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    The Fine Art of Crochet: Innovative Works from Twenty Contemporary Artists
    The Fine Art of Crochet: Innovative Works from Twenty Contemporary Artists
    The Fine Art of Crochet: Innovative Works from Twenty Contemporary Artists
    Ebook210 pages1 hour

    The Fine Art of Crochet: Innovative Works from Twenty Contemporary Artists

    By Gwen Blakley Kinsler

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    About this ebook

    Fiber artists around the world have embraced crochet as an inventive medium like never before. Expanding on the creative possibilities and using sculpture, immense site-specific installations, performance, and mixed-media objects, they have used crochet techniques to explore feminine craft and heritage, dissect gender codes, and show the primal creative expression represented by crochet.
    In The Fine Art of Crochet, author Gwen Blakley Kinsler looks at the art-crochet movement from 1915 onward to the crochet revolution of the 1960s, profiling twenty of the most innovative practitioners working today. Offering insight to those who may not have otherwise thought to go beyond the purely practical aspect of crochet, she features internationally known artists such as Arline Fisch, Leslie Pontz, Carol Hummel, Tracy Krumm, Bonnie Meltzer, and Soonran Youn. Gwen Blakley Kinslerthe founder of the Crochet Guild of America and a fiber-art practitioner in her own rightexamines the concepts and diverse works of these artists, in whose hands the magic of crochet creates cutting-edge art for the twenty-first century. Each artist approaches the medium with wonder and the desire to explore its full potential.
    This study and collection of images presents an exploration of the diverse styles, unusual shapes, and exquisite textures that characterize crocheted art today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateJun 17, 2013
    ISBN9781481731874
    The Fine Art of Crochet: Innovative Works from Twenty Contemporary Artists
    Author

    Gwen Blakley Kinsler

    Gwen Blakley Kinsler, a.k.a. “Crochetqueen,” is a writer, designer, and teacher, as well as the founder of the Crochet Guild of America. She has coauthored two technical crochet books and has written extensively about crochet as art and the artists who make it since 1994. She currently lives in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

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      Book preview

      The Fine Art of Crochet - Gwen Blakley Kinsler

      AuthorHouse™

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.authorhouse.com

      Phone: 1-800-839-8640

      © 2013 Gwen Blakley Kinsler. All Rights Reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 06/29/2015

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-3186-7 (sc)

      978-1-4817-3187-4 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906032

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Global Warming

      Bonnie Meltzer

      24 x 24 x 15 inches

      Cover Photo courtesy of the artist

      This piece shows how crochet becomes a skin over another surface. It is also instrumental in holding the found objects in place.

      12781.png

      THE FINE ART OF

      Crochet

      INNOVATIVE WORKS FROM 20 CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

      Acknowledgments

      Many, many thanks go to the twenty artists included in this book who opened their lives to me and helped make my dream of a book on the art of crochet possible. Throughout the process, I’ve found myself in the most captivating situation: spending time in the company of twenty talented artists whose work I find awe inspiring. As I traveled around the country doing interviews, it was an honor to be invited into the studios of people with whom I share a common passion for art and crochet. I couldn’t help but feel a special kinship to each of them. They were warm, introspective, and enthusiastically willing to share their concepts and their inspirations with me. I am humbled that they have chosen to share their stories, and I am grateful to have spent time with them. Most importantly, I am pleased to have twenty new friends!

      I am grateful to Karen Searle, author of Knitting Art: 150 Innovative Works from 18 Contemporary Artists (2008) for her advice and encouragement. I appreciate the fiber art path she’s created for me to follow. I am indebted to James Walters who long ago told me to listen to my inner voice and be confident in my creations. Special thanks to each and every member of the Crochet Guild of America who had faith in the concept of a guild. With wide-eyed excitement, they have shared their creations with me and with each other over the past 20 years. Many thanks also to my husband, Alan Kinsler, who has always accepted my adventuresome spirit and encouraged me to pursue my dreams; and to my daughters, Nicole whose writing skills I admire and Bethany who is my ever-willing and best model!

      Contents

      Introduction

      Crochet Beginnings

      Crochet Revolution

      Crochet Evolution

      The Era of Collaboration

      The Artists

      Arline Fisch

      Leslie Pontz

      Georgina Valverde

      Pate Conaway

      Carol Hummel

      Renie Breskin Adams

      Donna Lish

      Dale Roberts

      Nathan Vincent

      Andrea Uravitch

      Kathleen Holmes

      Tracy Krumm

      Donna Rosenthal

      Karen Searle

      Soonran Youn

      Jerry Bleem

      Jo Hamilton

      Yvette Kaiser Smith

      Bonnie Meltzer

      Dr. Carol Ventura

      References

      About the Author

      Introduction

      Crocheting is one of the fascinating traditional techniques that have been set ablaze in recent years by contemporary artists. Young artists are looking at the early works by Hicks, Tawney, Minkowitz, and others. Crocheting, like felting, knitting, and weaving, is finding a new wonderful voice in contemporary art making, impressively breaking previous stereotyped borders.

      —Bruce Hoffman, Director, Snyderman Gallery

      Crochet is a craft whose time has come. Throughout its history, the humblest of women have displayed fine technical skills, hobbyists have followed patterns only to find relaxation in the process, and creative souls have tweaked published patterns to suit their own needs. Today, the influence of crochet is far-reaching and the variety of its applications is endless. Artists from around the world use crochet as their medium of choice, showing unimaginable creativity.

      The works featured in this book represent the diverse styles, unusual shapes, and exquisite textures that characterize crocheted art today. The innate flexibility of crochet lends itself to possibilities that are limited only by each artist’s vivid imagination.

      At the leading edge of the creative crochet movement in 1956, Craft Horizons noted, Now vigor, purpose, and beauty infuse the crafts. No longer are they familiar exercises of techniques alone. They are true art forms reflecting the creative vision of the designer-craftsman who shapes them. The creativity and versatility of the art form and its artists has only continued to grow over the past six decades.

      Many artists discovered and embraced crochet as a means to create art in the 1960s. Clinton MacKenzie in New Design in Crochet, Unlike woven forms, crochet can be conceived in and worked directly in three dimensions. It can be composed in one piece and, like pottery and glassblowing, can be fluidly molded in the making. In Crochet History and Technique, Lis Paludan states Many never learn to crochet nor do they want to. They identify crochet with insertions in thick, white filet crochet and the clumsy woolen crochet of the 1930s. Both seem to have given crochet a bad name. However, new ideas are under way and more and more people have become aware of the scope of crochet. Interest began in the 1960s with experiments in free crochet, and new uses have been taken up. Artists have begun to take an interest in crochet as a means of expression. The best examples exploit the special qualities inherent in the technique of crochet—no attempt is made, as was so often before, to imitate other forms of needlework or handcraft. These trends have caused renewed interest in crochet and an awareness of its possibilities has developed from the 1970s to the present day.

      Over one hundred crochet artists from around the world, including Leslie Blackmon, Elaine Bradford, and Inga Hamilton, Prudence Mapstone and Andrea Lyn Van Benschoten, now come together in an Internet group to promote crochet as an art medium within the larger arts community, to raise awareness of art crochet among the general public and to discuss other crochet-related issues and events. Their consensus is that all kinds of surfaces and structures can be created with crochet including pliable or rigid, lacy or dense, delicate or bold. With just one simple tool and any thin continuous strip of crochet fabric artists can fold, roll, stretch, pleat, and compress to make whatever they want.

      It is this versatility that makes crochet so appealing to artists. Crochet can add a touch of the unique to clay or metal sculpture and it is portable so that it can be practiced in public, which makes for a well-educated gallery audience. Although often passed down from older family members, many crocheters are inspired today by the wide availability of a variety of fibers and colors; those who always push boundaries lend their personalities to create a hip, artistic style. Our financial and domestic constraints have relaxed and that leads to liberation. Our high-tech society has given us free time that was scarce in generations past. We no longer crochet out of need; we create for no other reason than creation.

      Crochet Beginnings

      Lis Paludan in Crochet History &Technique: "Earliest evidence from written sources, oral traditions, and samplers in museums suggest that crochet originated in poor, cold regions of Northern and Southeast Europe and the prosperous milieu of Western Europe. A simple form of crochet (slip stitch) done with tools made from bones, wood, or animal horns had many names: panting (Sweden), pjoning (Norway), Shepherd’s knitting (Scotland), gobelinstich (Germany), crochet de Bosnie (France), hooking (Central Asia)." The term crochet is derived from a French word, crocher, meaning to hook or to pick.

      Elyse and Mike Sommer in A New Look at Crochet noted that the first hint of crochet being used as way to create art surfaced in 1915 when the Modern Priscilla magazine suggested using crochet to make small bowls or covered mirror frames. In the same issue, a hat made of raffia twine foreshadowed the innovative use of all types of materials to come in the 1970s. As America entered World War II, crochet was deemed non-essential and saved for special things, but after the war, crocheted ornamental trimmings and doilies were common in every home. As wool and synthetics came into use, a more sophisticated look followed. During the fifties, crocheted clothing began to appear and standards for patterns were established.

      Crochet Revolution

      Crochet remained domesticated until the 1960s. At the same time young people rebelled against the establishment and crochet changed drastically as crocheters went on tangents no one had seen before. Crochet blossomed as an art form late in the decade and artists interested in fiber and textiles embraced the freedom of crochet, a medium that allows the artist to work in any direction and shape with many colors and textures. James Walters, author of many books on free-form crochet, including those co-authored with Sylvia Cosh, says of crochet art, In the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, the simple, almost ‘instant’ results of crochet together with these vibrant new materials attracted artists and craftspeople with broader aspirations and made it possible for them to express themselves in much more complete and personal ways than the Irish crocheters of the second half of the nineteenth century ever would have dreamed possible.

      In A New Look at Crochet, Elyse and Mike Sommer explain, "In 1968, The International Wall Hangings Show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which included crochet, became an inspirational springboard for many. Prizes in mixed-media shows are frequently being taken by crocheters, and all-crochet shows are no longer just a dream." According to Clinton MacKenzie in New Design in Crochet, "Men are taking a major role alongside women in this movement that takes crochet out of a realm limited merely to fashion and household items."

      Walter Nottingham was instrumental in the art crochet movement of the 1960s. He earned his Master of Fine Arts at the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and developed The Fiber Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. He also taught there as professor emeritus from 1960 to 1989 and influenced a generation of fiber artists. In 2008, the Textile Center of Minneapolis, Minnesota recognized Nottingham’s dedication to the medium with its Spun Gold Award, an honor given for lifetime commitment to fiber arts.

      In an interview with Carol Owen for the Archives

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