Santa makes her deliveries!

My art season ran long last week as I finished up all the scarf commissions I had accumulated from late season art shows. I made quite a few red and purple scarves with black ruffled edges, depleting the southern Indiana stocks of merino in those colors in the process. I felt like the UPS delivery person at Christmas, calling up patrons and arranging for drop-offs. This picture may look like me rollerskating with my family, but I’m sure I was just out on a scarf delivery mission. One person was so delighted when she saw the scarf that it ceased to be a Christmas present for her granddaughter. Another friend picked out a scarf and sent her husband to buy it for her as a Christmas present. He said he’d grown tired of getting a blank look when his wife opened his presents, and he knew this was going to be a success.

I made some giant strides forward on my huge commission piece. It’s a five by 2-and-a-half foot weaving, so this week I hand-made a five by three foot loom. I was just about to hammer in all the nails needed to warp the piece, but then I heard the voice of my sweet husband in my ear: “Drill pilot holes! You’ll be happier if you do!” So I did! All the nails went in nice and straight, just like a row of carrots coming up. With a nail every quarter of an inch, well, you do the math—that’s a lot of holes and nails. But I was glad I did it. And I’m not just saying that so he’ll make me coffee and pie! I then warped the loom and it’s ready to receive the weft. After a quick trip out to Sheep Street to pick up all the dirt brown yarns I could find I feel ready to launch on the weaving. I also picked up all the merino roving I could for scarves next year (be prepared, I say). Oh, and I found some really amazing spun silk, which is the waste from weaving Saris. I’ve seen various examples in different yarn shops, but this was so stunning I couldn’t possibly leave it. I ended up buying a couple of skeins. This too will go into scarves next season.

With the holiday season comes family, and that’s a good thing. The first visit started earlier than I would have chosen, when my thoughtful Czech cousin arranged for a 5 a.m. flight to bring her son into Indianapolis. He’s learning English in Los Angeles, and he’ll spend a couple of weeks with us. I consider this his ‘polishing’ phase, where he learns real Midwestern axioms and pronunciation. Actually, I was really delighted to pick up Vojta and bring him home, even if I had to get up at 3:30 a.m. On the bright side, when I got home there was warm blueberry pie and a batch of homemade Kluski ready for dinner that night. And an espresso! The boys were delighted to meet Vojta and show him around the house. The next day he pushed them around in the shopping cart at the grocery store. They had so much fun I couldn’t tell who was the bigger kid. And...if that wasn't enough, my rusty Czech is getting a welcome workout.

The rest of the news is all about getting ready for the holidays. I’m making marzipan for my holiday Stollen. I’m taking over a tradition from Jim’s grandmother, who bought Stollen from the local grocery store for Christmas morning breakfast. I thought that was just the place to buy into a family institution, but of course I had to make my own. Mine is full of dried currants, dried cherries, dried cranberries, slivered almonds, rum, butter, lots of sugar, and it’s all baked into a yeast-risen dough and covered with buttery icing. Yum! More preparations are underway to prepare the house for Grandma and Aunt Lois’ arrival on Wednesday. I’m converting the art studio into a bedroom for Lois, and I’ve got to turn the jungle room into an extra guest bedroom. A full house at the holidays is a very good thing, though. This is especially true if there are good things to eat and lots of laughter. I’ll do my part!

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

There’s not much I can’t fix in my dye pot…

Except maybe the snow from this week, at least not until I get a bigger pot. The two snowstorms we had translated into two and a half school days off, with shrieking kids and pizza lunches taking up much of my days. Still, I managed to get a whole lot of art done. The big news from Andrea at Wonderlab is that the giant butterfly is officially finished. I don’t know where they got the extra wine corks, or when they painted them, but Andrea seemed quite happy. I can’t wait to stop by next week to see it! I guess I can arrange a ceremonious return of the corks back to the recycle center. I also took some steps ahead on my ‘Transplanted’ piece, weaving the dirt and the sky and stretching it out in the frame. I think the dirt ball is lovely, as only a gardener would, as is the hole in the earth. I still need to add the overgrown roots and the plant and flower, but the parts of the piece that I wasn’t sure about have come together nicely. If only I could remember where I left the trowel!

Last week I also launched a few other new projects. Beginnings are fun, because you never know how each project will turn out. And there is no Island of Misfit Toys in my world—anything that doesn’t work just goes back in the collection for the next piece. I began my next volunteer project, which is a mobile for the Edible Lotus event that will hang over one of the Edible Lotus tables. I intend to make a barren tree in the fog using my latest favorite material, depleted dryer sheets. That means I’m still collecting if you have any extras. When my husband wanted to know how that was going to look, I just gave him my most mysterious look and told him: “Be surprised”. He had just made me a nice dinner with pan-seared tuna and a spinach salad, so maybe I should have been a little more forthcoming, but I was enjoying the moment.

After a few days of snow, the week turned bright and sunny. We’re back into the deep freeze, but at least it’s going to warm up during the daytime and the days are getting longer. On Thursday it was clearly a day to dye yarn (don’t ask me how I know these things). I got out my very old Nilus leClerc metal swift, appropriately made in Quebec. It’s still totally functional, built from iron and as solid as the Banque du Canada, but it’s also a great antique. It came up for auction at the Spinners and Weaver’s guild annual event and I got into a bidding war over it. It was worth every penny I spent and it’s a treasure in my art studio. Anyway, I pulled out the yarns that King Moonracer couldn’t find a home for (the winged lion that rules the island of misfit toys).

I had some pale mossy greens that weren’t working for me, plus some grey-blues, sandy browns and multicolored greens that had a lot of grey in them that I didn’t appreciate. So out came my green and yellow dyes and now, 13 skeins later, I have a new collection of vibrant greens for my spring green projects. This includes a mint green project that must have been inspired by the crisp air (or maybe it’s just Girl Scout cookie time and the Thin Mints are here). I made the minty green background gradient for a piece that will feature salamanders, skinks and lizards, each featuring those unnaturally vibrant colors and beautiful patterns that tell predators: ‘try having me for lunch and you’ll be very sorry, buddy.’ I know because that’s how I dress sometimes. That also means that if you see me around town this week, at a meeting or waiting for my kids at their Tae Kwon Do class, you’ll probably see me poking away at some amphibians. Don’t be alarmed—no amphibians will be harmed, and it keeps me from starting still more new projects.

Until next week...



Martina Celerin

Thoughts of warmer weather…

We’re back in the icebox in southern Indiana after a nice warm-up last week. While my frozen toes understand reality, my mind is off in warmer places. I finished my seashell piece, but with a twist that took even me by surprise. I had very carefully laid out a pattern for the large shells, designed to create clear movement as you visually took in the piece. Then my inner child quickly surveyed the piece and clearly demanded: MORE SHELLS! I watched as she grabbed a handful from my ‘shells with holes’ bag and proceeded to dump them on the piece. I gave her a healthy snack to settle her down a little, and while she was eating I arranged the shells a little. I loved the idea of having a little chaos in the front, and yet if you look carefully you can still see the underlying pattern and flow. Now there’s a metaphor for my life with kids! Or maybe the feel of the piece just captures that little depression in the beach you find where all the shells collect at low tide. There’s usually a cute little beat-up seastar that didn’t handle the surf well. That’s the metaphor for my husband.

A lot of other new or commissioned art is also coming together in my studio, and some of it will unexpectedly be on display around town this month. I got word from Jean Kautt at Bloomingfoods (she organizes the Blooming Arts Series) that the February artist had a family emergency and couldn’t hang a show. I have a few new birch pieces (birches, beaches—I’ve got to branch out), plus a few ‘previously shown’ pieces that I’ll hang at both Bloomingfoods locations. The show will be called “Thoughts of Warmer Weather: Water and Sunshine”. The east side store will feature ‘Water’ and the west side will be ‘Sunshine’ in case you’re wondering. I won’t show my new ‘Home Grown Tomatoes’ commission piece, but after adding the last little cluster of tomatoes it looks warm, happy and yummy. This weekend I’ll complete the attaching and call it done. I’ll also be at Wonderlab this Friday as part of their “The Science of Color Series”, doing a kid- and adult-friendly community art project. We’re going to build a large Eastern Tiger Swallowtail mosaic out of wine corks that volunteers have been painting for the project. Stop on by and share in the fun!

Finishing pieces also means new beginnings, and at the moment I’m struggling to decide which piece to launch into next. I have several ideas swirling around in my head, and basically I’ll just wait to see what the weather is like Monday to decide which color palate I need to work with. The first piece will present a chameleon, sitting on a fernlike compound leaf. The second will feature a sand crab on a beach pocked with crab holes. Keeping the sand out of their living room carpets must be quite a task—I’m sure there’s a great market for rugged sand crab vacuum cleaners. The third piece hits a little closer to home, to be called something like ‘The Transplant’. It will show a section of earth with a freshly dug hole, ready to receive a geranium with a severely overgrown root ball. If you’ve ever bought a flower that’s spent a little too much time at the greenhouse with abundant light and fertilizer you know what I mean. It’s going to be a little painful (for everyone involved) to break up the root ball and get started in a new environment, but you know it’s both necessary and the right thing to do. I think about my own transplantations that way, whether it was my move from Ontario to Bloomington, or whether it was my move from world of science into the art community. I owe a lot to the gardeners along the way, and I know that with a little light, water and fertile ground, anyone can blossom!

Until next week…

A very busy week…

Hooray, a Saturday at home! The last two weekends have been taken over by shows, first in Columbus and last week in Bloomington. This week was devoted to getting the rest of my life back under control. Monday I zipped all over town on errands, went to a BEAD meeting, bought some red velvet muffins from the Bakehouse for the boys and ferried them between school and their clay class at the John Waldron Arts Center. I also stopped in at the Bloomington Bagel Company and thought, hmmm, wouldn’t it look nice to have some of my new scarves hanging on the wall! They are great about hanging the work of local artist so I thought I’d ask. I spoke with Dawn, who’s in charge of the art displays, and she set me up with an immediate show at the Eastside location in The Shoppes on College Mall Road. I hung fifteen scarves on a clothesline, secured by wooden clothes pegs—stop in and check them out if you can. If that goes well I’ll be showing downtown soon as well.

Tuesday brought the celebratory dinner for the Fourth Street Art Fair committee. This year it was a potluck and it was organized by Robin Halpin. It was great to sit around and bask in the glow of another successful show. My personal basking took the form of chatting with my friends while sipping a nice Shiraz that David Goodrum brought. I really enjoyed the kale dish that Dawn Adams made with sesame and ginger, and Robin’s brownies from the original Joy of Cooking were a real treat with the wine. My boys really liked the testing the individual recipes on the dessert table. My husband (as usual) ate all the treats they selected but decided were unworthy of their young palates.

On Wednesday my crew went with other parents from Binford to the IU women’s college basketball game. IU edged out the Cincinnati Bearcats in a close game, three boxes of M&M’s were consumed, the boys got on the court as part of the festivities, and much screaming occurred.

By late in the week I was back in scarf-making mode. I stopped in at Yarns Unlimited and picked up some beautiful cranberry merino roving, as well as two really wonderful rich blues that will work wonderfully in scarves. I went to Opportunity House and I picked up a big bag of novelty yarns that will make their way into scarves. Even now I still have a bunch of ideas for scarf layout, colors and materials dancing around in my head. That’s good, because the Unitarian Universalist Art Fair and Bazaar is coming up on December 4^th and 5^th. The art is great, but even if you just want to buy Christmas cookies by the pound it’s worth coming. As for the scarves, I’m still having a blast making them because they allow me to develop techniques that will eventually be incorporated into weavings. On a similar but sadder note, I’ve given up making ornaments. I feel like I’ve taken that craft as far as I can, and I learned a lot about patterns and color combinations that translate into scarf making strategies. If you had your eye on an ornament, the “UU” show might be one of the last opportunities to find one.

Anyway, I hope you had half as much fun as I did this week. I have a great job! Thank you so much for all the support over the year, and I wish you all a quiet Thanksgiving break with family, friends and good food.

And a pre-PS: Here’s a shout out to the person who wanted me to make the white scarf with red dots and black squiggles—I’m really sorry, but I’ve lost your contact information! If you read this, or you know who this was, please help me close the circle.

Until next week…

The November Whirlwind

The last two weeks have been an amazing blur of shows, scarves and weaving. I had dropped into one of those wonderful life patterns where I was discovering and developing my own wet felting style by making scarves. It’s really an exploration of a new technique for me that I’ll use in future weaving projects. ‘Creating my own canvas’ has always been a major feature of my work, and I feel like I’m enhancing my repertoire of skills that will make their way into my dimensional weavings. Bluebell (the family car) was packed with 19 new scarves, twelve new wreaths for the season, and all the new ornaments I made over the year. I made the early morning trek over to Columbus Indiana last Saturday to show everything at the Déjà vu recycled art fair. It’s always a little stressful when you put your heart and soul into some technique, then put it on display for everyone to see. Fortunately, I came home with a lighter load and a warm feeling inside. I can do this!

Success, of course, breeds new problems. I didn’t have enough scarves to show at the Spinner’s and Weaver’s guild show this weekend. So I re-converted the dining room table to Scarf Central and geared up to make some more. I had one scarf that was a whole bunch of ribbons and strings and just enough just enough felted wool to hold it all together. It reminded me of my youthful days in a bikini, but that’s another story. It was a glorious week because I got to sift through my thirty or so 20-gallon plastic tubs of yarns and pull out the most delightful colors and textures to incorporate into the scarves. I also had to scamper over to Sheep Street in Morgantown to pick up several more pounds of merino. Of course I couldn’t resist picking up a bunch of new yarns to use, including some delicious jewel tones that I knew I wanted to work with. I especially worked on layering different colors of roving to achieve the depth and color gradients I wanted. The only downside is that my shoulder and arm muscles haven’t quite forgiven me for all the rolling I did to felt the materials.

I did launch into another project on a whim recently. I had collected a bunch of wool sweaters, including some in delightful greens that I knew weren’t going to fit into the color schemes I was using in the scarves. I decided to cut them up to make Christmassy fir trees. Of course it isn’t a tree until it is trimmed, so I used the tiny red felted balls that I had created using the new secret technique I learned. I trimmed them with gold rickrack and set the whole thing on beige fabrics with different textures. I glued them on to a pretty mottled beige card stock and inserted into each a piece of white cotton rag with the texture of vellum. I think they’re fun and perfect for the holidays—check them out at the Wandering Turtle gallery in Bloomington, or stop in and see them at the Unitarian Universalist show this December.

Finally, I put away my scarf-making materials and reclaimed my basement art studio. I picked up all the yellow yarns I had out for making my Autumn Aspens commission piece. I also had to clear away the remnants of my boys’ giant art project. I can’t really describe it except to say that it involves small pieces of electronics, popsicle sticks, fabric scraps and a glue gun. I’m so proud of my creative boys! Anyway, I herded their project into a corner and blocked it off visually with a tower of easels and tools. Out came the vacuum cleaner and once again I had a functional workspace. It’s really great to be back in my weaving space, and this week I’ll finish the autumn aspens piece. After I get some sleep. I’m still recovering from two shows in two weeks. Tonight I sleep; tomorrow I weave!

Until next week…

Cool mornings and hot cooking!

Can you feel the seasons change? There’s something about the cool, dry mornings, the last flowers in the garden and the first bright red leaves in the trees that gives it away. The calendar gives it away too: I wrapped up my final summer art show last week at Penrods. I dried out all my outdoor booth materials in the living room and carefully packed them away until the Broadripple show in the spring. The boys and I picked up the last CSA vegetables this Wednesday too. We’ll miss seeing Amy, Andy, Grace and Willa at Musgrave Orchards every week.

Every ending has a new beginning, and it’s time to get ready for the upcoming holiday art fairs. For me, that means the Holiday Market at the Shower’s building, the Fiber Arts show, the recycled art show (Déjà vu, in Columbus, IN) and the Unitarian Universalist art fair (Holiday Art Fair and Bazaar, with the great cookies!). I was wondering what I could make that was new for me to sell at those shows when my eyes fell on my giant pile of waste yarn. I decided to launch into a project I’ve been thinking about for a while, but one that I have resisted to keep focused on finishing weaving for the summer shows. Have I said I liked finding uses for everything? But what could I do with leftover yarn scraps of all colors? You guessed it—holiday wreaths! So with great enthusiasm I went through my sewing basket of thread and pulled out my spools of green, red and white. I used the thread to wrap yarn balls. This is a technique I picked up from Sue Westhues last year. She saw my ornaments from a distance and thought they looked like Temari balls. I had never heard of them so I started looking in books and on the web. It turns out that Temari describes an ancient Japanese craft of wrapping remnants with fine thread, then stitching onto the product. How perfect: pretty thread, meet yarn remnants! I even found a use for the leftover quilt batting Aunt Lois saves for me. She belongs to a quilting bee in Michigan and the batting scraps they generate would otherwise end up in the trash. I make her save them for me, and it gives me a connection to my slightly quirky aunt.

So now I have a bunch of Temari balls in search of a home. Hmmm. I built a wire frame and covered it with remnant cotton cording to make the backbone of a wreath. Then I wrapped the frame with strips of remnant commercial felt. I decided I need 106 Temari balls for each large wreath—wow, that’s a lot! Life would be easier if I wasn’t so good at math. So I made the first 106 and attached them to the frame. I hung it on the front door to get an idea about how it would look, and to me it looks just delightful. The eSoA (elder son of artist) thinks he’d like one in autumn colors—that’s my boy! So soon I’ll pull out the orange, yellow and plum threads from my collection for the fall color wreath.

The new fall wreaths are fun, but of course it’s also time to get back to finishing the projects I’ve put off doing to focus on the summer art fairs. That means putting together an analysis of the Fourth Street Fair from the surveys and writing the final reports. Important, yes; informative, yes; exciting, well, hmmm. I do like statistics! I also have to assemble a grant proposal to the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to help support the Fourth Street next year. Another deadline to meet. Arrrghhh.

So what’s been fun this week? When the world starts to descend on me I launch into cooking mode. The CSA has cleverly and deliberately filled my refrigerator with everything from eggplants to zucchini to cabbages to tomatoes, to, well, you get the idea. I cooked ratatouille, Mexican pepper casserole, Bulgarian pepper pot casserole, Chinese green beans and peanuts, and Garbanzo pepper curry. I’m still planning to make Gujarat baked cabbage, a cool looking Indian dish that I’m hoping will provide a tasty use for the cabbage. I’m also going to make Zucchini Parmesean and caramel pie for the kids. At least they call it caramel pie—I make with my blender and a huge zucchini. Despite the ingredients (not knowing helps) the boys like it and that’s the important thing. I even get help from the HoA, who makes the crust. He seems to like doing that, and me…did I say I like pie?

Until next week…