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Yarn Bombing: The Art of Urban Knitting

Posted on 12 August 2021
By Justine Malone & Alix Callinder
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Yarn Bombing: The Art of Urban Knitting

What is Yarn Bombing?

Yarn bombing is applying frequently highly colorful, knitted or crocheted garments to physical objects in society.

Function street art, office graffiti, yarn bombing is likewise referred to as guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urban knitting, wool bombing, graffiti knitting, and yarnstorming.

The Beginnings of Yarn Bombing

Yarn used as an artful covering has been around for generations. Anyone recollect those crocheted babydoll toilet paper covers?

Beyond household decorations, covering objects with yarn as an outdoors art course is also not new. Just await at the 1990's Yarn Works sculptures by artist Bill Davenport.

Merely the first "yarn flop" as we empathize it today is credited to Magda Sayeg, who made a knitted door handle cozy for her Texas bazaar in 2005.

Yarn covered bus

Her inspiration was simple: she wanted to brighten upwardly an otherwise common object. "Taking inanimate objects and having them come to life" is how she describes the procedure.

Currently Magda is a globally recognized textile artist who gave a Ted Talk most her experience.

Since 2005, yarn bombing has grown into a worldwide movement with knitters and crocheters creating many yarn covered objects around the world.

Yarn sock covering the leg of statue

Lauren O'Farrel became known as the "sneaky graffiti knitter" Deadly Knitshade in 2007, founding Knit the Metropolis in London in 2009 and notoriously yarnbombing a Phone Box in Parliament Square.

David Cole won the coveted $25,000 Rappaport Prize in 2009 for his knitted installations.

Stephen Duneier, known as Yarnbomber, began installing big-calibration yarn art in 2013 in the mountains of Santa Barbara, from covering an entire tree to making a massive, neon spider's web. All of a sudden, yarn bombs were sprouting upward all over the globe.

Is Yarn Bombing Graffiti?

With fame, of class, comes criticism.

Is something as innocuous as yarn considered to exist graffiti?

Some say yes. There are opponents to these forms of "street art" who argue that it is a violation to mark public holding in any way, and consider it a course of vandalism.

Some contend that environmentally it could be bad for copse to have "cozies" wrapped around them. I have heard people call it "litter," or complain when the installation gets dirty or fuzzy after time.

But most see it equally a refreshing pop of colour on an otherwise drab object.

It makes us look at these objects with new eyes and brightens the mundane. I liken yarn bombing with sidewalk chalk – colorful and easy enough to remove – and ofttimes carrying an important message.

Yarn covered benches

Craftivism Brings a Vox to the People

For years now, crafters effectually the globe have been subverting the idea of "women'southward piece of work." Fiber crafts similar knitting, crocheting, embroidery were long dismissed by the patriarchal lens as squeamish homemaker hobbies and nothing more. Feminine qualities were non valued, and working with yarn was considered steadfastly feminine.

These days, women (and men) are beginning to loudly proclaim the real value of feminine qualities, including textile piece of work similar knitting and crocheting. I could become on and on about how the human relationship of femininity and crafts have evolved in contempo years, but that'due south a blog for a different day. The event was, of a sudden "women'south work" had a purpose in the public sector, Beyond the obvious commonsensical function. Textile work has even played an of import part in politics and activism.

Something as historically feminine every bit knitting & crocheting can become a political statement, colloquially referred to equally Craftivism. For case, taking something as unassuming and "soft" equally yarn and covering a state of war tank, or creating a crocheted hand gun sculpture – these acts send a very powerful anti-war, anti-violence message to the observer.

Tank covered in yarn

You may have been aware of the famous Pussyhats during the Women'south March of 2016, a flare-up of pinkish declaring solidarity for women's rights.

An Australian community called Knitting Nannas Against Gas uses craftivism to criticize "the devastation of our state and water past exploration & mining of Coal Seam Gas & other non-renewable free energy.

Maureen Daly Goggin put information technology well in Joie de Fabriquer: The Rhetoricity of Yarn Bombing "For many crafters, paw work is a dynamic response against the separation of labor and domestic skills, the split betwixt public and individual, the disconnection between mass fabricated and handmade, the division betwixt producers and consumers, and the other binaries rendered past modernity and the industrial age."

That said, the beauty of textile crafts is that they can be both within and outside of politics.

Sometimes a yarn bomb is just installed to brand a boring street corner but a little less boring. Sometimes colour exists, but, to be beautiful.

Rock covered with yarn cozy

The biggest yarn bomb on tape, from The Craft Club, was created for the express purpose of being the biggest yarn flop on record. (It later plant a 2d purpose by providing joy and color to the children's hospice where information technology was somewhen installed.)

Agata Olek's famous roofing of Wall Street'due south "Charging Bull", often misinterpreted as a challenge to ideas of hypermasculine aggression, was actually installed equally a whimsical (if unsolicited) Christmas present to New York.

Ironically, the Charging Bull itself was a politically-driven illegal installation in 1989 that was allowed to remain as a permanent fixture, whereas Olek's innocuous bright pink addition was removed after just two hours. Some yarn bombs can be misconstrued as aggressive graffiti when they are but meant to be artful delights.

Yarn Bombing in Santa Rosa

Luckily, in some areas, yarn bombs are supported and adored by the communities in which they are installed.

You may take seen some knitted objects correct here in Santa Rosa!

The City of Santa Rosa deputed us years back to encompass the Railroad Foursquare area lamp posts with yarn. We had volunteers assist the states with the knitting and crocheting for several weeks before finally installing them all together on a Saturday afternoon. They were upwards for nearly two months and really brightened upward the neighborhood – and started some bully conversations.

Santa Rosa currently has an active yarn bomber – Judy Kennedy! She has also been commissioned by the city to do some projects, and does her ain "bombing" around town. The pole in front of Spinster Sisters seems to have a new lively covering seasonally. Wait out for an upcoming interview with Judy in a future weblog post!

Yarn bombing has a storied history. Information technology is colorful and loud and hard to ignore, and whether or not it is making a specific statement, it is certainly being heard. I for i am delighted whenever I come across a new yarn flop in public, and hope to go on seeing them for the rest of my life.

Yarn covered tree trunks