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

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

The art world reclaims me.

By some combination of reasonable weather and administrative fortitude, the school system managed to string together five full days of school this week. For me, that’s like waving a red flag in front of my internal artist. I was able to move along all my major projects this week. First, I finished the background weaving for my large format weaving and tied it off from the loom. I stretched it out on the frame that my personal wood craftsman Tom Bertolacini made for me and stitched it to the oak members. It looks perfect! Then I laid out the completed veggies: three beets, four carrots and one of the onions. The veggies still needed rootlets, so I started wrapping onion rootlets in my waiting times. I have a nice wooden bowl full of them, enough to garnish a big salad. The rootlets that I’ve attached to the onions looked very nice, which meant I could spend a little quality making onion leaves. I picked yarns that formed a gradient from pale to rich green and started wrapping some reclaimed macramé yarn. The finished leaves are more like tubes, the kind of thing a chef chops up for a pretty garnish on an elegant dish. I can finally see the light at the end of the row of vegetables. Of course the real challenge has been to keep the garden rabbits from eating them while I slept at night.

Another project whose deadline is approaching involves putting together a dress for the Trashionista show. I started out with a fabulous idea that involved legs from Barbie dolls. I did a lot of Barbie collecting last year. Then I fed my inner demons by ripping off their little legs! Jim found it all a little creepy, but it was all in the name of high fashion. Given all the icky things models really have to do to succeed I didn’t think I was that bad. As the dress came together, though, I decided that it was just going to be too heavy. I quickly switched to the plan I developed for a second dress. I’ve been collecting dryer sheets, one of my signature recycled fabrics, for a year now. I got out the ironing board to smooth them out and prepare them for painting and glitter application. I’d give you more details, but I know Versace is a troll on my blog. I made the mistake of laying them out on the kitchen island as a surface to add some puffy fabric paint. I added my designs, only to discover that the paint takes three days to dry fully. That’s not consistent with having two boys who need regular feeding and a place to dump all their school stuff. The living room carpet is now covered in handcrafted designer fabric tiles. OK, so they’re really just painted dryer sheets. On the bright side, the people who really appreciate fashion have very broad tolerance for new fabrics. Either that or they can’t tell painted dryer sheets from dyed silk squares. By Monday I should have all the materials for one Trashionista dress, some assembly required. While I have my seamstress hat on I’ll probably mend some of Tommie’s pants with torn out knees. Nothing like two boys to keep your life in perspective.

That covers most of the highlights from the week. I did give my ArtsWork presentation to a small but enthusiastic group of artists in transition on Tuesday. I described my own metamorphosis from scientist to artist, which I really enjoyed. Part of the charm is being able to see how much I’ve grown over the past few years. Each new technique or endeavor, whether it’s needle felting animals, creating wet felted scarves, or print cards of my pieces has been a new part of the adventure. I still feel like I’m a newbie in the art world, though. There’s so much to learn!

That means it’s time to get back to chugging along, making more art, and looking forward to springtime. I am so ready for a change in the weather—it’s like I’m still living on Ontario, with the snowiest December and January that most Bloomingtonians can remember. It’s been so cold that Jim and Tommie even went ice fishing yesterday, being so desperate to get out and do something. It was a mild day and nobody fell through the ice, which made the trip a success for me. On the other hand, the best we’ll do for fresh fish tonight is salmon from Kroger.

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Two day school weeks

Help! The boys spent more time at home this week than they did in school. Monday brought the Martin Luther King Jr. day holiday and Tuesday was an in-service day. That brought on the usual parade of breadsticks, pizza and popcorn-snurfing kids over for play dates to fill the hours. That made me a little less productive, but I was able to keep my art projects moving forward. Luckily, in my house MLK day is also a pie holiday. The boys and I bought nine big apples, three each of ambrosia, pink lady and Sonias. I gave Jim my best ‘I need a pie very badly’ look. It worked! I had a nice week of pie and espresso for breakfast after a week of intense 6:30 am Zumba classes (thanks Liz and Cera!).

In art news, my big commission piece took a few steps forward as I worked on weaving the sky. I also started cranking on the carrots and beets during the week, which I can work on just about anywhere. The four carrots are done, and I must say that they look delightful. My completed beets needed leaves, which was an evening job this week. It was very cold several nights, and that meant fires in the fireplace. I sat in front of the flames and embers to keep my fingers warm as I worked. When the fire started to die down I called out ‘krb!’, which translates into fireplace in Czech. That brought a well-trained Jim in the living room to poke at the wood and get the fire stoked up again so I could focus. To make the leaf veins for each leaf I use somewhere between six and twelve cut remnant copper wires. Beet leaf veins require a lovely deep purple yarn, which I was lucky enough to have through a typically unusual twist of fate. When the boys were very small I ordered a few toys from an educational catalog. It also offered remnant yarn lots for sale and I bought a bunch. One of the first yarns I received was, I thought, a really awful color that I would never be able to use. Of course I didn’t know I’d have beet veins in my future. I wrapped my copper wires to create the veins, attached them to last week’s leaves and connected the leaves to the beets. Another vegetable done! Next it’s on to the onions.

Another big milestone this week for the giant veggie piece was receiving the frame. My friend and woodworker Tom Bertolacini made and delivered one of the oak frames and it looks great! My greatest concern was that it needed to be sturdy enough to support the large weaving. I’ve had problems in the past with frame-members bowing under the strain of the horizontal pieces. But Tom’s frame is made of thick oak with three central support bars. I have great confidence that it’s going to support the piece with ease.

The boys did manage to get back to school on Wednesday, even though a big storm was looming on the Wundermap. That gave me some time to have a delightful chat with my aunt and uncle, Maruska and Martin, in Pisek (in the Czech Republic). I haven’t spoken with Martin in over three years, and then the hour-long call cost me a lot of money. This time we talked using Skype and I took advantage of the internet. It’s great to be able to see each other as you speak and really connect with them. After this talk, and my Skype conversations with my aunt and uncle Mila and Pepik, and my cousins Renata and Milan in Prague over the holidays, I really have a warm and fuzzy feeling to be part of my bigger Czech family.

On Thursday the big snow hit. Of course school was called off and the boys were excited to have yet another day at home. Friday was back to school, and Saturday meant getting back into our routine with Taekwondo in the morning, a play date in the afternoon, and kluski for dinner. And next week my life gets even busier. Monday are more arts organization meetings, Tuesday at 5:30pm I’ll give a presentation at City Hall in the ArtsWorks series entitled, “Transitioning into an Art Career” and the big story about me in the Home and Lifestyles magazine should appear at the end of this week. And there are still giant onions to create!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Warm from the dryer…

This has been a good arts week. My inner fashion designer was validated when I got a nice e-mail from the Trashionista show coordinators. Not only was I juried into the show, they asked if I could make a second piece! Of course I couldn’t pass up a challenge like that, so off I went trying to design another ball gown. I was channeling river themes when I started, and the piece ended up blue, silver and black. I started off by repurposing an old blue sundress—the high-waisted variety that was popular back in the eighties. Then I trimmed out a bit of material from a pair of pants that was part of an old Halloween costume. It has a smooth, crushed velvet texture that’s now the waistband. You can’t live in the eighties, I say. I needed some decoration for the waistband, so I went to my collection of silver things and found a bag full of handles from fancy paper shopping bags. I had a vision that involved the bottles of glue left over from last year’s Children’s Booth project at the Fourth Street Festival where they glued all sort of found materials onto large panels in the colors of the BEAD logo. I added water to several of the glue bottles, dunked the bag handles into the diluted glue, then laid them out as a swirly pattern on wax paper to dry. The handles became the little swirly whirlpools on the waistband. Of course I had to maintain a little continuity with the first piece, so I zipped over to Opportunity House and snagged a nice black bathing suit for the top. It also secretly fits into the water theme, although the casual admirer might not notice it. As I was in the process of dress design I stopped in at Yarns Unlimited (celebrating 30 years in business) to see their beaded handbag display and ran into Suzanne Halvorson, which is always a pleasure. I was amazed at the intricate work, and one thing that caught my eye was the dangling triangles on the beaded handbags. I decided that’s what I needed to add some width and flounce to the gown. I achieved this on the dress by cutting slits into the bottom two thirds of the sundress and sewed in triangles of shiny black raincoat material. To top it all off I pulled out some leftover black spray paint. How often do you hear the top fashion designers say that—look for the technique to be big in the spring shows! I realized I could stencil nicely on the blue material, so I introduced a few black swirly patterns to give it a more industrial feel. I can’t make a ball gown with out a dryer sheet shawl, but this time I went with silver and black. The good news is that it looks great, but the bad news is that I ran out of dryer sheets. I’m going to need more for the ‘Edible Lotus’ project that I volunteered to participate in, so I’m on the lookout for more used dryer sheets. Yes, I blend the real and the surreal in ways unimagined by the greats of the renaissance.

While my dressmaking project has taken up a lot of my time, I haven’t lost track of my tomato project. I’ve been poking tomatoes and I’m up to sixty-five, three short my goal for ‘Homegrown Tomatoes’. I’ll need to make a few more stems and hopefully I can begin pulling that piece together this week. To celebrate I bought a single red tomato from Bloomingfoods, which I’ll enjoy on a veggie burger sometime soon. Nobody else in the family likes raw tomatoes, so this one is all mine!

Until next week…

Tomatoes in the snow…

This year Santa Claus brought the boys boogie boards for sledding on the snow. Ever since we’ve been waiting for snow, and not altogether patiently. Finally the snow started falling on Wednesday night, and the few inches we got shut down the schools for two days. The kids loved it, but somewhere in my Canadian hometown they’re laughing at us. We have since made several trips to Bryan Park to challenge the local hill. To get a picture of the fearsome slope, it’s about where the eastern most edge of the Rockies meets the western most edge of the Appalachians. With the steep gradient, and someone to launch you down the hill (thanks Bret!), you can get up a little speed. Somebody must have torn down the little posts with the black diamonds on them, and I think the rescue helicopter teams must have had the day off.

After a couple hours on the slopes, every good sledder needs hot cocoa. But a punishing day on the slopes also means cheese pizza—not all the shredding happens on the slopes. I discovered that I needed to replenish my pizza sauce supply, given the hungry hordes that were swarming the house, so I pulled the last of my frozen CSA tomatoes out of the freezer. They look a little sad, but they make great sauce, and now I’m ready to create all my tomato-based dishes for the rest of the winter. The shriveled little bodies are both the reminder of the riches of last summer and the promise of warmer days ahead.

Tomatoes have been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve steadily been producing needle-felted tomatoes for the commission piece I’m working on. The surface is going to be a collage of all the different tomatoes you might see at a late-summer Farmer’s Market. They don’t freeze well, so I keep them in a bowl to ripen up that last little bit as I make more. I’ve been using all of my tomato-coloured fleece to support the different varieties and shapes, so I’ve got everything from reds to yellows to greens. Then I delved into my tomato-coloured yarns. I even have some old red shoelaces of just the right shade that will end up somewhere in the piece. And so I’ve been joyously weaving a background for the piece this week. If you listen carefully you can almost hear the angelic choir in the background as I think about weaving after months of shows and scarves and ornaments. Have I said lately that I love to weave? Anyway, the background has kind of a smushed-tomato-on-top-of-the-stock pot look, bringing together all the colors of the surface tomatoes. You don’t really see it clearly in the piece, but where the surface tomatoes don’t quite come together you can see it peeking through. People used to say that you can’t see the forest for the trees—we’re going to start saying that you can’t see the weaving for the tomatoes.

This has also been a week of hanging shows, so if you’re out and about Bloomington this week, keep your eyes open. I hung a show with five other artists the John Waldron this week. They’re all fiber artists who clearly love color. They make the show bright and happy, and it’s worth the trip downtown. The opening reception was Friday night, and while the weather limited attendance, the people who came were lively and happy. I also hung my ‘Warm and Cosy: Scarf Art’ show at the Bloomington Bagel Company shop on Dunn Street. Surprisingly, my spell-checker still can’t get it through it’s head that Cosy isn’t spelled with a ‘z’. It’s just too much of an American sacrifice to change it after I’ve given up all the ‘u’s in my favourite words. You can see more scarves at Wonderlab museum if you stop in there. I ran into Andrea from Wonderlab at the John Waldron reception, and now I’m eager to see the display she put together at the museum. Andrea says they used magnets, foam and cord to hang the scarves, and somehow an air vent is breathing some life into them. Hmmm, maybe it’s time to incorporate movement into my pieces! I do love a challenge.

Until next week…