My Corner of the Sky…

What a week!  It has been a whirlwind of activity around our house.  Everyone in the family stepped up to make the house presentable for Grandma and Tim, Jim’s brother.  I must say it is awfully nice to have the entire house clean at one time, rather than attacking the neediest room each week.  The main focus of their visit was to see Pippin, but I’ll save those stories for later.

After the house started to shine, I did manage to squeeze in more needle felting.  I’m very excited about the felted tiles I’m creating featuring vegetables and fruit.  Everyone knows that fruits and vegetables are healthy to eat, but mine are especially high in fiber.  Ha ha ha!  This week I focused on peas.  When I was sitting outside the room where the boys were having their voice lesson I was positioned underneath a large commissioned piece that featured pea vines on a trellis, which made for a wonderful creative connection.  I worked, listened to singing and looked up at my artistic history.  When I thought about the fancy wine we planned to drink with Tim, I got to thinking about grapes so I had to make a few of those to feature on tiles.  And of course you can never have enough tomatoes, so I made more thick slices that show off the delicate seeds and internal structure. 

Saturday night featured the opening performance of Pippin!  It was fabulous to share the event with my family around me in the center of the sixth row—best seats in the house!  I just got to take it all in.  The kids were amazing!  They sang and performed their hearts out and the audience loved it.  The costumes really pulled it all together—I must say I’m really proud of my designs, and I’m incredibly grateful to all the people who transformed them into costumes, especially Nancy Riggert.  It was fun to see some of the parents who contributed to the costuming after the show, and they got to see how their efforts fit into the big picture.  They were in awe of the entire performance.  I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish as a group.  I’m grateful to Gwen Witten and Chris Miller for giving me this opportunity.  It’s just the biggest canvas I’ve ever worked on, and it’s so much fun to see it all come together. 

Next, a little parental gloating is in order.  Tommie and Jacob were fabulous!  The transformation that Tommie undergoes when he is onstage is phenomenal, to the point that people don’t recognize him.  He does appear different visually underneath grey hair and behind a beard, but his body movements, gesturing and voice characteristics are completely fabricated and distinct from his day-to-day persona.   And, if you want to see them live - the next performance is this Saturday Oct 22, 7pm - and here is the link to the tickets!

I wish my grandfather, a bass in the Czech opera, could have seen him in action.  Jacob shone too—he was a glowing, performing ball of energy.  He embraces the stage, but his stage persona is a caricature of how we see him at home.  He was a confident magician, a dynamic circus performer, and always in command of his art.  My little pumpkins!

We had a wonderful visit with Grandma and Tim.  We shared lots of stories and laughs over meals and a trip to the Farmer’s market on Saturday morning.  We found hot chocolate and coffee for everyone—including me!  Marina made me a special, off the menu, decaffeinated coffee that made me very happy.  At the market we sampled a variety of dainties for breakfast and found enough vegetables for the week. The biggest news from the gastronomic adventures was that there was pie.  It was an amazing blueberry/strawberry creation using fruit from our trip to Andrews Produce on Topsail Island back in May.  It came after the almond encrusted walleyes the crew caught in July and a nice bottle of wine, so we had an excellent meal.  And I got pie for breakfast over the next few days!  Today I finished the last slice, though.  I’m beginning the next countdown to the next pie—I wonder what and when it will be?

Until next week

Martina Celerin

Making mini Martinas…

I’m wearing three hats this week!  The first is my needle felting hat.  I had so much fun last fall creating the needle felted vegetable and fruit collage pieces that I decided to scale down to make individual felted pieces.  Each fruit and vegetable really is its own mini artwork full of visual information, detail and interest.  Some are symmetrical, others are not, and often the subject brings vibrant colors.  I’m now thinking about my fruits and vegetables as small tiles that can be combined for display.   

The project fits with my fall life because Saturday mornings revolve around trips to the farmer’s market—yesterday was a three-bag haul, with lettuce, apples, garlic, peppers and more.  There is such a bounty of the harvest on display in rich, warm fall colors.  The vegetable haul mirrors the social experience, seeing lots of friends and regulars.  Marina at Le Petit Café becomes a regular fall connection with special hot chocolate and coffees for the family, and Maria from Piccoli Dolci often provides a special treat.  The man who sells us jam and jellies knows that our teenage boys eat through whatever we buy (and hence will be back).  The farmer who saved a huge bag of onion skins for me thought I was a little crazy, but they proved to be the perfect source for the dye to create an accurate onion skin color.  The whole Saturday morning adventure just fits so well with my art. 

My second hat is a wet felting hat. Not that I’m felting hats!  I had a fabulous experience a couple of weeks ago in Fredericksburg, starting with a workshop by Pamela MacGregor and continuing with Elizabeth Woodford, that started me thinking about wet felting vessels.  I’m now playing with different fibers and experimenting with new techniques.  I really want to be able to create textures and then embed objects into my vessels, much like my weavings where I create underground scenes. That way you’re encasing memories and stories in the vessels.  At this point, though, I need to sort out the techniques first.  That’s about the time when my science background kicks in.  I started by creating flat felt circles and embedded various yarns (synthetics, wools, sisal and felt balls).  I learned a lot from my first piece and launched into creating a few simple vessels.

My third hat is maintaining and tweaking costumes for Pippin costumes and props.  The big performance at Bloomington High School South starting October 15^th and running for two more weeks on Saturday nights.  You can order tickets here. The costumes themselves are finished, but those darn kids keep growing!  Final adjustments are in order so the costumes fit perfectly on the night of the performance.  Watching the rehearsals over the summer has been revealing, because socks slowly appear as legs grow longer while the pants do not.  Come see Tommie, who is Charlemagne in the first two performances (October 15 and 22), while Jacob is a magician in all of the shows.  I’m looking forward to seeing the visual spectacle as my art pieces dance around the stage!  Oh, and I’ve heard that the kids might sing too :)

The big news in my workshop world is that I'll be doing another workshop - next month - in Crawfordsville, IN.  If you are interested in participating, please contact the event organizer, Jessica Madsen at jdpmadsen@gmail.com  It will be a one day workshop on Saturday November 12, from 9:30am - 5:50pm.

 And on the family front, we’ve been taking in some theater of late. Last Friday we saw BPP’s ‘30 Days of Mourning’ that featured Steve Scott (aka the boy’s taekwondo instructor) Paul Kuhne (an amazing actor and friend) and Aubrey Seader (a fabulous actress and Sounds of South alumna).  It was amazing!  The interactions were believable, intense, and powerful.  The actors embraced the roles such that you were immersed in the situation and rooting for the characters.  On Friday night we saw Cardinal’s performance of Baskerville.  What a fun production!  The staging was phenomenal.  They brought the Hound to life, even if it didn’t end well for the sheep in the performance or the spectral hound who attacked the Baskerville clan.  The pacing was fast and the costume changes constant, which made for a very entertaining evening.  I love having two such strong theater companies in our town.  As I started to write this on Saturday, I wasn’t sure there was going to be a pie for the report.  Fortunately, Jim found some gold rush apples at the farmer’s market.  He got up early to make a pie this morning!  It looks great, but I won’t know for sure until dinner tonight.  I’ll provide a report when I can.

Until next week

Martina Celerin

Rain, rain, rain…

Mother Nature delivered a hefty dose of rain to Bloomington this past week.  She seemed to be a little off-target, though, because a substantial amount of it found its way into my art studio.  Fortunately, there was no damage to my art or materials, but recovery meant rearranging stacks of materials and rolling back the rug.  My array of fans and dehumidifiers took over and I’m back to being functional, but the net effect was an interruption in progress in my studio.  Of course I can take inspiration from just about anything, so rain was my muse this week.  I channeled water away from my happiness by creating umbrellas for Pippin.  In our version, the players are part of a vintage circus scene.   

Rather than shielding the performers from rain, our umbrellas help balance tightrope walkers and add drama to characters.  To achieve the costume palette of amethyst, sapphire and emerald, with black and white serving as neutral colors, I created all of the umbrellas from broken or re-purposed umbrella skeletons.  Thanks wind!  My favorite has to be the one that I made out of the crinoline from a fancy doll dress.  I cut half moons out of the canopy to scallop the edges and added a cane that I picked up at the Recycle Center from the Materialsfor the Arts program.  I replaced the rib tips with disco ball beads from a necklace that Nancy and I found at the Hoosier to Hoosier sale. 

I embellished each of the panels with trim scraps, reclaimed rhinestones, and circles of cut out of old sweatshirts. 

I created two additional umbrellas in a similar spirit of recycling.  This time I used actual umbrellas from which I removed the canopy and replaced it with triangles of fabric scraps.  Of course I embellished the panels!   

Sparkle, pompoms, felt balls and ribbon seemed right.  If that weren’t enough, I made an umbrella for Berthe.  She’s the flamboyant grandmother whose red dresses are shrouded in black that I created a couple of months ago.  The base costumes came from red dresses from My Sister’s Closet.  They were damaged and couldn’t be sold, so they generously donated them to our project.  I overlaid the dress with black lace fabric and clothing from the Recycle Center.  Berthe’s umbrella is unlike those of the circus performers and has a very different color story.   

I replaced the original fabric from an umbrella canopy with black lace triangles.  I covered the ribs on the outside with faceted trim that I got at a surplus store in Tucson, Arizona last year.  I added black felt balls I made several years ago and embellished the umbrella with lace velvet ribbon and red trim the Sounds of South students harvested from various pieces of clothing and curtains.  By the time I was done, the skies had cleared and the rain was gone!

This week I had the opportunity to sit and watch rehearsals for Pippin.  Even though some of the details are still being fleshed out, I can see the that the singing and choreography will be amazing.  I was able to visualize the scenes costumed and with all the props in place, which was an amazing feeling.  I can hardly wait the couple of weeks before costume rehearsals begin!  I can see that there will have to be many quick costume changes, so I’ve built technology into the costumes to allow them to snap on and off.  With seventy kids, who sometimes need to change their complete outfits in a short time, chaos doesn’t begin to describe the first iteration of rehearsals in costumes. 

In other big news of the week, the Pippin T-shirts with my logo I designed have arrived.  Between projects I managed to carve out a few minutes to sit and read the Herald Times in my big comfy chair, but clearly the paparazzi was watching.  I kept waiting for a pie to appear, expectantly sniffing the air when I woke each morning for the wafting aroma of baking pie, only to be disappointed.  My best hope is the peck of peaches that sits in a mound on the kitchen island.  Let it be today!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Lots of irons in the fire…

My blogs often start out with the manageable lamentation that I have a bunch of projects in the works.  It seems that I have too much going on to accomplish it all.  What helps me manage is to stand back and look at the big picture.  I find if keep I moving forward, a little bit on each project each week, my responsibilities don’t feel so overwhelming.  This was one of those weeks!  I stepped back into working on a weaving project I started a while back, which was to work on the background for a birch piece set next to a summer lake.  I’ve made similar pieces, and this composition is especially calming for me.  I pulled the piece off the studio wall and started crocheting some of the foreground land mass to build the piece away from the wall.  

 I’ll plant the birch trees there.  Then I spent some time needle felting the effects of the gentle summer breeze on the water to create the perceived notion of waves.  I’m hoping that the piece should be finished and ready to travel to summer art fairs by this time next week. 

I spent some time this week moving ‘My Roots’ forward as well.  I’m creating this for an exhibition in November, although I’ll travel with this piece to summer art fairs.  I have decided that if it finds a new home this summer, it wasn’t meant to be part of the exhibit.   

My goal was to finish making the turnips that will nicely fill in the green hole still in the piece I shared last week.  I worked on these as the boys did their taekwondo, and the early-stage turnips are usually mistaken for potatoes or some other roots.  As the delicate purples and greens are added the turnips take on their identity.  I can tell they’re exited to join their other root relatives on the weaving. 

April marked my return to the costume studio at Bloomington High School South.  If you haven’t heard, and I can’t imagine that many of you haven’t, I’m currently creating the chorus costumes for a performance of Pippin this fall in a vintage circus motif.  I’ve been collecting all sorts of treasures from various places, both local and on my travels, to fit my color scheme for the performance.  I focus on reclaimed and recycled clothing and materials for the costumes.  Some parents have dropped off materials, but I regularly visit the Recycle Center (especially the Materials for the Arts program), My Sister’s Closet, and the Bloomington Thrift Shop.  I even found some useful costume things at the Re-Store in town!  On my spring break visit to Michigan I brought home a big haul from a store called the Cat’s Meow. 

One of the first new costumes I have laid out for the incoming freshmen includes a peplum I cut from a dress I found at the Cat’s Meow.  The purple skirt was formerly a purple dress, and what will be the black and white skirt was formerly a bed skirt.  I’ll trim the costume with Christmas ribbons and chords made from t-shirts, cut as a continuous strips to make the cordage. 

I am generating lots of projects for my sewing faeries!

While the costumes are my day job, I’ve been moving forward on pulling things together for my workshop in Virginia in June.  I took advantage of the beautiful weather from last week to bring my wide belt sander on the veranda.   

I converted the slats of wooden blinds into batons or pick-up sticks as the boys spent some quality time outside playing with bubbles.  They also decided they needed to try some stained glass work, so they spent a couple of hours on that project.  So yes, I happened to have copper tape and a soldering iron, and yes we have a bunch of beach glass, shells and funky found objects that they could fuse together.  Doesn’t every mom have those things? 

Family life has been about as busy as usual, with the biggest news focused on Jacob.  He had some extra practices this week before his big Hip Hop Connexion performance on Friday night.   

It was terrific!  The Jaywalkerz did a fabulous job, as usual, and brought the house down with their performance amid a dozen other skilled performance groups.  

 On the pie front, I had been scratching days on my calendar to maintain some hope.  Jim hasn’t been 100% and I wasn’t sure I was going to get a pie this week.  But good news!  I woke this morning to the smell of blueberry pie baking, and tonight night was a pie night!  Hooray!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Seventy Degrees and Summer Beckons!

After a heavy focus on making costumes, this week I launched back into making pieces for the summer art fair circuit.  Yesterday the thermometer reached seventy and the day was sunny.  Eranthis, snowdrops and crocuses started flowering across the yard, filling it up with fresh colors.  The weather seduced my mind with thoughts of summer, so off I went to make some summer birches by a stony lake shore.  I picked up some florist wire remnants and have been wrapping them with yarn from alpacas that I buy at the summer farmer’s market.   

My friend Cathy Crosson of RedRosa farm raises alpacas and sells a yarn, spun from a particular color of charcoal grey alpaca that work well for me.  The wrapped wires contribute the narrow diameter branches of the birches, and I can bend them as I like to make natural tree pieces that hold their shape.  I wove the background for the piece about a month ago, but other responsibilities prevented me from advancing the piece.  I stretched out the weaving in one of the oak frames that Thom Bertolacini builds for me, so now I’m ready to build forward the background using a dimensional crochet technique.  When everything is in place I’ll attach the birch trees and start listening for the waves splashing up on the rocky shore. 

Friday marked a milestone in my other major focus, making circus costumes for the current Sounds of South members in the upcoming production of ‘Pippin’.  I’ll share a few individual pictures, but I think the image I like best shows the two racks jam packed and bursting with purples, blues and greens.  I even threw in some black, silver and white for good measure.  That was a good stopping point for my costuming, which allowed me to go back to creating weavings.  I’ll use the next month to focus on making art to travel to summer fairs.  

 I also need to develop pieces for a fall exhibit I’m working on titled ‘Treasures from the Earth’.  In April I’ll go back to Bloomington South and making circus costumes after the freshmen class has been selected and measured.  I’ll continue collecting used clothing in the color palette for the show until then to draw on for the new costumes. 

Speaking of costumes, yesterday I delivered twelve mannequins (a big thank you to Deb Christiansen from IU!) to the Blue LineGallery.  These will support my costumes from last fall’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ production.  

 The gallery will host a joint exhibit with a fashion designer that will take you behind the scenes a little bit.  I’ll share my rough sketches for the costumes so people can see the thought process that connects the conception with costume building and leads to the final, wearable product.  Jim Andrews is curating the exhibit so I’m looking forward to getting a list from him describing which characters he would like to include.  I know he’s partial to the grater, the whisk and the potato mashers.  Mark your calendars and come out on March 4^th for the opening reception, although the show will be up for a couple of months. 

In travel news, I’m packing for a workshop in Memphis,Tennessee next weekend.  I do know that my three big boxes with fifteen looms and mountains of colorful yarn have arrived.  That helps give me confidence that everything will go smoothly when I get there.  I’m looking forward to the explosion of color when they come out.  I just need to remember to pack my Swiss army knife in my suitcase and not my carry on when I travel!  

 I probably won’t be able to write a blog next weekend, but I should have lots of news and pictures when I write again on March 5^th.   On the home front, Jim surprised me with a cherry pie on Saturday morning.  Hooray, my favorite!  I think he knew that.  We definitely need to pack more fresh farmer’s market cherries into the freezer for the cold months.  I’m going to have to muddle through on blueberry and raspberry pies until May.  

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Basket Full of Veggies!

Melt some butter and get out the garlic press—this week I have been making what I’m confident are the last two vegetables for my "Fall Stew" piece.  Yes, it has been a long, drawn-out process, but the slow process of making all the vegetables means I get to savor each contribution.  I got to thinking about Amy Hamilton from the Core Farms CSA.  We used to travel to Musgrave Orchard each week to pick up our basket of summer vegetables before our schedule just became to erratic to be able to plan on receiving vegetables each week.  Now we rely on the Bloomington Community Farmer’s Market.  Anyway, I remember how much she enjoyed describing the different characteristics of each garlic variety they grew.  

 I learned that there were many varieties and that they were either soft or hard necked, which helped guide my design.  I prefer the hard neck varieties over the grocery-story soft neck versions.  The hard neck garlic heads don’t store as well, but they are more flavorful and complex, just like a nice red wine.  They feature a single row of toes around a central core, as opposed to the jumbled toes of the soft neck variety.  I made three heads by first making small felted balls.  I stuffed small clumps of sheep’s wool that I got from Gale Hale (but I think she got it from Nancy Kreuger).  Last summer I invested a huge amount of time washing and cleaning and now I’m able to use the beautiful white fleece.  I stuff clumps into Grandma’s old nylons (the ones with holes) and tie knots off between the clumps.  A trip through the washer and dryer and a snip next to each clump releases a soft felted ball about an inch in diameter.  I needle felted the balls into toes and shaped them into the garlic head.  I’m really pleased with how they turned out!

My final choice for vegetable to fill the last space on the piece was inspired by a birthday party I went to last week.  My friend Cinny had her sixtieth birthday party at her home in Brown County, and Dawn Adams gave me a tour of the property.  I was struck by the sea of purple turnip tops that act as a cover crop to retain soil and nutrients.  The richly colored tops were shielded a tiny bit of green that survived the ravages of the cold snap we had in early January.  I couldn’t see the white bottoms, but I knew they were there, drawing from the deep tap roots that stabilized the soil.  I’m always up for a sign from the universe, so when I needed my own cover crop to fill in the last space in my weaving I knew it had to be turnips!  I can’t tell you how happy I will be attach my bushel basket of vegetables to the weaving and call it done!

The other project that has been keeping me busy for most of the week was working on costumes for Sounds of South.  This was my first full week of going into the costume studio every day.  With the help of my sewing and glueing faeries, Nancy Riggert and Misti Hays, we have made great strides on the boy’s vintage circus costumes.  As of Friday I have designed twenty of the twenty-five male costumes in the current SOS group.  I fully understand that there will be a new crop of freshman joining in the spring, but for now I’m looking forward to celebrating the complete set of the male costumes by the end of the coming week.  I should even have made a pretty good dent in the girl’s costumes too.  I’ll post the images of some of my favorite costumes next time.

It has been a good week, but I ran out of pie around midweek and have gone three days now without pie.  I think I need Werner Herzog to narrate a documentary on my pie struggles.  On the bright side, we’re one trimester away from a summer vacation!  

Until next week,

Martina Celerin