Bombing. With yarn.

Yarn bombing for me is very exciting. And apparently for some of you guys as well. So, I decided to talk about it a bit more and introduce some yarn bombers/artists. Although they are not all artists by trade, their approach to knitting and crochet makes my heart skip a bit.

Magda Sayeg

I was so moved when I read her story and how she started a world-wide movement out of boredom. Magda Sayeg, the mother of the yarn bombing movement, believes that we should interact with art in our everyday lives and not only when visiting museums or exhibitions. To her, yarn bombing IS a form of art. What fascinates me most about Magda Sayeg’s art is that she takes this “kind” and gentle material, the yarn,  and covers up everyday objects and gives them a totally different meaning: Covering a double-decker bus with yarn, tree trunks, stop sign poles and so on. It is really an eye turner. You ARE going to stop and look at it. And maybe describe it to your friend. While in the process of yarn bombing, Magda Sayeg, interacts with passers-by. “Why are you doing this?”, “woah! This is beautiful!”, “You are ruining this street pole!”, or “What happens if it gets wet?”. These are some of the questions she is confronted with.

Isn’t this some kind of change, interaction and engagement? And isn’t this some kind of evolution of art as well? Maybe it will just bring a smile to your face. Or it will help you see things differently.

Ernesto Neto

Moving on to Ernesto Neto, a Brazilian visual artist. I first encountered his art when I saw his crocheted installation, GaiaMotherTree, at Zurich Main Station, sometime in July 2018. I was in total awe. So much, that I purposely forgot to take a train home. The installation looked like a huge magic tree from another world. With its organic and sensual form, hanging from the high ceilings of the station, touching and spreading on the floor, the artist created some kind of a refuge in this super busy and noisy station. You could interact with the installation, walk through it, sit down and meditate in it, touch and smell it (parts of it were filled with aromatic herbs). What Neto is trying to communicate with his art, is “to slow down our time, for us to have time to breathe and feel life inside of us”.

Okay maybe Ernesto Neto is not an actual yarn bomber, but he uses knitting and crochet in a lot of his art. I couldn’t not include him.

Stephen Duneier, aka the Yarnbomber

Last time, I talked about breaking down the stereotypes. Well, Stephen Duneier is probably the best example. Investment and business manager, strategist, author, coach and lecturer. In his TED Talk Achieving Your Most Ambitious Goals, he talks about how he achieved and made his wildest dreams come true. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t concentrate for 5 minutes, a mediocre student, overweight and all the things you can imagine as a consequence. At some point, he decided to change his approach to life. He took little steps and started to realize that “persistence breeds productivity”. Hold on, I am getting to the yarn bombing part. He put a goal of reading 50 books per year and he recognized that the first step, was to identify when to put the phone down and read one word. That one word would lead to reading a phrase and so on. He went on to apply this method to his studies, to his weight problem, his professional life, creating his own consulting firm and finally holding a Guinness world record. For what? HA! For the largest crocheted granny square!!

Stephen Duneier, learned how to ride a unicycle, to play the drums, completed one of the world’s hardest half marathon, called Pier to Peak. And then, he learned how to knit and crochet! It all started when, one day he was sitting under a huge eucalyptus tree and just looking at it, he thought: “this tree would look really cool if it were covered in yarn”. That’s when he discovered yarn bombing. This was actually his first yarn bombing project:

Do you realize now how different knitting or crochet can be from what you thought it was? And this, yarn bombing thing, is only a tiny part of what you can do with these crafts. The important thing here, is to realize that nothing is what it looks like. And how dusty ideas, views, or whatever you want to call it, should always be challenged.

Till next time.

Love & Craft,

S.