Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef
By the Institute For Figuring And Companions
January 10 – February 21, 2009
Track 16 Gallery
Bergamot Station, C1
2525 Michigan Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90404
Photo by Alyssa Gorelick

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Holy crochet needles!

What you’re seeing is a crocheted rendering of a coral reef, part of an on ongoing eco/craft/art exhibit at Track 16 gallery in Santa Monica, CA. Thanks to a brother who has art news beamed directly into his brain, I found out about this and will go see it before it closes next month.

I’m excited to see it not just for the technical handiwork (I want to see if I can pick out picot stitches in the anemone!), but also because it showcases the creative and expressive force that crafting is. It’s geek art/nerd crafting at its most colorful and interesting.

More from the gallery’s website:

One of the acknowledged wonders of the natural world, the Great Barrier Reef stretches along the coast of Queensland Australia, in a riotous profusion of color and form unparalleled on our planet. But global warming and pollutants so threaten this fragile marvel that it may well be gone by the end of the century. In homage to the Great One, Christine and Margaret Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring have instigated a project to crochet a handmade reef, a woolly testimony that now engages thousands of women the world over.

Vast in scale, collective in construction, exquisitely detailed, the Crochet Reef is an unprecedented, hybridic, handicraft invocation of a natural wonder that has become, in itself, a new kind of wonder spawned from tens of thousands of hours of labor. After major exhibitions in Chicago, New York, and most recently a smash success at The Hayward in London, Track 16 is proud to present the first West Coast showing of this giant, ongoing, evolutionary, fancywork experiment.

I hope to take my camera with me, and be able to share more fascinating snapshots of the exhibit like these.

For more information, visit the Track 16 gallery website, HERE.

I have a three-day weekend coming up that I’m supposed to devote to quilting, sewing and baking, but now my mind’s wandering to that dark corner under my bed where I stuck my crochet needle and a ball of pink thread a couple months ago in frustration at failing at a scarf. After this exhibit, I just may find myself crawling into the belly of the beast to retrieve those and start crocheting again!