New York - It had to happen: Someday, somewhere, a woman would grow tired of knitting yet another baby blanket, Fair Isle sweater or pair of colourful socks. Then what?
Well, then we get fire hydrants decked out in fuzzy vests, light poles and tree trunks wrapped in colourful, textile love and other outrageous acts of knit graffiti, also known as yarn bombing, yarnstorming and guerrilla knitting. Maybe you have seen the handiwork in a city or suburb near you, even out in the wild. The randomness of it is the point, say these fibre artists.
“It’s really fun to surprise people,” says “Esther,” a member of the Ladies Fancywork Society in Denver, Colorado, who prefers her anonymity. “You don’t expect to see a crochet-wrapped bike loop (rack). It’s just so unexpected. It kinda shakes people up.”
The four crocheting ladies, who took their street names from their grandmothers, tagged the big blue bear that peers into the Denver Convention Centre in April with a crocheted 2.5m ball of blue yarn, attached to the 12.8m bear with a crocheted chain.
Last summer, they were awarded a public arts grant and spent six weeks embellishing a construction-site metal fence with 109m of colourful, crocheted flowers.
Why?
“Street art is so aggressive and masculine,” Esther, 25, reflects. “It’s great to have a counterpoint to it. A hyper-girlie touch.”
So, rogue knitters and subversive crocheters do it for the art, the attention and the thrill.
And folks, they mean well.
“Not everybody is going to love it, and that’s one of the reasons it’s fun. You’re doing something that’s not sanctioned,” says Leanne Prain, 34, who co-wrote the book on yarn bombing. Well, one of the books: 2009’s Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti, with Mandy Moore, from Arsenal Pulp Press.
Transforming the twin crafts in this public manner is liberating for a lot of crafters, says Prain, of Vancouver, Canada.
“My hope is it expands what people think of as art and who can make art,” says Prain.
Knit graffiti artists often “tag” their sites on the sly, even at night. They target street signs and light posts, but avoid interfering with a sign’s purpose. Sometimes the tags are removed quickly, often by passers-by, but others can go unnoticed and remain for weeks, even years. That is part of the thrill for the yarnstormers.
“We don’t obstruct anyone’s way with these things,” says Esther.
Many consider the mother of knit graffiti to be Magda Sayeg of Austin, Texas. In 2005, she knitted a cosy for the door handle at her Houston clothing shop. Reaction to that simple, bright handle propelled Sayeg, now 37, into covert acts of knit graffiti. Her tagging grew bolder: In 2008, she and a six-person team covered a Mexico City bus in colourful Afghan blankets.
“Really, what it says is there’s a need for a human element in a dehumanised environment,” Sayeg says. Today, several yarn artists maintain blogs. From independent acts of worsted rebellion, a community was born.
Another book, Astounding Knits! (Voyageur Press, 2011), by Lela Nargi, highlights several yarn bombers’ work, including Sayeg’s. (You can also see the outlandish bus and other Sayeg works, including her team’s most recent large-scale installation – wrapping up 91m of air conditioning ductwork at Etsy.com’s Brooklyn, New York, headquarters – at her blog, Knitta Please.)
The first International Yarn Bombing Day is this weekend. Promoted on Prain’s Yarn Bombing website, and on its own site and Facebook page, the event is meant to encourage crafters to tag something.
Knit graffiti is not the only novel direction in which the yarn arts are heading. Nargi’s book is an eye-popping introduction to the fanciful ways artists are re-envisioning them: from sweaters so miniature they fit on the head of a pin, to a life-size, knitted gingerbread house.
The work of Dave Cole, a Providence, Rhode Island, sculptor, is among those featured: His American flag, made of felt, is so large it was knitted with utility poles and two John Deere excavators. His 2009 large-scale, knitted work, “The Big Knit”, involved covering a Melbourne, Australia, bridge in bright pink and orange tape.
“I think I’m probably trying to stretch my own abilities more than anything else,” says Cole, 35.
At the other extreme is Anna Hrachovec, a Brooklyn creator of knitted toys, some of which are diminutive and featured in her coming book, Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi (Potter Craft, 2011).
“Once I started making something that was all just my idea, and especially since I was making characters, once those came to life in that way, I never turned back,” says Hrachovec, 29. “I never made a single scarf.” – Sapa-AP