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

Red and blue with a white stripe

It was a busy week of good things in Bloomington. First, I received the good news that my t-shirt design for the 35^th annual Fourth Street Festival was selected by a close vote of the Fourth Street committee. The image is one of the abstract designs in the series that came from my vacation sketches last May on the Outer Banks. Along with the selection comes some responsibilities, and I have to choose the background color that best suits the design. I’m considering brick, soft yellow or a sky blue. If you like the image, pick up a t-shirt this Labor Day weekend!

Then, my Valentine pie wish came true—a warm cherry pie greeted me when I came back from Zumba on Monday morning. I didn’t even know we had cherries! I’ve had some delightful espresso and pie breakfasts this week. And for Valentine's dinner I baked two heart-shaped pizzas that were demolished in record time.

In the art studio I’ve been on fire. I completed the background for my Ratatouille piece. I posted an image of the piece in progress on Facebook and received a number of comments, including one from my friend Sonia. She thinks it looks rich and red, warm and inviting—and it reminds her of a womb. I even managed to stitch the background onto the second large frame from my personal frame builder and organic egg supplier, Tom Bertolacini. He nailed it again for me and I’m grateful for it. At the same time as I’ve been working on the background I managed to make progress on the foreground. I’ve come up with a way to create the vegetable slices that gives them crisp edges. For a fiber artist, that can be a challenge. I zipped all over town to consignment shops and resale stores picked up all the well-worn wool sweaters I could find. I felted them, then cut and stacked the pieces into multiple layers to make the zucchini and tomato slices and eggplant cubes needed for the design of the piece. I pulled out my long needles and stitched them all together, and I’ll complete them by felting the colors and veggie patterns on the surface. I’m excited because I have the proof-of-concept that my vegetable design will come together for the piece. I’m adding the skin to the first zucchini pieces and I’m pleased with the recycled-sweaters-as-veggie-art concept.

Friday turned out to be the day of six tests for my son Tommie. He and Jacob shared the last one, as they tested for their blue-with-a-white-stripe belts in Taekwondo. It’s the first step on the way to their brown belt, and they’re both doing very well at it. Their friend Jonathan came with us to the test and came out to Bucchetos for pizza with us afterward. That wasn’t the end to the week, though, as Saturday we got up and headed out for a combination bike ride (Tommie) skateboard ride (Jacob) and walk (Jim and I). We spent an hour and a half on the Clear Creek trail seeing the birds and horses along the trail. It was a winner of a trip, as judged by the fact that there were no injuries and Jim remembered to bring a snack for the halfway point.

The conclusion to the week came Saturday evening when we attended the ‘Day of Writing and Art’ at the Lodge downtown. I didn’t really know what it was about, but I was asked to contribute a piece for the show; I chose “Fruit Salad.” A group of local girls were participating in an ArtsWeek program called ‘Women Writing for a Change.’ A group of local artists contributed perhaps 25 art pieces to hang on the wall. As part of a much longer day of activities, a group of girls carefully viewed the pieces and wrote out what the pieces communicated to them. The process is called Ekphrasis, which roughly translates to ‘speak out’, or call an inanimate object by it’s name. We saw a parade of talented girls reading aloud their imagining of what the pieces might mean. The beautiful coda to the event was when the audience members took turns speaking out loud phrases or sentences from the poetry that touched them. It’s just like having a nice dessert after an elegant meal. It’s another reason that Bloomington is so great—I was again exposed to some unexpectedly wonderful art.

And the week finally ended with my sweet husband making a giant bowl of kluski for dinner Saturday night...yum!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

The ice storm cometh.

Did I say something about linking five straight school days together? That’s not what happened this week. The great ice storm of ’11 started on Monday night and locked out school until Friday. Fortunately Jim is from Michigan, and nothing will stop a Michigan boy from accomplishing his mission. The roads were cleared well enough by Tuesday night that we ventured out to see Blue Man Group at the IU Auditorium. I thought that they were great—a cross between Cirque du Soleil and the old Saturday Night Live. You just didn’t know what they were going to do next. I just love drumming and percussion, and they pounded out a blue streak. On the way home, Jacob wished for the power to go out so we could have some family time, and boy did he ever get his wish! The snowstorm of Monday night turned into the ice storm of Tuesday night, and the combination of high winds and iced trees took out the power for thousands in Monroe County. We readied the candles, flashlights and hand-crank radio and went to bed.

We woke to a cold house Wednesday. We did our best to get by with no heat, lights, or internet connection. It was enjoyable to sit in front of the roaring fire that consumed much of a fallen big apple branch from the back yard and listen as the IU basketball team beat the Golden Gophers of Minnesota. Nobody wanted to get into the frigid beds that night, but luckily, later that night the power came back on! We woke to a partially heated house and resumed our routine, albeit without school. They did manage to hold a second day of school for the week on Friday, so I guess they deserve a little credit.

Sandwiched around trying to stay warm (I don’t do cold well) I did manage to get some art done. My most important accomplishment occurred when my patrons for the two large commission pieces came by to approve the second colored sketch—and they did! It will be called ‘Ratatouille’. I launched into the project by re-warping my big loom, this time with a deep red warp. I started creating some of the fleece colors I will need to create the giant tomato, zucchini and onion slices. Luckily, my nude models are all organic, and they come in little piles in the produce section of Bloomingfoods. To create the zucchini skin, I pulled out my deep green and speckly highlighed fleeces and fed my new drum carder. I’m ready to launch into the second big piece. I’m getting a little ahead of myself, though, because I still need to make a giant gardener’s hand to pluck the giant carrot in the first big piece. But it’s all coming together!

In other news, Lee Hadley wrote a delightful piece about my work in the Home and Lifestyles magazine of the Herald Times. I really like his writing style—it’s concise and the verbs really bring the piece to life. He should write more! You can check out the story and the wonderful pictures at the H & L site. The accompanying photos are very flattering, taken by Pete Scheiner, who spent a morning capturing my studio. My son Jacob wanted to have a picture taken in his bedroom with his hamster, Shadow, which Pete graciously did. That turned into our family photo! And everybody looks nice—I really like it. The pictures also show off my new physique, now that I’ve lost 21 pounds—hooray! Thanks Liz and Cera at Bloomzum(ba).

The week culminated in a date this afternoon with my sweetie pie. We went to see the play ‘Kissing Frogs’. It’s a collaborative effort between the Bloomington Playwrights Project and IU Theatre. It was such fun! The staging, music and choreography were creative and professional. We recognized several of the actors from ‘Rent’—they are incredibly talented. The BPP setting allows a much more intimate experience than the traditional, larger venues in town. I’m so glad that Chad is in charge. He’s just doing many fabulous things there, and it’s exciting to witness the rebirth of the Project. Now I’m really excited about doing a commission for them, but it has to wait until I can complete the big commissions in progress. Could we just have school for a whole week? And maybe a pie?

Until next week…

Martina Celerin