Summer Art Fairs!

Wow, what a crazy art fair season it has been!  I’m terribly sorry for breaking my usual pattern of weekly blogging, but the events of the past month squeezed all the spare time out of my schedule.  My roadies and I did two art fairs in three weeks:   Des Moines, Iowa and Madison, Wisconsin two weeks later.  The bottom line is that twenty-three weavings now have new homes!  I’m so pleased, proud and flattered that so many people wanted to buy one of my pieces!  I’m getting a little ahead of myself, though.  

The last time I blogged I was feverishly preparing for the Des Moines show.  I had just completed my new loon piece and packed everything up for the trip.  The show itself circled the Pappajohn sculpture park, which turned out to be a very nice setting.   

The hours were brutal—ten a.m. to ten p.m. Friday and Saturday, then ten till five Sunday.  The good news was that the support crew was terrific.  My boys and I had access to free snacks, water and soft drinks all day long, something they took advantage of.  The people who visited the show were thoughtful and considerate Mid-westerners.  Even though Des Moines is a big city, the people give it a small, almost Bloomingtonian feel.  

 I didn’t sell a single piece on Friday, which made me briefly doubt all the good things I had heard from other artists about what a good show it was for them.  Things really got rolling on Saturday, though, when I sold several pieces.  The boys even got into the act and helped sell some of the work.  Jacob especially was telling family stories about how pieces were made, and how I acquired elements that went into pieces. 

 Most people listened in awe as he led them through the booth.  I’m sure he helped sell a few pieces for me.  I ended up leaving eleven pieces in new homes in Iowa. 

I have to say that I was pretty proud of my output of pieces over the winter—I started the season with thirty-one pieces in my booth and a couple in galleries around town.  After Des Moines, though, I was spurred to create as many new pieces as possible for the upcoming Madison show.  My family was terrific—the boys gave me some space, and Jim took over running the house and cooking.  I worked from sun up until sundown to replace a few of the pieces that were popular in Des Moines.  My ‘Garden Walk’ especially was one piece that was very well received and sold early. 

I was able to create a similar piece, along with two other pieces for which I already had made some of the needle-felted and crocheted components.  I took everything I had to Madison, hoping it would be enough.  I ended up finding new homes for twelve new pieces—my best show ever!  The show was made even better because we got to stay with Wendy and Duane in Hollandale, Wisconsin.  It’s a long drive in and back each day (around 45 minutes), but we get to stay in an absolutely quiet patch in the meadows far outside town.  Wendy and Duane take very good care of us.  We had grilled salmon and dark chocolate bread pudding, among other delicacies, to celebrate the art fair successes. 

While I worked, they all went off to explore the Cave of the Mounds, Aunt Mary’s Café, and play mini-golf.  I did get into the act a little on our set-up day, though.  Jacob suggested that we rent bikes.  We all spent Friday morning riding the trails around Madison’s lakes and streams (with a nice lunch at the Zuzu Café too).  I can’t tell you what a nice time the whole trip was!

The reality of my successes hit home as we drove home.  I just didn’t have enough pieces to justify packing everything up and doing the Uptown show in Minneapolis.  I was really excited about doing the show, which has received great reviews from some of my Fourth Street art friends.  It was a very sad time to sit down and write the e-mail telling them that I wouldn’t participate this year.  Even now I need to buckle down and make some new pieces to show at Fourth Street.  

 I figure I have five more weeks, with the boys in school for four of them.  I’m already well into a tomato piece.  I wove the background, which I think of as tomato sauce.  On our drives to art fairs I have been making tomatoes.  I have around twenty-three made, but I still have a ways to go.  I haven’t fully decided if it will be a salsa piece or a tomato piece, but right now I’m in a groove making tomatoes. 

Being back in town means sampling all the good things Bloomington has to offer in the summer.  The boys tested for their red belt with a black stripe on Friday.  One more belt (red/black) and they’ll be on to their black belts.   

We’re very proud of them.  We also got to the farmer’s market on Saturday for broccoli, corn, cucumbers, peaches and boysenberries (they called them blackberries, but I think they were boysenberries).  Jim made a delightful pie.   

It was so good that next week we’re going to stock up on berries for a freezer pie.  Berries are a great way to take a little bit of summer and save it for the cold days of winter.  So…  I’ll have coffee and pie for breakfast for the next few days, and no art fair to prepare for this weekend!  Life is good. 

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…