Put head down, weave, feed family, exercise; repeat.

It might sound like a broken record, but it was another very cold week with lots of quality time spent in my art studio.  I focused mainly on another piece for my ‘Portraits of Trees’ exhibition this spring in the Showers building.  The inspiration came from a walk I had this past summer with my niece Haley, her new baby Arya, Grandma, Jacob and Great Aunt Lois.  We had a lovely afternoon stroll on the Riverwalk along the Saginaw River in Bay City, Michigan.  My memory now is just of a happy, even emotional family time.  We saw lots of willows along the shore, with several leaning over the river and the rock walls that prevent erosion.  I tried to capture the swaying willow branches in the piece that I’ll call “Riverwalk Willow.” 

 I’m getting close to having my target of twelve pieces for the show, but I’m going to keep steaming on.  My tree-based pieces are always popular at summer art fairs, and I’m in a bit of a groove right now…

One highlight of my week was having lunch with my artist friends Dawn and Cappi.  I carved out a little time around noon on Friday to see “Ed Bernstein:  Almost Illuminated” on campus.  I always have a fabulous time with Dawn and Cappi, but sharing the art experience is a great way to get out of my usual routine.   

The exhibition was a retrospective featuring a large body of printmaking with lots of riffs on a common subject placed in different contexts.  I was struck by the burning chairs placed in different situations, where Ed’s use of light and dark was quite striking.  His textures in the water were full of detail up close that fell into harmonious movement from a distance.  Very nice.

I have a new project in the works: to update my website.  I’ve been working with Paul Smedberg to expand my interface with the rest of the world.  The final product should appear in a week or two.  What’s most exciting to me will be a link to my Flickr site that shows the images of all of my photographed pieces over the span of twelve years.  It’s so much fun to look back and see where I’ve been and where I stand now as an artist.  My work ends up in the media more, and yesterday there was a picture of my “Tethered Memories” in the Herald Times.  

They published a very nice piece about the people in the Spinners and Weaver’s Guild, where I’ve learned new techniques such as needle felting.  In fact, I spend a lot of my time there poking away quietly during the meetings, just taking it all in. 

Yesterday we finally had a break in the weather, with temperatures up to forty-five.  Wow, did that ever feel good!  But we’re back into the icebox today and Tuesday.  We’re all expecting some school delays.  Sadly, the delightful cherry pie from last week is gone.  Did I mention that I really like cherry pie!  I know there’s another bag of tart cherry pie filling in the freezer, so I just need to figure out how to get it out and into a crust!  Sometimes little hints in the blog do the trick—we’ll see.   

Yesterday evening I waiting for my little pumpkin Jacob to come home from his first ski trip to Paoli peaks.  I kept busy as I waited and only periodically (not more than 6 times I'm sure...) asked Jim "how do you think that he's doing?" The word is that it was ‘epic!’  I *knew* that he has some Canuck in him!

 Jim cut up and split a bunch more firewood so we’re ready for family fires when the cold weather hits.  We’ll hunker down and play card games that the boys have been teaching us.  And if I just keep ignoring Winter, soon it will be Spring!  And that’s when I have my art show downtown—yikes, I better get back in the art studio!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin

Portraits of Trees are on my mind

I’ve been weaving feverishly in my art studio of late.  Looming hard deadlines to hang a show are always a great motivator!  I’ll be exhibiting a show called ‘Portraits of Trees’ in the City Hall atrium in the Showers building starting March 4^th, but I started the new year with only two pieces appropriate for the show.  I was envisioning a collection of pieces that resembled photographic portrait stills.  The subjects are trees of varying species set in different contexts, but always capturing a family connection or relationship to the people in their lives.  Given the space, I think I’ll need at least a dozen new pieces with this theme.  Now I’m up to seven, after many hours in my art studio.  In my last blog I featured a piece I called ‘Tethered Memories’, which featured a balloon tethered to a park bench.  I love that piece, and it set me to imagining a baby in a stroller with a balloon tied to the handle. 

The completed piece spawned the idea for a triptych entitled ‘Trips to Bryan Park.’  The second piece in the series features a tree and a little red wagon, imagining a child old enough to pull a wagon full of essential toys to the park.  These are both pieces that resonate with my trips to Bryan Park with my boys as they grew up.  The current phase of their life will be titled something like ‘Emerging Independence’ and features a bicycle leaning up against a tree.  Now both boys ride to the park by themselves, armed with a cell phone and instructions to call when they arrive and when they set out for home.  They take their tennis rackets or a basketball when the weather allows and meet their friends in the park.  The last piece I just completed for the show is called ‘Family Portrait’ and features a large paper birch stand in a landscape format, shown in the summertime. 

Both Jim and I grew up in northern climes surrounded by lots of birches, so the piece feels like an extended family portrait.  I had some help from Noah Blumenthal wrapping birches at the end of last year after he graduated from IU.  Some kids end up flipping burgers, but Noah decided he wanted to wrap birches to show his parents that their money supporting his college education was worthwhile!  It was good to have someone in the art studio to chat with, but it is also good that he’s a quiet person so I was able to focus on my own work.  Anyway, now I have a month and a few days to come up with five more tree pieces!  I really have to stay focused.

After some brutally cold weather, January has begun to look up.  Well, at least the days are getting longer...  Jim finally got the hint that it was time to make another pie.  A beautiful cherry pie appeared Sunday morning while I worked in the art studio.  I didn’t even notice it until later in the day when I spotted it on a swing through the kitchen.  My birthday celebration is also coming up this week, which we moved from late in December.  There are just too many good things to eat around the holidays, so making another chocolate cake didn’t seem like the right thing to do.  I’m hoping for a nice dinner and a Sacher or Linzer Torte.   

And maybe even a present!  I won’t get my hopes up too high just yet, though.  With all the goodies coming my way, it felt great to get back into a fitness routine of late.  I seem to have gotten into more classes than I was doing before, but I love it.  There’s a new Dancefit class at Windfall in the mornings, and Hayley, the instructor, is an amazing ball of energy.  She’s incredibly positive and enthusiastic, so much so that it’s fun to get up in the morning.  I’m still doing Bollywood on Saturday mornings at Panache, and this past Saturday the class was packed.  A lot of my favorite people were together having a rocking good time.  I even get some afternoon exercise time with Jenny (sweaty Mondays) or Walter (wicked Wednesdays).  After a full day of making art I really appreciate the chance to just go dance and throw my body around.  I get a reminder with my morning espresso and cherry pie that I need to get up and exercise!  Life is good.

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Birthday cakes and Christmas cheer!

Despite my best efforts, blogging fell to a low priority over the holidays.  I almost got this post out before Christmas but I never got around to posting.  I’m going to update and share it.  I’ll tell you what’s new and exciting in the new year in a fresh post shortly. 

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but my studio is delightful.  It’s been a very good week in the art studio.  I spent time there weaving each day this week and managed to finish a piece called ‘Cousins at the Lake’.  I’ve been thinking about family, and that the holiday season is the perfect time to get together.  I’ve been doing my nook and cranny cleaning and general home re-organizing in advance of my family coming in from Michigan and New Mexico over the Christmas holiday.  I also flashed back to my friend and photographer Tom, who has a cottage on a lake with birches surrounding it.  Somehow those ideas all came together into the piece as the holiday approaches. 

I’m also hoping to get at least one other piece completed before I have to convert my studio into a bedroom.  A drawing on a thank you card I received after I visited a fifth grade classroom at Binford last week inspired this piece.  I was invited to talk about using recycled materials to create art, something I do in each of my pieces.  I had a really good time with a fun and enthusiastic bunch of kids.  I was very impressed with the insightful questions they asked about interpretations of the pieces.  A few days later they surprised me with an amazing batch of thank-you cards!  One had a sketch that really spoke to me, and I’m planning to build a weaving around the idea.  The weaving will feature a balloon tied to a park bench that’s under a tree.  I’ll call it something like ‘Tethered Memories’.  Since the time I wrote the first and last draft of this post, I’ve managed to bring the piece to completion. 

If you didn’t get that I’ve been on an art frenzy since I’ve completed my last commission pieces and before I go into holiday mode, I can report that I have also been working on my felted fruit piece.  I have all but the seeds finished on the watermelon chunks.  I filled in the meat of the lemon slices with wool that I have in my stash that I dyed to a gentle yellow with dandelions.  Then I finished the edible white part of the apple slices.  It’s nice to be working on this project because I can work on it anywhere.   When my art studio becomes a bedroom for the New Mexico Drummonds I’ll still be able to move the piece forward.  I plan to do a lot of chatting with family, and I can always poke while I talk and listen. 

I have to start winding this down, but lots of other stuff is going on.  I’m in the process of sorting out my summer travel schedule. I heard back from the Des Moines art fair, but unfortunately they wait listed me.  Tommie is convinced that they’ll invite me to participate, so we’ll just wait and see.  On Thursday we celebrated Jim’s birthday.  It wasn’t a pie week, but I did make an elaborate German chocolate cake that Jim requested.  I found a Bobby Flay variation on the classic recipe listed with a high degree of difficulty.  I was up for a challenge, so off I went!  I was sold on the cake part when I read that it featured a cup of cocoa powder.  I ended up using Giaradelli’s instead of Dutch (Drost) because that was all I could find.  The frosting recipe called for a cup of goat milk, but I haven’t seen any goats lately so I improvised.  My favorite part of the process was learning Bobby’s ganache technique , which was the absolute simplest process I’ve ever used.  I’m definitely going to use that again on some other baked delight very soon.  The cake was a big hit!  It took several days to finish it off, even though it went very well with espresso for breakfast.  Who knew?  Happy birthday to my sweetie pie. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Time to weave and receive!

 As soon as I completed my final commission piece, I revved up my sewing machine and launched into one last push on Re-Shirts before the Unitarian Universalist Art Fair this past weekend.  I managed to assemble a few more from fabrics I snipped into shape and stored for the occasion.  I wanted to have a nice selection because the Re-Shirts were a big hit at the ‘UU’ show last season.  I even picked up a few shirts I had at 'The Gathering' in town and ended up with sixty-two Re-Shirts.  Just as I was building up artistic steam for the show, a big storm came barreling out of the Midwest.  It dropped ice on us during set-up, then eight inches of snow overnight and through Friday.   

The schools were closed and the town pretty well shut down, but I drove in to meet the enthusiastic crowd of eight or so shoppers that braved the weather.  On the bright side, I had lots of time to needle-felt, talk to my friends and even do some Christmas shopping without any crowds!  Saturday dawned a little cold and crispy, but more people did venture out.  It was good to see some familiar faces that I get to see only once or twice a year and catch up.  The smaller crowds yielded longer and more meaningful conversations, which I liked.   

The good news is that I have plenty of Re-Shirts for the Bloom show in February!  I'm sure I’ll till make a few more, though.  I’ve had several comments or requests for Re-shirts that are a little longer in the front.  I re-designed my tank in all three sizes such that it is about four inches longer both places.  I’ve created the pattern and I’ll try it out before Christmas.  My plan is to give great Aunt Lois the first one in blue, which is her color, so don’t tell her! 

Partly because of the show, I have done a fair amount of needle felting lately.  I finished the lemon and orange rinds for my fruit plate piece.  That reminds me of the story of the piece, which is a nice circle.  My booth at the UU show is next to Abby Gitlitz, the glass artist.  Last year we got to talking about Turkish food.  Abby used to live in Turkey and she speaks the language.  She offered to bring me a recipe for imam bialdi, my favorite dish at Anatolia on Fourth Street in town.  Abby brought me a cookbook that happened to have an image of a bunch of vegetables laid out on a plate as a salad, some assembly required.  That image inspired the “Summer Salad” piece, and now, a year later, “Fruit Plate.”   

I was also reminded that last summer, Marcy Neiditz, ceramicist extraordinaire, gave me a pale green, thick, wool sweater that she shrank.  I’m never sure what I’ll use materials for, but I discovered that the green was just perfect for the inside of kiwis slices!  I added the brown skins onto the kiwi slices during slow times at the show.  I even had time to work on the pink fruit of watermelon triangles.  I previously dyed some fleece with cherry and strawberry kool-aid to get just the right color.  When the show was finally over Saturday afternoon, we packed up in record time and celebrated another successful show in our own special way, with homemade kluski and a warm blackberry pie!  I think there’s still one slice left for tomorrow’s breakfast with coffee.  Now I can focus on the holidays and reclaiming the house.  The power of two boys to reduce order and cleanliness in a house should never be underestimated.  Then I’ll get to move back into my art studio and weave!  I’m so excited!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

The holiday season is upon us!

Last week included Thanksgiving, which means travel to Michigan to visit Grandma and her kitties.  I came really close to finishing my latest commission piece just before we left, which made me eager to get back at it when we returned.  I’m delighted to report that the weeping willow is now fully leafed out, finished, and en route to it’s new home.  I love the way the branches drape from the tree.  I see an elegance that reminds me of Rapunzel’s hair.  To finalize the piece I added a special bench with an unusual feature—it gives the patron’s initials and anniversary date carved into one of the bench slats. 

The piece is a gift to commemorate their anniversary, so I wanted it to be special.  I did some practice carving and staining to get it right.  I think I came up with a technique that yields writing that is at once legible and cryptic.  You have to know what you’re looking for to recognize the detail.  The piece is finally complete and I’m delighted with how it turned out. 

Since you asked about Re-Shirts, the number of the week is 32!  That’s how many new shirts I’ve made for the Unitarian Universalist art fair.  I probably could have assembled a few more but I ran out of black bias tape.  I finished snipping off all the little strings and my friend Ruth came through on her generous offer to come by and iron the shirts in advance of the fair.  It’s the last art fair of my holiday season before I burrow into my studio to create pieces for the 2014 summer art fair season.  Next week I will also re-stock my local venues, such as The Gathering, which has Re-Shirts and Lion scarves for sale in the holiday season, and By Hand Gallery, Wonderlab, and BloomingfoodsEast, which have felted scarves, sweater petals and cards.  The all make nice holiday gifts!

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we had a delightful visit to Michigan for the holiday.  We visited with Grandma, Lois and family friends the Gibsons and Ms. Millie.  We ate and laughed a lot and just generally hung out.  I’m never good at just sitting still so I did manage to make a nice big bowl of leaf clumps out of the yarn that I dyed last month.  I also came up with an idea for a new piece.  It was inspired by a comment from my patron that I sent the last piece to (Tap Water).  

 She said something about a fruit piece and I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be fun to do a fruit plate similar to my ‘Summer Salad’ piece. In my new vision I want to create clumps of color where similar vegetables are arranged thereby making almost color blocks on the canvas.  I’ve started thinking about and creating lemon slices, orange slices, kiwi slices, blueberries, cherries, apple chunks and watermelon triangles.  

 I’ve already made the lemon slice discs and attached yellow fleece, dyed with turmeric to create the outer edge of the lemon rind.  I’m looking forward to delving into my dandelion-dyed fleece to use as the lemon meat.  I think it will be a fun piece, but don’t ask about cantaloupes because I'm allergic to them. 

Oh, and I did get two small slices of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.  It was good, but not enough.  The pie fairy is going to have to hurry to get one in before we get to the special raspberry pie scheduled for Christmas!  Go pie fairy, go!

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

As American as Re-Shirts and Apple Pie

It is delightful to be back on schedule with a weekly blog—things have settled down to the usual weekly hectic pace.  I have been working on my next commission piece and I now have the background woven.  By the end of today I should have the piece stretched out in its frame.  My next step is to do the dimensional crochet to build the grassy shoreline forward such that there is a place to plant the willow tree and the bench that are the focal points of the piece. 

I love to weave, so that’s taken up a lot of time, but I’ve had to split my time between weaving and making more Re-Shirts.  Last week I cut out the pattern for 48 new Re-shirts!  I focused the fall/winter colors that are strong and bold.  I tried to avoid pastel colors, but a few fabrics just demanded to be used.  I am planning to do the Bloom showcase in February, so those colors might be more appropriate as spring approaches.  It was a lot of fun breaking open the boxes of fabrics I’ve been collecting over the past several months.  

 It’s a lot like opening Christmas presents with all the colors and textures.  I then get to piece them together to see who works with whom.  I began with eight bins of fabrics that have had a previous life and now I’m down to four.  So many of the fabrics have history, such as the Re-Shirt I made from Rosemary P. Miller’s curtains.  I even cut up my first official art fair dress, which was made of flax.  The back-story here is that I always have a collection of four or five nice dresses that I wear at shows.  The lower parts of dresses are usually in really good shape as the tops wear out, so I want them to live in a Re-Shirt.  I even have some shirts that Tommie has outgrown and should be hand-me-downs, but the colors and patterns don’t match Jacob’s aesthetic.  And of course I’m permitted to remove shirts from Jacob’s wardrobe that no longer match his vision of style. 

To keep myself fit I’ve been doing Bollywood, Zumba and Dance fit more regularly these days.  Yesterday morning I was even part of IU’s Dance Marathon as a back-up dancer in Darrelyn’s Zumba troop.  Our goal was to pump up the crowd of over three thousand IU students with some energetic music and dance.  They were thirty hours into the marathon at 5:30 in the morning when we started.  It was a lot of fun, although I realized I was the oldest person in the whole room.  What I lack in youth I make up for in enthusiasm!  The marathon was held in the indoor tennis facility to make room for all the students and dancers.

On Friday night, Tommie and I went to IU’s basketball game.  It was a lot of fun, whooping and hollering and cheering.  We even did the IU chop (on cue, of course).  On the way out we spoke French as we walked to our meet-up point with Jim and Jacob.  They went to see Ender’s Game, and they came to pick us up.  I think they liked the movie.   

With the balmy weather we’ve had this week I was able to sand and paint four more frames for this winter’s weaving projects.  That brings my total of finished frames to 24.  The warm weather will pass with the spate of thunderstorms and sporadic tornadoes that passed us by yesterday afternoon.   

 

Oh, and good news!   

A fresh apple pie appeared early this week!  I still have one slice left to have with coffee to start my Monday morning, so life is good. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin 

Great holiday art fairs, but no pies.

When the weather turns cold I start thinking about the Bloomington holiday art fair season.  It has been a full couple of weeks as I prepared for the Fiber Arts Show held over the past weekend.  The Spinners and Weavers Guild puts it on, and this year we had a record turnout.  I heard that the concurrent Clay and Glass shows that are also held in churches along Third Street were packed as well.  I brought forty-five of my new Re-shirts to the show and came home with less than twenty.  With the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Holiday Art show coming up in early December, and Talia's "Gathering" pop-up store opening in Fountain Square Mall later this month I have to get busy again!  With the weekend behind me I took over the dining room, pushing the table out of the way to make the floor into my palette.  The boys will just have to find somewhere else to eat for a few days!

My Re-Shirts are my project to give a second life to great fabrics trapped in old garments.  I collect and cut up shirts, skirts, dresses, curtains, and any interesting materials I can get my hands on.  Sometimes I include a fabric panel "chest plate" I created by block printing.  Over the summer, in anticipation of this season, I made my own blocks and created some prints to which I’m partial.  I also experimented with a cross-section of a Nautilus shell and used that as a ‘block’ to print.  The result isn’t as bold as I intended, but the pattern has a delicate quality and lots of detail that I find appealing.  I’m planning to incorporate it as a centerpiece in some of the new shirts for the UU show. 

Weaving hasn’t been a mainstay of my efforts lately, but I did finish one of my commission pieces, a version of Tap Water.  I excitedly finished the piece and packed it up into a big box to ship today.  And now I’m launching full force on my next commission piece, which will be similar to my recent ‘Sitting with Grandpa’.  It will feature a park bench overlooking a pond, but this one will have a secret message carved into the bench to celebrate the couple’s anniversary. 

My family life has been packed, as usual.  Jacob has been practicing with his Hip Hop group at the Panache dance studio.  With extra practices in the evening to tighten things up, along with Tommie’s Science Olympiad and Jacob’s assistant teaching at Monroe County Martial Arts, we were a bit oversubscribed.  Last Friday night was the showcase and Jacob did a fabulous job with his two pieces.  I think he also had a great time dancing with his friends, so this might become one of his regular activities.  Panache is such a great studio, filled with enthusiastic and supportive people. 

  And as for the report from the kitchen - lots of baking has been happening in the house, with bread, muffins, but no pie.  I used up all the summer apples from Grandma’s house that we had frozen in July.  I incorporated the rind of three oranges into a nice recipe I found that uses whole wheat flour and lots of cut oats.  I made variations with cranberries and just got the OK from Jacob to include toasted pecans.  Hmm, did I say that there was no pie over the last TWO weeks?  Even though I called on the Pie Fairy in my last blog?  I am not amused. 

Until next week,

Martina Celerin