May showers bring rhubarb pie for Mother’s Day

The cool May weather has kept me inside most of the time.  Still, I’ve been having such a great time working on my ants.  I borrowed a giant book about ants from Mike Hogan (thanks Mike!) and I spent most of Mother’s Day sitting on the comfy sofa, examining the fine structural details of big-headed ants.  It is important to me to understand how an organism works to begin to understand which features are most relevant and must be included in the sculpture.  After my session with the book I started working on the major worker ant.  I began needle felting the body, adding lobes and structure, cutting away and molding surfaces that aren’t just right, and honing in on the body I want.  I’m working from 2D images to create a 3D structure, so sometimes it's a struggle to wrap my head around how to synthesize the 3D image from the flat picture.  The next phase is to attach the arms and antennae.  I made the anterior limbs, but the second and third pairs were just too big.  Instead of trying to fix those, I just started over on those features.  The good news is that the large legs I made will be “just right” for the larger supermajor caste that is next on my art agenda.  I still need to create the all the facial features too, but I feel really good about my progress.  If I have any concern, it’s that the number of images available for the supermajor and queen big-headed ant are limited.  I also borrowed the genus resource book from the IU library—I hope that’s enough.  E.O. Wilson, I need you!

I have two other big commissions in the background.  One is on hold as I wait for fabric swatches to arrive to personalize the piece.  But I’m enjoying the wait - I  like sitting next to the piece in the art studio and having it keep me company.  As I work, I get to glance up at the path trailing off into the distance.  Sometimes it’s really good to just let a piece sit and ferment for a while before launching into it again with renewed enthusiasm.   

My other project is a large format commission of fall aspen grove.  I spent much of this week in the studio wrapping aspen tree trunks appropriate for the foreground, background and middle distances.  There is a size and tint gradient for the trunks as they recede into the distance that I try to capture in my tree pieces - that takes special care.  As I got deeper into the canopy construction, I realized that I probably won’t have enough of my hand dyed mohair boucle.  That means the dye pots will come out in the next few weeks.   

On the bright side, I did find some perfect yarn at the event when the Monroe County Civic Theater cleared out two of their storage lockers to downsize their years of collected props and raw materials.  Thanks MCCT!  I had fun sifting through your treasures!!

On the family front, we’ve been having delightful family dinners on the newly cleaned-up veranda, even when it was raining.  I did get the traditional rhubarb pie for Mother’s day last Sunday.  

 This year it was mostly rhubarb with a few strawberries mixed in.  The crust (and pie) was unusually good this year!  Should I hope for another while rhubarb season is still here?  Hmmm. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

The Open Studios Tour!

The focus of the entire week was getting ready for the Open Studios Tour.  This is the first year for the event and I wanted everything to go well.  Jim and I spent a good chunk of time on the garden, which meant weeding and mulching along the pathway to the front door.  We had lots of nice perennials in bloom, including lilies, bear’s breeches, penstemon, foxglove and astilbe.  We even slipped in some annuals this year for a little more color, which was a nice touch.  Jim has been out watering and applying spray to keep the deer away, at least until after the show.  I love it when a plan comes together! 

  

Of course when you invite all of Southern Indiana into your house you have to do a little cleaning.  Upon a close inspection, I saw the years of handprints the boys invested on the walls.  That took a good morning of scrubbing alone.  I moved the table and our big plants from the dining room into the living room to create space for art.  I set up my display walls all around the room and hung up all the weavings I had and a good number of my Discardia Re-shirts. 

 When a visitor came to the doorway, my son Tommie greeted them, asked them to fill out a brief survey, and showed them the layout of the house open for the tour.  Guests passed from the dining room to the kitchen, where free cookies and lemonade were set out.  They had to pass the T-shirt station, with my “Bike the B-Line” T-shirts and the boy’s new art creations they call T-bands.   

They are made from discarded T-shirts, torn into strips and incorporated into macramé bracelets.  They had some very cool color combinations and the pieces sold very well.  It turns out that Jacob has a real talent for sales.  This is good, because he’s saving money to buy an iPod Touch.  After this weekend he’s well on his way.  I’m proud of his ability to work and save for things he wants to buy.  Anyway, once they got past the kitchen guests came down to my art studio to see a few pieces in progress.

 The weekend itself was a huge success.  We had 173 people visit our house, and I had some absolutely delightful conversations.  There were a lot of people who have seen my work or followed my career and wanted to see the studio and find out how I create the pieces.  I was surprised to meet so many people who weren’t the usual that comes to art fairs so I got to meet a lot of new people.  I think everyone was amazed at my highly organized collection of yarns, felt, fabric, fossils and other found objects in big storage binds downstairs.  I need materials in a broad range of colors so my storage needs get pretty complicated.  Looking back, I was delighted to be able to share my workspace, pieces in progress and strategies for making art with everyone who came.  

 Of course art creation never takes a rest.  I moved the big commission piece forward, creating some more of the leaf clumps I’ll need for the canopy.  I attached the last tree on to the path, so I can tell the project is coming to a close.  It always seems that as one project finishes another lands on my plate.  This week I met with two patrons who want to commission a large piece that features a pathway through a forest, but this time in a landscape format.  It took a lot of planning to re-design the layout.  The focus is usually on the trees, but because it’s a horizontal piece the focus shifts to the path.  It’s interesting how changing the layout of the piece re-orients the focal point and feel of the piece.  The piece started with some sketches I did on the beaches of North Carolina and will come to fruition after the art fairs of the summer. 

And one last bit of family news—Jim and Tommie went to Lake Monroe on Memorial Day Monday and came back with a bucket full of big bluegills.  We had a delightful fish fry on Tuesday.  As if I didn’t get enough good food last week on vacation, Jim also made me a rhubarb pie this week, which lasted until Sunday morning.  Life is good!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Ratatouille Arrives!

Finally—‘Ratatouille’ is complete! I’m delighted with how it turned out. I even feel as if I’ve taken the first step toward being a grandma by carrying around pictures of the completed piece and showing the people who have watched me along the way. I received so much support and encouragement as I felted tomato slices, eggplants, zucchini and herb leaves into existence over the past few months that I felt I needed to share the finished product. It has been fun to watch their responses to seeing the finished piece. The people who actually saw the size of the tomatoes have the best sense of the overall magnitude of the finished piece, which is huge 5' X 2 1/2 '—the tomatoes are the size of dinner plates. Even though I like the tomatoes, my favorite part of the piece is the basil leaves. I feel like they really enhance the cohesiveness of the piece, and I just like how they turned out. I can almost smell the piece!

Did I say I was pleased with how it turned out? That’s true, but I am sooo ready to move beyond creating vegetables. At the end of the week I devoted big blocks of time to my next piece, a signature piece for the Bloomington Playwright’s Project. If you’ve seen their aggressive writing tools on the attack you know the basic design. In my version the background is purple and the BPP letters are a bright yellow. That means I spent some time digging through my yarn boxes to find just the colors I needed. I was on a spring and birth mind set (their motto is "where theater is born") and so I chose a purple that reminds me of the Johnny Jump-Up violets in the lawn, mixed in with their shockingly bright yellow dandelion friends. I bought the yellow fleece at the Fiber Arts show from Donna Jo Copeland last November. It was dyed with tumeric to produce a brilliant, almost neon yellow, which is amazing considering that it comes from a natural dye. The yellow letters have a crispness that I’m enjoying, especially after focusing on organic vegetable shapes for the past few months. And weaving, finally weaving, in my art studio has been a delight. While I enjoy needle felting, there’s a certain rhythm to weaving that I’ve missed. The piece will feature a hand, which I’ve completed, holding an angry pen, ready to create a great play. I just need to adjust the length of the wrist, and make the pen.

The fact that it’s officially spring means the dandelions are commandeering the local lawns. I had the boys out collecting dandelion heads for dyeing later this summer. I even spent fifteen minutes this morning mowing down the yellow flowers in the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and road. I should have enough for a good dye pot. I’ve got to replenish some of my color stocks, which also led me to the big Fiber Event in Greencastle this past Friday. It’s one of the highlights of my year. I went with my friend Ruth, which made for a delightful trip. We chitty chatted the whole time, making it feel as if we made it there in ten minutes. I had a wonderful conversation with a weaver and natural material dyer from Nashville who sold fair traded spun banana silk yarn—that will probably make it’s way into a scarf this fall. We talked about some of her recent adventures in dyeing, and she showed me some yarn and fleece that she had dyed with wild rose clippings using iron mordant. It got me eyeing the wild rose in our back yard that I don’t really like because it scratches the whole family as they bring bikes through the gate into the back yard. We talked about using invasive plants for dyeing, which made me wonder about using euonymous as a green dye. That evil vine has taken over big parts of the back garden beds, and it’s heading for a major haircut this summer. I’ll do some experiments with added alum and varying conditions, but I’m sure I’ll find a use for any material that survives the dye pot.

The last bit of news from the week has to do with one of my favorite foods—pie! A rhubarb pie appeared yesterday morning. Although it came from frozen rhubarb because no fresh stalks could be found, it tasted great and the crust came out as a crumbly delight. Yippee! I’ll have pie and espresso for breakfast after Zumba all week!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

Eggplant, Zucchini and Rhubarb Pie

Actually, I’m surrounded by zucchini and eggplant art. I ate the rhubarb pie. More on that later. The big news of the week was the completion of vegetable chunks for my large format ‘Ratatouille’ piece. I turned my attention to the giant hand that will pull a giant carrot from the ground in my ‘From the Garden’ piece. I’m not sure that’s the final name, but it’s the companion piece to ‘Ratatouille.’ I spent considerable time adding a layer of skin to the hand as we traveled to and from Michigan over the boy’s spring break. I’ll start creating the herbs and fleshing out the tomato slices this week, which means the light at the end of the tunnel is in view. I just have to work around the mountain of vegetables in my art studio.

The weather this week has just been beautiful. The boys decided to till and weed their garden bed, and I ordered three yards of hardwood mulch for Jim to use on the flower beds. That’s the grand metaphor explaining why our marriage works so well—I buy the mulch and he spreads it. As of today, the front yard is pretty well under control, but there’s still a big pile of mulch in the driveway. The warm weather even lured us out to May’s Greenhouse this afternoon. We ended up buying some lettuce, onions and a few pansies to brighten up the garden. Tommie and Jacob leaped into action and planted everything in their garden space. I have the salad spinner standing by and a new bottle of Ken’s Light Ceasar salad dressing in the fridge. Grow little leaves, grow!

The other big news of the week was our trip to Michigan last weekend to visit Jim’s mom. Grandma still had snow on the ground, ice on the patio and a frozen river behind the house, so we got to re-live winter. We stayed inside and had a delightful time. We ate too much good food and laughed for all we were worth. We rented a van and brought back a bunch of treasures she wanted to get rid of, including a tattered blanket from great grandma Drummond. I opened it up to discover a huge piece of wool batting in a gauze cotton cover. It’s perfect! I don’t know what its perfect for, but I’m certain it will be great. And it fits my motto: recycled wool is good, free wool is even better! The best news from the trip was that Jim made a rhubarb pie. By some odd coincidence, Monday the 14^th was national ‘pi’ day, as in the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. Could I help it if Jim thought it was national ‘pie’ day? Pie, as in, here’s two pounds of rhubarb, my sweet husband! (Think ‘mulch’ here, hee hee hee)! It was delightful! I wonder if he’ll get suspicious when I tell him about national pie day?

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Mother's Weekend

My arts and personal experiences were unusually diverse this week. I did a workshop at Stone Belt this week, which was a very enjoyable experience. The clients were willing to try new things, and we had a lot of fun together. We tried wet felting ornaments on wool ball templates that I created, and we felted some small ones from scratch. I also assembled my pepper piece—that brought a big sense of relief and accomplishment. Late in the week we pulled our boys out of school to drive to Michigan to see Grandma for Mother’s day. They were just glowing. They got to walk out of school right after lunch, waving goodbye to their buds who had to stay in school. We had a delightful drive north, although the weather didn’t cooperate. It was rainy, windy and cold the whole weekend, but we didn’t notice. It did squash our planned fishing trip. I was ready to bring home the walleyes for dinner but it didn’t work out. That left me with a lot of free time, which let me get a lot of needle felting done on my latest projects. I have just started a new body of work on a smaller scale, and these pieces are intended to be compositions with earthy tones. Instead of weaving the backgrounds, I started wet-felting canvases using techniques I developed as I wet felted scarves. I’m creating the frames out of thick wool cheneille yarns and needle felting the surface. My goal is to explore some compositional ideas that are rattling around inside my head using needle felting to create the images. I have retired from making ornaments, which was something I needed to do, but I learned a lot about pattern and color in that process that I’m hoping I can transfer to my latest endeavor and do some in depth exploring of composition….more on that as the pieces appear!

Now I’m back from Michigan, trying to get everything unpacked and the boys off to bed, even as I get the blog up. Basically, Jim is in charge of dragging them away from the Cartoon Network and getting them reading in bed. We did have a great trip, with two big highlights. First was the Mother’s day rhubarb pie, a family tradition for decades. I must say, I had no problem marrying into this tradition! Did I say I like pie? It is my honest opinion that this was the best rhubarb pie he’s ever made. It’s been a long evolution, getting the crust just right and the filling consistency a smooth, tart treat. Being a scientist at heart, we’re just going to have to repeat the experiment to see if he can do it. On the way back he took me to a secret sumac stand, since I’ve been looking for sumac heads to do some dyeing. These will go into my newest “compositional” pieces if I can get it right. I’ve heard that the fresh red heads are best for dyeing, but I couldn’t wait and harvested a big bag of last year’s seed heads. Tommie and I picked the heads and took pictures while Jim and Jacob sat in the car and learned how all the buttons, levers and pedals worked. He’s going to be ready to drive early! I’ll just hand off the keys and close my eyes. On the drive back I did some more poking, finishing off the flower heads for my dandelion piece. My goal for this week is to finish that piece. I’m feeling a little pressure with the Columbus (Ohio) Art Festival coming up in a few weeks. It’ll all work out though… it always does!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin

The days are just packed

Could I possibly have packed any more excitement into this week? Should I start with the rhubarb pie? No, I should start with Monday when I loaded up all my art and headed to Indianapolis. I was invited to give a lecture to the Embroidery Guild in Indianapolis. I took my scarves, ornaments, tools, and all my weavings that weren’t hanging somewhere. I even dug out my first exploratory pieces and took one off the wall that I made before I was working artist. The talk was intended to cover my history as an artist and the influences that helped shape me. One of the great things about giving talks like this is that I get to both re-live and observe my evolution as an artist. I’m reminded of how much I enjoy what I do! It’s fun to see the different design and structural landmarks that define different turning points in my career. What made the trip, though, was that my audience was just great! They asked a lot of questions at the end, which is one of my markers for success. It was also nice to see such a range of ages—they clearly have a vibrant and engaged group. To top it all off, the talk coincided with the last of the redbuds and the emergence of the dogwood flowers so the drive was pleasant too.

Tuesday was eighty and sunny, and that brought on a fishing trip to Lake Monroe with my dear husband and son Tommie. Jacob went over to a friend’s house for play and pizza until eight. We zipped over to the Pinegrove launch area after school, put in the canoe, and headed straight to the secret crappie location we discovered last year. The crappies didn’t really cooperate, but we ended up catching all the catfish we could hope for. I tried hard to catch crappies—I really did—but somehow the catfish always seem to find me. We even managed to lose a really big fish that was on for a while before giving us a big splash as it snapped the line and swam away. To be social we invited the fish to come home for a fish fry on Thursday. Fishing aside, though, we had a really nice time paddling on the lake as the sun set.

Wednesday brought a different challenge. It was the day that the Fourth Street Art Fair committee met to review the 450 applicants we had this year, which is a record. I was partial to the fiber category works, some of which were truly stunning. The paintings were also awesome this year—there were lots of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the committee. We’re a pretty tough crowd, so you’ll have to come to the Fourth Street fair this year and see what we have on display.

Thursday was an eventful day for me in the art studio. I launched into heavy-duty mode to finish my piece for the Edible Lotus fundraiser dinner. Time is getting short so I had to really put some effort into my piece. I had first envisioned a tree in the fog, which evolved into a jeweled tree. I like the symbolism of the tree for community art projects, such as the community tree that I organized two years ago for the Fourth Street children’s booth. In that project, each leaf was an individual art piece created by visitors to the fair, decorated with recycled and recovered materials. The whole Lotus Festival concept reminds me of that tree, because it depends on the contributions of a huge number of volunteers like the tireless Deborah Klein, local paper artist extraordinaire. Anyway, you have to understand that the project has been very stressful for me because of the deadline. Any time you try to convert an idea into a three-dimensional piece you just don’t know when (or whether) it will really come together. Sometimes ideas work better in your head than on the canvas. When you have a deadline that’s a bad thing and it was starting to weigh on me.

The concept for the piece itself is a three-dimensional tree that is intended to hang above a table. It needs to be very light because, like the old joke, if a tree falls on a donor, everybody notices it. To solve the problem I turned to my newest and lightest medium, the recovered dryer sheet. I’ve had people collecting them for me to add to my personal stack. They’re airy and light, and somehow that works with the airiness I intended to circle around the tree itself. I sewed the dryer sheets together and gave them an evening coat of white paint. Then I painted on the tree with fabric paint and acrylic paint straight out of the tube to create the weight of the tree. I like how it turned out—the tree has the look and feel of worn leather and it contrasts nicely with the lightness of the dryer sheets. The swirly branch designs remind me of the patterns in my ornaments, which is something I noticed when I gave the talk. There’s just something very appealing to me about that design, something wholesome about the round swirling patterns. For the jeweled leaves I was inspired by a Monet print we have in our living room that has deep purples and greens, like jewels in the deep blue water. I thought that the richness of the colors somehow matched the richness of the Lotus festival music. I searched my stores of felt scraps for little pieces that I just couldn’t throw away and found some real treasures. I cut and cut and cut some more to create my small leaves, and I managed to dull a pair of my favorite scissors in the process. Luckily, I have three more pairs (always be prepared!). A new pair of scissors will soon appear in the family collection and the boys will be happy. Use ‘em and lose ‘em seems to be their motto. The last step will be to glue the panels onto the wooden supports, and until then I’m holding my breath. If it all comes together I’ll post it on my Facebook page.

Since there’s no rest for the weary mom, Friday was a busy family day. I stopped in to see Jacob’s dinosaur project at school, took the boy’s to their Tae Kwon Do class, brought them back home for a snack and then off we went to the Rogers-Binford school carnival. I baked and decorated a cake for the cakewalk that was quickly claimed as a prize—at least I saw it in someone’s arms shortly after we got there and sat down for pizza. We bought some books, played some games, ate some candy, dyed four lips blue or red with wretched snow cone colors, watched karyoke as we waited to win a big prize at the raffle, and chatted with parents and friends. But that wasn’t enough for one day or week! We packed up and zipped off to the Musical Arts Center to see West Side Story that night. The performance was excellent, as usual, and the boys are now ready for the next theatrical event in town—the Cardinal Stage Company is putting on the ‘Little Shop of Horrors’.

Saturday started off with a trip to the farmer’s market, then the house turned into a madhouse with friends of the boys over. A little gardening got done and a few flowers planted, then the day gave way to dinner featuring warm fresh flatbread with garlic and cheese spread and a nice Argentinian pinot noir. And since fresh rhubarb was on display at the farmer’s market, I used all my secret strategies to get my dear husband to buy rhubarb and bake me a pie this morning! There isn’t much better than warm pie with whipping cream on a Sunday morning with a nice cup of tea! Did I say I like pie? Plus, the best news of all: this week it all starts over again! Only the adventures, pies and type of wine seem to change!

Until next week...

Martina Celerin

The Week of Tylenol

I had a full and delightful week. This was spring break week in Indiana, so the crew and I packed up and we drove north to see Grandma in Michigan. The first highlight was the rhubarb pie my loving husband made, using the two pounds of rhubarb I packed. Of course nothing ever turns out quite as planned. We didn’t have quite enough rhubarb, so in went an apple and some frozen strawberries. The baker made a slight error and used self-rising flour for the crust and over-filled it with filling. Everything got bigger; the crust rose up and the filling bubbled out. It turned out to be a tasty creation, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a pie. I also never miss a chance to scout out new supply stores, so I visited the Northwoods Outlet store in Pinconning and Larson’s Salvage in Bay City. I found lots of useful stuff but no brass flashing, a key secret ingredient in fern leaves. It also turned out that during our trip the last of the snow melted in Kawkawlin, so on our last day we got into picking up sticks with Grandma. That event signals the exit of winter. One cleans up the worst that Michigan’s snow, ice and wind deal out between Halloween and St. Patrick’s day. I was pretty sore on the drive home, but that’s part of the adventure.

Our return to Indiana was marked by trees beginning to bud and the first daffodils coming out. We left the forests in winter mode, but on the drive back we could see the subtle pinks of budding trees on the horizons and the yellows of willow in the low areas. During the drive I put the last touches on my black salamander with yellow spots and fleshed out my mud salamander. Now he has arms and is ready to crawl around my art studio. The background for the piece is already finished, so he has a home when he’s ready for it. When we pulled up to the big yellow house we were greeted by the iris reticulata, which have a beautiful deep, rich purple and elegant yellow markings. They burst through the carpet of leaves that my loving and well-intentioned husband meant to remove last fall but didn’t. The leaves probably gave that little extra bit of protection that carried them through the last cold spell. That’s one secret to a good marriage: a wise spouse learns to rationalize their partner’s failings as strengths that probably turn out for the best. If you’re smiling too you appreciate what that means.

I did have one job to do when we got home. We’ve had a raccoon that defeated the last home security system we installed. He found a way to burrow between two layers of wire mesh that weren’t well connected over the soffit on the east end of the attic. There’s nothing more upsetting to a good night’s sleep than hearing a raccoon creak his way into your house, slide down the trusses over your bed, rearrange your insulation and plunk down for a good day’s sleep right above you. Did I mention that this happens at 5 a.m.? If you’re lucky you get to hear him go out around 11, too, although his egress is slightly less offensive. I’m sure they have food and sex on their minds so they’re eager to get out. Anyway, after more serious but failed attempts to capture him in a live trap outside (thanks for the extra trap, Cappi!) we decided to be a little more devious. We waited until he was outside, then before he could settle back in for his morning snooze I climbed into the attic. I was armed with hammer, nails, wire mesh, wire snippers, flashlight and a mask. It’s always a bit of a stretch and shimmy to get through the small hole into the attic, then an uncomfortable crawl on hands and knees using the trusses spaced every foot or so. I cut up my mesh to fit the opening then started nailing it up with every nail I had. The work was especially challenging because I couldn’t make full swings with the hammer, so each try included a hit on the nail and a hit on the preceding truss on the backswing. After an hour of that I was ready to get back to the light and clean air, desperately hoping that we hadn’t trapped the critter inside. So far so good—no scratching last night, and no thumping around this morning. The bad news is that I’m paying for it now—all my hammering muscles are screaming out to me, so it’s back for more Tylenol.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, sunny and seventy, which means a perfect day for collecting. I went along on a family fishing trip to lake Monroe. The crew was looking for crappies, which they found along with a small bass, but I was looking for a stone fish head and tail for a weaving. Well, not actually stone fossils, but good enough replicas to capture my imagination. Stone elements make a nice contrast with the fibers in the weaving, and I like including collected fossils and rocks in pieces. I found what I was looking for and I found the beautiful bones of a small mammal. They were bleached white from the freeze/thaw cycles of winter and the water and sunshine of spring. The cleaning process was probably enhanced a bit by a few little critters along the way. Despite their appearance, I need to find just the right compositional idea for a piece to include them because my loving spouse cringes every time I mention using bones. It’ll just be our little secret when I put them in and we’ll see if he notices.

Finally, the real headache of the week is just coming on. It’s that time of year when I have to sift through all my business records to come up with the numbers for my tax forms. Oh joy. At the same time I downloaded the forms I need to become a citizen, which is a big step for me. I now know that not every American has a gun, and that Bloomington is a wonderful oasis for an artist like me. Plus, I’ll get to vote! Watch out world!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin