Knitters hit the streets

Hennning Wallace, left, and Elizabeth Trieu, center, help textile artist Magda Sayeg wrap knitted yarn around a column during Yarn Bombing Day, Saturday, June 11, 2011, at Michaels in Burbank. Yarn bombing is a type of street art that features displays of knitting or crocheting on ordinary objects in the community such as street signs, trees, public buildings and monuments. (Michael Owen Baker/staff photographer)

For at least one day, the world got just a little warmer and fuzzier, thanks to a whimsical art movement known as "yarn bombing."

In a softer and light-hearted take on graffiti, guerrilla "fiber artists" took to the streets during the first-ever International Yarn Bombing Day on Saturday in an attempt to bring a little color to urban landscapes, outfitting inanimate objects such as trees, street signs, parking meters, fences, statues and even cars with knit pieces.

The common goal: to brighten up someone's day and hopefully bring a smile to their face by putting crocheting in a different light. | Click here to see photo gallery.

"If one act of yarn bombing makes someone smile or brightens someone's day when they look at it, then what we as a community have done one day in a year would make this event a success," wrote the founder of the International Yarn Bombing Day, Alberta-based knitter Joann Matvichuk.

Matvichuk and Magda Sayeg, an Austin-based artist credited with starting the movement about seven years ago in Houston, both were stunned at how the movement had grown into thousands of people taking part in the day from as far as Iceland, Norway, Egypt, Israel, Germany

and Australia.

"It's giving (the mundane) human qualities that somehow make you smile, maybe make you think of someone knitting you a sweater," said Sayeg, who yarn-bombed Michaels craft store in Burbank on Friday and Saturday. "No longer is it a mailbox, it's a mailbox with a sweater. It all of a sudden becomes kind of cute and adorable."

Along with a small crew, Sayeg, 37, cozied up the facade of the store, and wrapped columns and other architecture inside.

To mark the day, the chain had invited yarn-bombers to decorate five of its stores across the states. More conventional knitters were also invited to create blankets for Starlight Children's Foundation, which helps seriously ill children and their families.

"We are continually impressed by the creativity of all our customers," said Paula Puleo, Chief Marketing Officer of Michaels. "And salute those who share their unique art with their communities."

The Burbank project was the latest in a number of installations Sayeg has done, which has ranged from a 300-foot office AC duct to a bus in Mexico City, to 60 lampposts along a major street in Rome, to dozens of trees in Paris. Her Mini Cooper has its own red- blue- and green-striped cozy.

"It's just inspired the household knitter to do something nonfunctional," Sayeg said. "People are taking this material that's associated with things that are functional such as clothing, and they're knitting for art's sake. They're taking it out of its traditional context, which is using it to make things to keep warm."

And to those who see yarn bombing as a form of vandalism, Sayeg calls it "the most harmless thing."

"Knitting is usually associated with love," Sayeg said. "No one ever knits for hate."

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18255450?source=rss

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