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Friday, March 16, 2012

Lace invasion

What could be more fun on a beautiful spring day than to go to your favorite museum and apply doilies to trees?  I was invited to participate in this "lace invasion" by my fiber art friend Bette Levy, whose show opens this evening at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany IN.  Bette's work includes a lot of crocheting, and the bright idea was had to do a crocheted installation on the lawn and steps of the museum.

Bette and some others had worked ahead, crocheting between doilies to make large expanses of lacy coverings, so that all they had to do was wrap the expanses around the tree and close up the back side.  On my tree we were more improvisational, simply applying the doilies to the tree with push pins and then crocheting cords between them.

Because our tree was small and had several branches at working level, we were able to work up quite an intricate network of cords and doilies.


By contrast, the people with the largest tree just made a single big wrap.

People also put doilies over the architecture.

There were unexpected obstacles to working in situ: where to put your hands and your thread! When there's a branch in the way you have to be able to adapt your stance.  Here's me in action, trying to make my wrists bend in ways my grandmothers never taught me.  (thanks to Suzi Z for the last two photos)

4 comments:

  1. I wished all that lace was mine.

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  2. The serendipity in artist's lives is a constant. That is how visual creatives work...discovery through our daily action. The very day that Bette Levy asked if I would consider adding to the crochet 'bomb' on site "DOILIES" project at Carnegie Center, even though I was past #LAFTA member, I discovered in my basement WHERE THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN!!..the doilies crocheted by my Swedish grandmother whose family name MAGNUSON I use as my business and e-mail conglomeration "tag" ID #magnusonart.

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  3. This makes me happy just looking at it! Hope that you had fun.

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  4. It was fun to look at and watch the "bombers" in action yesterday. Betty's show was so interesting and quite a change from anything I have seen of hers. Loved the letters, lists and envelope pieces, especially.
    Robin Walston

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