season’s kale from the garden. Luckily, kale is the secret ingredient in “Lois soup”, which comes from Lois Graham, the boys’ fairy godmother in Michigan. Of course to her it’s “Sarah’s soup”. I use chopped up veggie sausages instead of real sausages, but it’s full of kale, beans and spices. A soup by any other name…

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Bloomington in the Hot Summer

Summer in my town means many things. This week it means art camp for the boys at the John Waldron Arts Center. The place has been taken over by Ivy Tech, and the place is a beehive of artistic creation each weekday morning. There’s kind of a school year feel to the mornings at home—everybody has to get up, dressed, fed and have a snack basket put together. At the camp, the boys have had both teachers before. Both are well liked, so it’s a good experience all-around. Tommie started off making a bowl that expanded into a serving platter, so in a proud-mom-sort-of-way I’m looking forward to having another addition to our collection. On the down side, the morning weather approached steamy last week, with morning ‘lows’ in the eighties. But that doesn’t deter an artist! Down in my basement art studio it’s cool and comfortable, and I got three glorious hours to myself each morning to focus all my energies on weaving.

Did I say weaving? I’ve thrown every spare moment at making new art pieces. I started weaving a piece that was commissioned at the Columbus Arts Festival. A woman there liked my chameleon piece, but she preferred the red-eyed tree frog among fern fronds that I made and sold last year. I got to bring the chameleon home, although he found a new home in Madison... To make the fern leaflets, I got out my brass flashing and started cutting. I snipped out more than I’d care to count, but they sound nice and jingly when you pour them into a pile. I think the leaflets even look quite cute before they’re covered and assembled into ferns. They seemed a little naked, though, in comparison to the lush jungle setting of our backyard—it’s been so hot and wet that everything is overgrown. To cool off a little and reconnect with my Canadian roots, I also finished a piece I’ve been working on called, at least for now, “Four Birches by the Lake.” I think the heat wave has gotten me yearning for a cool northern lake to sit by. I really like the depth and sparkliness of the water that I was able to achieve. As for the name, we have a running family story, where when I finish a piece I often ask my family to help me name it. For example, when I made a piece with a single tree next and a lake, a very young Tommie wanted to call it “Lake by the Tree .” He’s a literalist when it comes to naming art, and the trend has continued.

The weekend routine has been a little disjointed, with Jim and Tommie going on a road trip to Lake Erie to do some fishing. Jacob and I spent some quality time together, and he even made me breakfast one day! He’s such a good fellow. We went to the Farmer’s market to supplement the container of blackberries that we got from the CSA. They’re juicy and tasty, and the berries would be WONDERFUL in a pie. Are you rested up yet, sweetie? We’ll see. While they were gone, Jacob also discovered a new art form called ‘Pixos!’ They’re tiny balls you arrange in a pattern and then mist with water. The surface liquefies and the pieces fuse with their neighbors. Given a little time, the pieces do harden and can’t be manipulated. Or perhaps more accurately, they don’t fall apart when you try to play with them too soon. This ‘waiting’ element in the process is a key factor that Jacob has slowly come to accept, although grudgingly. The pieces seem like they’ll make nice Christmas gifts and tree ornaments…watch out Grandma! The fishermen came home late last night, so completeness was restored and perch dinners are in our near future. Hmmm, I wonder how perch goes with blackberry pie?

Until next week…

Martina Celerin