Bringing The Yarn Bomb To The Country

[Editor's Note: As I am facing numerous writing deadlines over the second half of February, this seems like a good time to give a retrospective glance to the first two years of Art of the Rural. Over these weeks I will feature a few new articles, but also many favorites from the archives. Thanks again to everyone who has read and contributed; what began as a labor of love has become a project far larger, and far more rewarding, than I ever could have anticipated - and I deeply appreciate the readership and participation of such a diverse audience. In March we will offer new articles and series, and share some new projects related to our mission.

Bringing The Yarn Bomb To The Country was originally published on June 9, 2011. International Yarn Bombing Day is set for June 9th this year.]

By Rachel Reynolds Luster, Contributing Editor

International Yarn Bombing Day will occur for the first time this Saturday, June 11th. The event was the brainchild of Joann Matvichuk, a “domestic goddess” who lives and works in Lethbridge, Alberta. Her motivation is to encourage knitters and crocheters to perform crafted graffiti on the same day, around the world as a collective group.

For those not familiar with the concept of yarn bombing, it’s a form of graffiti and cultural activism that involves repurposing aspects of the urban landscape by covering them with knitted and crocheted adornments. The movement was started in 2005 by Texas artist Magda Sayeg. At the time, Sayeg was the owner of a yarn shop in Houston and was overcome with “a selfish desire to add color to my world.” In reaction to the urban landscape and the lack of warmth she found there, she knitted a cozy to cover the metal door handle of her shop. She then knitted a sheath for the stop sign across the street. Passersby stopped and noticed. They took pictures. She was encouraged by the reaction and began covering items across the city. 

Sayeg and a group of fellow knitters have since yarn bombed items across the world including parking meters in Brooklyn, a bus in Mexico, and a twenty-six foot statue of a soldier in Bali, neutering its violence, according to a 2010 article in The Guardian. In that same article, Sayeg says, “In this world of technology, over-development, fewer trees and more concrete, it is empowering to be able to beautify your environment." This is a powerful statement in action. Sayeg, now in Austin, has spawned an international movement with yarn bombing groups popping up not only across America but also in Japan, Britain, Scandinavia, South Africa, and Australia.

Generally done in cover of darkness, some of the participants wear masks and relish the role of artistic vagrants. Like all unsanctioned street art, yarn bombing is illegal, and Sayeg’s original group of knitters in Houston crafted a terminology for their work based on the world of hip-hop, creating names for themselves such as Notorious N.I.T. and P-Knitty. The group as a whole was called Knitta Please or just Knitta. Further information on the history of the movement, Magda, and International Yarn Bombing can be found here.  

I’m not really good at knitting, but I love to do it. I’ve crocheted for as long as I remember. My great-grandmother taught me when I was 4 or 5 to do a chain and basic single stitch. I remember getting a crocheted potholder every Christmas from Nanny with a five dollar bill folded up inside. While they were truly horrible potholders (acrylic yarn easily melts), I still have an entire collection along with the many scarves and pillows she made for me over the years. I keep them because they are touchstones of my time with her and all that she shared with me. They represent personal remembrances, a set of skills, and bright objects that are both functional and decorative.

I am also enamored with the idea of knitting or crocheting to affect cultural change. Yarn bombing definitely falls into the category of “craftivism,” a concept developed by Betsy Greer, whose website is a resource for many in the DIY and feminist craft movements. I love that those participating in yarn bombing, at least on one level, are taking action to reclaim their urban landscape, one that they see as cold and distant, by beautifying and changing it with a craft seen mostly as domestic, predominately functional, and in many circles--I would imagine especially in an urban context--irrelevant to modern society. Participants are reclaiming public spaces as home. Still, I have been contemplating what form such a movement would take in rural America and what the motivations and implications might be.

 Photograph by DPA

First, I believe that many of the rural yarn bombing projects would stay around. Rather than temporary remnants of acts of activism, removed promptly by city employees tasked with keeping the city clean, I think rural examples would be adopted by many as decorative aspects of community life and remain part of objects such as mailboxes or garden swings where they were placed. I also believe that it might cause a resurgence in rural textile craft and appreciation of it. If we factor in, for example in my community, that there are many people, especially women, raising fiber animals and creating yarn that could be used, the implications become economic. These are just some of the possibilities that come to mind, but I would like to encourage any of you who knit or crochet to yarn bomb something, anything, in your rural communities on June 11. Of course, I believe we should locally adapt our methodology for such activities. If you’re going to yarn bomb something at someone’s home, you might ask first. I think, probably, public spaces are fair game. It doesn’t have to be large, could be something as simple as the first door handle that Magda did at her shop in Houston. Yarn bomb your local senior center, or better yet, get those folks involved!

In the spirit of engagement, I sent a note to Joann Matvichuk, organizer of International Yarn Bombing Day, asking if she had communicated with any groups or individuals planning on participating in the event from rural America. She was kind enough to pose the question on the IYBD facebook page and received dozens of responses of interest. Two responses in particular struck me as relevant as we think about what the implications might be for rural yarn bombing activities.

Corrine MacKrell: “I grew up rural. If I were going to yarn bomb at home, I would personalize it like a gift. A camo scarf on or around the garden gnome of a hunting family, flowers in her favorite color for the lady down the road, etc.”

Shane Raymond: In the country we have to be more discrete and organic with our tags. Since I know most of the people and their personalities I can tailor my tags better as well. Overall I would say it's much more personal. Example, a colorful spider webs in the trees in deep state land. The only people that will see them are middle-aged hunters.

I encourage you to join the conversation on the International Yarn Bombing Day’s Facebook page. If you do a project, I’d love for you to share it with us. I’m interested in your photographs and in learning how the projects are perceived in your community. I’ll share my story too.

Crystal Bridges, Alice Walton, and the Occupy Movement

Crystal Bridges; Mike Pirnique, InArkansas.com

As the 11-11-11 opening date for The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art approaches, many high-profile articles on the site and its guiding spirit, Walmart heiress Alice Walton, have begun to appear across the airwaves and the internet. 

Just this morning Elizabeth Blair reported on NPR about the museum and its relationship with its local cultural and natural environment. As has happened across much of the media coverage, Ms. Blair's otherwise excellent overview characterizes the Bentonville area as being small-town, though the region's statistics suggest otherwise; please see Contributing Editor Rachel Reynolds Luster's previous piece on "Art & Identity In a Not-So Rural Corner of Arkansas" for a deeper discussion of Bentonville and Walmart's place in this expanding corner of the state. 

Across Ms. Blair's piece, as well as Martha Teichner's feature from CBS Sunday Morning below, Crystal Bridge's rhetoric on the synthesis of art, architecture, and nature is taken at face value - with no consideration of how rural culture (let alone Ozark culture) comes to inform the space. Ms. Teichner's piece is a success in many other ways -- as it humanizes a figure vilified by certain segments of the art world -- even suggesting, if we read between the lines, a kind of rural-urban narrative within the reactions to an Major American Museum built in the Ozarks. However, the emphasis on "nature" over local culture allows for another piece of reporting on Crystal Bridges that offers the Museum as a pastoral retreat. Ultimately, this does a disservice to Ms. Walton's vision, and to the more engaging discussions that could emerge from such journalism. 

[Unfortunately, CBS disables the YouTube embedding for Sunday Morning; please follow this link to view the 9 minute feature.]

Both of these pieces do succeed in suggesting that the story of Crystal Brides is complicated -  and that a knee-jerk reaction against the museum or its founder misses the unmissable fact: that most major art museums, art institutions, and, indeed the art world itself, is motivated in large part by the largesse of such individuals and their corporate partners. While many citizens might criticize Corporate America's business practices, they gladly partake in the latest Impressionism exhibit. 

Such interconnectedness suggests the argument the Occupy movement has not yet made forcefully enough to its followers: that they are implicated in the very structures they critique. (For instance, the We Are the 99 Percent tumblr page displays the extent to which the movement is energized by frustrated arts and humanities graduates.) A self-examination of where the 99% and the 1% might converge, or at least have shared values or interests, could do profound good for the cultural and political atmosphere in this country - much more so than Guy Fawkes masks on one side and the cartoonish reporting of Fox News on the other.

I find it interesting that this weekend the media will provide dispatches both from the opening of Crystal Bridges and from a new weekend of Occupy events across the country. As these demonstrators begin to feel the effects of winter, as their figures march across the screen, we will also be presented with images of the stunning architecture of Crystal Bridges - a museum set in one of the most caricatured and misunderstood regions of America. Both of these stories suggest that our easiest and most impassioned arguments may not, in the end, bring us any closer to understanding what we might learn, and what we might have in common.

The NEA And Creative Placemaking In Rural America

selection from the cover to the NEA Arts Magazine

On Monday we discussed Double Edge Theatre, a visionary laboratory theatre group that can help to expand the dialogue of what's happening--and what's possible--in rural America and the rural arts. This effort continues today, and is aided by the recent issue of the NEA Arts Magazine, which is entirely devoted to how rural arts and culture organizations are enriching their local and regional places.

Rachel Reynolds Luster and I will be covering each of these organizations in greater detail, but I wanted to make sure that our readers had heard of this issue's publication so that they can peruse it and send the Magazine around to friends and colleagues. Following the link above will lead to a pdf, as well as a wealth of online features--including some well-produced videos. Here is the NEA's introduction to this publication; I'll include links to each organization:

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the United States has turned from a mostly agrarian, rural country into an urban, industrialized one. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, nowadays only about a fifth of the population live in rural areas, even though those lands comprise more than three-quarters of the country and are a major source of the nation's resources, culture, and traditions. Rural America may be more connected than ever before -- through the Internet, better phone services, and improved transportation systems -- but it still faces unique problems. As populations moved from rural to urban/suburban communities -- and metropolitan areas expanded into areas that had been rural -- serious problems have been left in their wake: aging and inefficient infrastructure, lack of employment, increased poverty.

This issue of NEA Arts looks at the creative approaches rural communities have been taking with the arts to help improve their communities socially, aesthetically, and economically. In Vermont, the Orton Family Foundation is bringing artists into the community planning process, while in the middle of Arizona's Sonoran Desert, the International Sonoran Desert Alliance has turned an abandoned school into artist housing, leading to new economic growth for the small town of Ajo. Two rural towns in Washington State take different approaches to utilizing the arts to revitalize their communities. On the Fond du Lac Reservation in Minnesota, art is used in a health clinic to promote the Native culture as well as for its healing properties. And in North Carolina, HandMade in America has shown that the traditional arts are a viable, important part of the local economy as well as the local culture.

The NEA Magazine and its web features also consider Donald Judd and his influence in Marfa, Texas (via the Chinati Foundation), the NEA Our Town program, Dave Loewenstein's mural projects, and The Wormfarm Institute in Wisconsin.  (Folks can read our previous articles on Mr. Loewenstein here and Wormfarm here)

The term "creative placemaking" is discussed at great length in an excellent paper by Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa; Creative Placemaking can be downloaded from the NEA here, and there's also a video that offers further information on the concept and its relevance to our current arts discussions: 

In creative placemaking, partners from public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired.

There will be much more soon on all these ideas and these inspiring examples from rural America. Until then, we can enjoy the Magazine and the NEA video work.

Bringing The Yarn Bomb To The Country

By Rachel Reynolds Luster, Contributing Editor

International Yarn Bombing Day will occur for the first time this Saturday, June 11th. The event was the brainchild of Joann Matvichuk, a “domestic goddess” who lives and works in Lethbridge, Alberta. Her motivation is to encourage knitters and crocheters to perform crafted graffiti on the same day, around the world as a collective group.

For those not familiar with the concept of yarn bombing, it’s a form of graffiti and cultural activism that involves repurposing aspects of the urban landscape by covering them with knitted and crocheted adornments. The movement was started in 2005 by Texas artist Magda Sayeg. At the time, Sayeg was the owner of a yarn shop in Houston and was overcome with “a selfish desire to add color to my world.” In reaction to the urban landscape and the lack of warmth she found there, she knitted a cozy to cover the metal door handle of her shop. She then knitted a sheath for the stop sign across the street. Passersby stopped and noticed. They took pictures. She was encouraged by the reaction and began covering items across the city. She and a group of fellow knitters have since yarn bombed items across the world including parking meters in Brooklyn, a bus in Mexico, and a twenty-six foot statue of a soldier in Bali, neutering its violence, according to a 2010 article in The Guardian. In that same article, Sayeg says, “In this world of technology, over-development, fewer trees and more concrete, it is empowering to be able to beautify your environment." This is a powerful statement in action. Sayeg, now in Austin, has spawned an international movement with yarn bombing groups popping up not only across America but also in Japan, Britain, Scandinavia, South Africa, and Australia.



Generally done in cover of darkness, some of the participants wear masks and relish the role of artistic vagrants. Like all unsanctioned street art, yarn bombing is illegal, and Sayeg’s original group of knitters in Houston crafted a terminology for their work based on the world of hip-hop, creating names for themselves such as Notorious N.I.T. and P-Knitty. The group as a whole was called Knitta Please or just Knitta. Further information on the history of the movement, Magda, and International Yarn Bombing can be found here.  

I’m not really good at knitting, but I love to do it. I’ve crocheted for as long as I remember. My great-grandmother taught me when I was 4 or 5 to do a chain and basic single stitch. I remember getting a crocheted potholder every Christmas from Nanny with a five dollar bill folded up inside. While they were truly horrible potholders (acrylic yarn easily melts), I still have an entire collection along with the many scarves and pillows she made for me over the years. I keep them because they are touchstones of my time with her and all that she shared with me. They represent personal remembrances, a set of skills, and bright objects that are both functional and decorative.

I am also enamored with the idea of knitting or crocheting to affect cultural change. Yarn bombing definitely falls into the category of “craftivism,” a concept developed by Betsy Greer, whose website is a resource for many in the DIY and feminist craft movements. I love that those participating in yarn bombing, at least on one level, are taking action to reclaim their urban landscape, one that they see as cold and distant, by beautifying and changing it with a craft seen mostly as domestic, predominately functional, and in many circles--I would imagine especially in an urban context--irrelevant to modern society. Participants are reclaiming public spaces as home. Still, I have been contemplating what form such a movement would take in rural America and what the motivations and implications might be.

 Photograph by DPA

First, I believe that many of the rural yarn bombing projects would stay around. Rather than temporary remnants of acts of activism, removed promptly by city employees tasked with keeping the city clean, I think rural examples would be adopted by many as decorative aspects of community life and remain part of objects such as mailboxes or garden swings where they were placed. I also believe that it might cause a resurgence in rural textile craft and appreciation of it. If we factor in, for example in my community, that there are many people, especially women, raising fiber animals and creating yarn that could be used, the implications become economic. These are just some of the possibilities that come to mind, but I would like to encourage any of you who knit or crochet to yarn bomb something, anything, in your rural communities on June 11. Of course, I believe we should locally adapt our methodology for such activities. If you’re going to yarn bomb something at someone’s home, you might ask first. I think, probably, public spaces are fair game. It doesn’t have to be large, could be something as simple as the first door handle that Magda did at her shop in Houston. Yarn bomb your local senior center, or better yet, get those folks involved!

In the spirit of engagement, I sent a note to Joann Matvichuk, organizer of International Yarn Bombing Day, asking if she had communicated with any groups or individuals planning on participating in the event from rural America. She was kind enough to pose the question on the IYBD facebook page and received dozens of responses of interest. Two responses in particular struck me as relevant as we think about what the implications might be for rural yarn bombing activities.

Corrine MacKrell: “I grew up rural. If I were going to yarn bomb at home, I would personalize it like a gift. A camo scarf on or around the garden gnome of a hunting family, flowers in her favorite color for the lady down the road, etc.”

Shane Raymond: In the country we have to be more discrete and organic with our tags. Since I know most of the people and their personalities I can tailor my tags better as well. Overall I would say it's much more personal. Example, a colorful spider webs in the trees in deep state land. The only people that will see them are middle-aged hunters.

I encourage you to join the conversation on the International Yarn Bombing Day’s Facebook page. If you do a project, I’d love for you to share it with us. I’m interested in your photographs and in learning how the projects are perceived in your community. I’ll share my story too.

Native American Basketry: A Living Tradition

The Autry National Center in Los Angeles is currently offering The Art of Native American Basketry: A Living Tradition, a wide-ranging look into the basket arts across cultures and geographies. Here's the Autry's introduction to this exhibit:

More than 250 objects will be on view, ranging in size from small Pomo feather baskets made for sale to tourists, to massive Apache olla baskets used for storing large quantities of seeds. Because the works shown have been selected from a remarkably wide-ranging and distinguished collection, visitors will be able to see how the materials, techniques, and designs of the baskets vary from region to region, reflecting different physical environments and traditions. Also evident will be the distinctive styles of individual artists, whose signatures can be instantly recognizable to other weavers. The Autry has invited thirteen contemporary basketweavers to serve as consultants in research and planning and will purchase a basket from each consultant to add to the permanent collection.

The museum, in its efforts to stress the contemporary element of this tradition, is also featuring a series of video installations that carry the voices of these modern basketweavers into the gallery space:



We haven't spent enough time with The Autry National Center in the past, so we look to correct this soon. Their Native Voices program, "devoted to developing and producing new works for the stage by Native American playwrights," is particularly exciting--we'll discuss these productions soon. Until then, The Autry's YouTube channel is well worth a visit; they offer over 50 well-produced videos that suggest the range of their cultural and artistic mission.

Following The Quilt Trail

photograph from the North Tennessee trail by Suzi Parron

Last week Noah Adams produced an excellent piece on NPR's All Things Considered that discussed Tennessee century farms -- both the history of these families and their uncertain future. Mr. Adams journey to these farms followed the North Tennessee Quilt Trail, one of many such trails throughout rural America. 

The barn quilt phenomenon began in Adams County, Ohio in 2001, when Donna Sue Groves set a painted plywood "quilt" on her barn in honor of her mother Maxine, an accomplished quilter. What followed was the Adams County Clothesline of Quilts, a 105 mile circuit that now includes dozens of barns. As Ms. Groves developed this trail--and a movement gathered around the artform--the practice blossomed into a force that both sustained the community and brought in lots of folks to wander the trail and engage in some agritourism. This has led to the formation of regional, and even national, communities of barn quilters; almost a decade later, one would be hard-pressed to drive through many rural counties without having your journey annotated by a few of these quilts. 

An internet search demonstrates how widespread this new artform has become, and how many local rural communities are seeing the wide array of benefits inherent to the art of barn quilting. Suzi Parron, a writer and high school English teacher, has partnered with Ms. Groves to tell the story of this movement in Barn Quilts and The American Quilt Trail, set for publication by Ohio University Press in 2011. Ms. Parron maintains an excellent blog documenting her book-writing process and her travels to barns across the country. 

Below is a video that tells another angle of the story behind these barn quilts. Here, the producers behind The Hardest Year visit Ms. Groves, who is now undergoing treatment for breast cancer. In the face of challenges so painfully common for many Americans in the last few years -- job loss, illness, mounting health care bills -- the community that Ms. Groves helped to create is now reaching to offer their support and friendship.