Yarn bombing in Philly

Philadelphia light poles get all cozied up

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

By: Peter Crimmins
pcrimmins@whyy.org





Those who have an eye for graffiti may have noticed downtown Philadelphia is getting fluffier. Some scofflaws are using yarn and knitting needles to wrap sidewalk poles and bikes racks with cozies, scarves, and socks. A Chinatown art gallery gives guerrilla knitting the highbrow treatment.

Jerry Kaba strings up yarnwork for his artist girlfriend Jessie Hemmons

Jessie Hemmons wrapped two light poles on Juniper Street near the Convention Center in cozies knit from bright pink, orange, and green yarn. The streetlights are about 30 feet high, requiring a motorized cherry picker to get to the top.

"This is an opportunity I wouldn't be able to do on my own, because I don't have the resources, like being able to go up in a cherry picker."

Hemmons was invited to cover two light poles by an art gallery called Jolie Laide. Director Travis Heck likes the contrast of candy-colored yarn in a post-industrial urban block.
"It's this grungy, broken windows, all the doors are messed up. And to make it a little more beautiful – brighten it up a little with her stuff."

The covered light poles are the largest pieces of yarn bombing in Philadelphia. Hemmons did not install them by herself – she sent her boyfriend up thirty feet in the wobbly cherry picker.
The yarn will remain on the pole until it rots off – but Hemmons says when it gets faded and dirty she will cut it off.

 

Yarn bombing

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Utility pole warmer on a New York City street corner.

Yarn bombing, yarnbombing, graffiti knitting or yarnstorming is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of knitted or crocheted cloth rather than paint or chalk. While yarn installations – called yarn bombs or knit bombs – may last for years, they are considered non-permanent, and, unlike graffiti, can be easily removed if necessary. The practice is believed to have originated in the U.S. with Texas knitters trying to find a creative way to use their leftover and unfinished knitting projects, but it has since spread worldwide.^[1]

While other forms of graffiti may be expressive, decorative, territorial, socio-political commentary, advertising or vandalism, yarn bombing is almost exclusively about reclaiming and personalizing sterile or cold public places.^[1] Dave Cole is a contemporary sculpture artist who practiced knitting as graffiti for a large-scale public art installation in Melbourne Australia for the Big West Arts Festival in 2009. The work was vandalized the night of its completion.^[2] An anonymous knitter or group of knitters dubbed the "Midnight Knitter" has been decorating branches and poles under the cover of darkness in Cape May, New Jersey.^[3]