Balls of Light and Columns of Smoke: Surfaces in Hyperbolic Crochet,

Creative Combinations at the Wisconsin Union Galleries

By Katie Vaughn

 

Interesting forms have taken over the Wisconsin Union Galleries. Beautiful beings seem to twist, turn and grow before you in the Class of 1925 Gallery in the Memorial Union, and in the adjacent room, rebar has transformed into a minimalist landscape in the Porter Butts Gallery.
In Balls of Light and Columns of Smoke: Surfaces in Hyperbolic Crochet, Ayelet Lindenstrauss Larsen and Gabriele Meyer showcase a stunning application of math. The two mathematicians have created large- and small-scale hyperbolic forms out of crochet.
In an exhibition statement, the artists explain that a hyperbolic plane is a type of two-dimensional object in which every point looks like every other point. But in these planes, “if you start looking at concentric circles, their circumferences grow ‘too quickly.’” This “extra” grows exponentially, resulting in wild ruffles and curls.
The forms occur naturally in some shells, algae and leaves, but Larsen and Meyer create theirs by hand, in boldly hued and white yarn. Meyer hangs her larger works from the ceiling, allowing them to turn and interact within the space.
Larsen, in contrast, displays her tiny forms inside miniature room-boxes, a clever way to play with scale. Though her pieces are small, they feel otherwise. She writes: “when I hold them in the palm of my hand they do not feel small. The explosive growth of their boundaries gives them power, and the power reads as big.”
While one might expect an artistic examination of a mathematical form to be carried out in a high-tech, computerized manner, the surprising use of a traditional craft instead is a stirring and deeply satisfying choice.

In the next room, Suzanne Torres explores the dualities of the modern world in De-Constructed Environments.
Her “Solitary Skin” installation spans the gallery floor. The steely rebar material and grid-like form reference cities, construction and urban architecture, yet the organic shape resembles an undulating landscape. Its sleek, almost skeletal shape abstracts and distills the idea of the environment down to its essence.
In a statement about the exhibition, Torres writes: “My intention is to devise an alternative landscape embedded in the dualities that construct our habitats—the natural and artificial, the surreal and intimate, the contrived and happenstance—by manipulating the language of materials most commonly associated with our constructed settings and mundane usage.”

By her hand, the combination of hard, human-made materials and a free-flowing, natural form feels like a most accurate reflection of the modern environment.
Both De-Constructed Environments and Balls of Light and Columns of Smoke run through October 29 at the Memorial Union. For more information, visit union.wisc.edu.

Yarn Bombing: a craft phenomenon that's gone from street art to community activity!

Have you noticed any trees wearing sweaters, or statues with colored covers? Then you've seen yarn bombing, a craft phenomenon that's gone from street art to community activity!

Carly Mallenbaum, USA TODAY 9:55 a.m. EST November 11, 2013

(Photo: Brooke Seidelmann)

WASHINGTON -- Look closely , and you'll notice something special about the greenery at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts community center on U Street: It's made entirely of yarn.
"We wanted to play on the contrast and decorate the outside with something that you don't traditionally see in this urban jungle," says Stacy Cantrell, 41, the curator of the Smith Center's knit graffiti.
The nonprofit's display is the latest iteration of the craft trend that's been coloring city streets for about a decade; Yarn bombing, the act of crocheting and knitting unexpected pieces for public display. Leanne Prain, author of Yarn Bombing who may have coined the term, says "bombing" is a word often used in street art to describe "something explosive you do really fast," like "spraypaint subway cars" and now, cover public property in knitting. Hurry and take an iPhone picture, because the pops of woven color go up quickly and have limited life-spans.

"That's kind of the beauty of yarn bombing—it's temporary," says Beth Baldwin, 40, an arts coordinator who adorned a sign-less brown-brick bar in 2011 with knitted pink and red hearts. "Maybe you're noticing things in your neighborhood that you never noticed before, and then it's gone. It leaves a little hole in your artistic heart."

The artwork filling people's hearts, Twitter feeds, Pinterest boards and Instagram accounts, ranges from tube socks on parking meters, to accessorized statues and wrapped city buses.
Magda Sayeg, 39, is widely considered the first yarn bomber. She says she "wanted to add something that was a little more human and soft" to her Houston, Texas clothing store "on a boring, dreary day" in 2005. So, she knit a cover for her doorknob.

"People were walking in to look at it and asking me about it," she says. Later, Sayeg and a group of guerrilla knitters who cheekily called themselves Knitta, please, "wanted to gauge people's reactions" by knitting covers for car antennas and stop signs. Other international knitters have followed suit, leaving few cities safe from surprise attacks of yarn.

Yarn bombing is the act of covering something unexpected in knitting. Why not knit a sweater for a tree this season?  Magda Sayeg

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Sayeg covered a Mexico City bus in psychedelic colors, yarn bombed part of a Bali statue, wove a message into 250 rods on a Brooklyn bridge and decorated a Sydney stairwell in stripes of yarn. "Even if you're a grumpy person and hate my work, you end up sort of smiling" after seeing it, she says.
Yarn artwork like Sayeg's is more than just pretty colors. Knit installations "can be absolutely subverting authority," says Nicholas Bell, curator of American Craft at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He says, for example, popular crochet artist Olek showed "underlying criticism of the economic order" when she yarn-bombed the Wall Street bull statue in pink yarn on Christmas three years ago.

In July 2012, Bell featured an Olek work in his 40 Under 40: Craft Futures exhibit at the American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery. "People did a lot of staring in disbelief" at Olek's installation, a yarn-bombed room which "rips the idea of knitting as your grandma's hobby," says Bell.
Lucia deCordre, urban design director at Virginia's Rosslyn Business Improvement District, turned to yarn-bombing when she needed a community-friendly way to highlight the path from the local metro stop to the Artisphere museum in Virginia.
"Yarn bombing could get that job done," while also bringing the community together, said deCordre. This summer, more than 140 volunteers hand-stitched tree covers and crocheted animals for the project, which earned deCordre a Downtown Merit Award.
Back on U Street, the knit cacti are about much more than grabbing attention and directing pedestrians; they're about healing.

Creating the public art brings people together "from all walks of life, ages and skill levels" for therapeutic knit sessions, says Cantrell, who curated both the Rosslyn and U Street yarn displays. The Smith Center, which is yarn-bombing in honor of its Against the Bias craft exhibit, is a non-profit community center for those affected by cancer.

Those that participated will "enter into this community of crocheters and knitters, and make lifelong friendships," says Cantrell.

Meanwhile, passersby can't help but turn their heads and smirk at the wild yarn flowers. Sheetal Patel, 33, stops to take a photo.

"I've never seen a yarn bomb before," she says after the term is explained to her. "It makes me so happy, because it's a drab street. Now, I can peek out my window" to see some "character."