Going Around and Around with Hyperbolics

As we plan for the exhibit coming up in September at the Lincoln City Cultural Center, one of the things that I wanted to consider was the actual visual impact of entering the space. One of the features of the Wertheim sister’s fiber art coral reef in Baden Baden was the coral wall that ran along the outer perimeter of the room.

Thankfully, I had a couple of wire frame book cases that I had disassembled almost a year ago and this provided me with forty wire frames that we can easily cover in hyperbolics and hang around the room.

Hyperbolic corals are certainly the “gateway coral” to creating pieces for the reef. We have some crafters that only want to make straight forward (ha ha) hyperbolics, other crafters that want to make hyperbolics in creative and fascinating materials, and still others who make a couple and then go on a search for other coral forms to create. For all of those people who ask “Do you still need these hyperbolics?” The answer is yes! I have created fourteen frames so far and that is enough to cover the first wall of the textile studio. We will use as many frames as we have hyperbolics to cover them.

All that to say, keep up with the hyperbolics if that is your happy place. I have been playing around with them quite a bit lately and while I pass out the patterns from the Institute for Figuring at fiber fairs and coral making days, I have to admit, I usually play fairly fast and loose with their patterns.

A good example of this would be the simple circular hyperbolic plane. I usually crochet in fingering or worsted weight yarn but the other day, I created a coral in bulky. While I wanted a curly coral, I didn’t necessarily want a tight, rigid coral. I have found that starting the first few rows by increasing once in every single stitch can start you off in a good direction, filling out the middle quickly and hiding the center. You can then choose your rate of increase depending on your chosen yarn and hook. I have also played around with using fingering weight yarn with a C or D hook and increasing three stitches into every stitch for the first few rounds and then going down to either two in every stitch or two in every second stitch. This makes your coral a little softer looking, not quite so small and tight, but yet beautifully curly.

I’ve also been playing around with different types of edging. For some yarn that might not be the most attractive, throwing on a fuzzy novelty yarn edging can basically hide the yarn beneath and make an interesting texture. For yarn that is beautiful and just needs a little lipstick, choosing a threadlike novelty yarn, perhaps a silver or gold, will highlight the hyperbolic curves while still honoring the beautiful yarn beneath. Another thought is creating a scalloped edge to your hyperbolics with a contrasting or complimenting yarn.

Every now and then I actually sit down and do the math and it dawns on me how quickly our installation is coming up. We’ve been building up to this for about two years now and it almost doesn’t seem real. I hope, if you are anywhere near Lincoln City, that you will join us for our opening night on September 22 which will include a viewing of Saving Atlantis.

For now, stop by the Fat Lamb Fiber Festival this coming weekend for a little shopping, a little lamb snuggling and a little reef inspiration.

Saving Atlantis

I have been thinking a lot lately about lasting impacts for people who view the PNW Community Coral Reef. As I watched people looking at the reef through the Footwise window, I realized that, although they stopped and enjoyed it and may have talked about it briefly, what was the lasting impact of that interaction? Perhaps this was driven home even more when I visited the Mulyana exhibit. Families “oooh” and “ahhhd” as they marveled at the incredible workmanship and beauty but how many stopped and thought about the deeper meaning?

I guess that is the chance you take when you try to communicate a message through art. Will it change anything?

So this has got me thinking about ways to make people linger longer at our installation. How can we increase the ways that people can interact and learn. How can we actually make any difference once our installation moves on?

I do plan to put together a “scavenger hunt” for people to find specific corals, creatures and even garbage on our reef. I plan to pepper some facts in along the way so perhaps people will take away some kernal of knowledge. I also want to show a documentary during the reef’s installation so that folks can watch the documentary in the auditorium and then walk through the reef which will be just down the hall.

There are many excellent documentaries and discussions online that talk about the destruction of the coral reefs and plastic pollution in the ocean. If you are creating pieces for our reef and would like a general documentary on coral reefs with beautiful shots of corals and fish, I recommend this documentary on Youtube. I also recommend Chasing Coral as a good opener for the climate crisis facing coral reefs and the Woods Hole Institute Ocean Encounters discussion on ocean plastics.

Since we are based in Oregon, I would like to show the documentary Saving Atlantis. You are able to purchase a single viewing of it which I encourage you to do. We will be purchasing the rights to show it to an audience at the Lincoln City Cultural Center and I have decided to put up a fund raising page to help me cover the screening rights. If you are interested in helping out, please visit our fundraising page.

Also, if you have any other educational ideas that we could tie into our installation, please feel free to drop me a line!

Oh The Places You'll Go!

A couple of weekends ago, I got back from driving to Minnesota for a vacation and I wasn’t sure if I would be up for another car based adventure so soon but there was something happening in Los Angeles that I just couldn’t pass up.

Although the PNW Community Coral Reef has the same flavor as the community based fiber art coral reefs spearheaded by the Wertheim Sisters, my personal initial inspiration for a fiber art coral reef came from the Indonesian fiber artist Mulyana. Back when I first started poking around the internet, searching for crocheted coral and thinking I had come up with an original idea, I found Mulyana. Not only are his creations incredible but as an Indonesian, he comes from the part of the world where I have personally dived on coral reefs when I was in the merchant marine.

I love the concept of a community coral reef where thousands of people contribute and make an astonishing piece of art but I also have to stop in wonder at the beauty of an entire reef created by a single artist with a vision.

I wanted to visit Mulyana’s installation in person to get a close up of the knit and crocheted pieces and to get inspiration to bring back and show to folks interested in creating pieces. I hope you will enjoy my visit to the museum!

The First Glimpse of the PNW Community Coral Reef

Well, we have had pieces of the reef at various fiber festivals for the past year but for the first time, we have put up a serious glimpse of what it could be when we install it in Lincoln City this September.

If you are anywhere near Corvallis, Oregon this month, stop by the Footwise window and take a peek. We were unsure if we had enough corals and creatures to fill the space and we had Plan B and C if we ran shy of corals but unbelievably, we didn’t use all the corals and creatures BECAUSE WE RAN OUT OF ROOM!

Renting the van and packing it with 17 bins and 8 coral structures was a big job but I met Shanna at Footwise and she brought her 6 bins and we got busy putting it all together.

Our chosen plan to make vignettes was a lifesaver and certainly is the way forward. We still have many more vignettes to make as more donations come in but it allows for the reef to be put together like an ever changing jigsaw puzzle.

We really feel that this window will be the most challenging space as we were so restricted in how we could put things together but perhaps it’s best to do the difficult thing first so that we can learn for next time.

The bleached area is looking great but we definitely can use a lot more bleached pieces. It would also be great to have pieces with height as that adds a lot if interest.

The fabric background was also touch and go as we weren’t sure the clips I had would actually hold it up but thankfully it did.

The kelp, fish and jellyfish add so much to the reef! We have many hanging pieces that we weren’t able to fit into this small space so look for even more hangables in Lincoln City.

As a fiber person, I am drawn to color and texture and just looking at the variety offered by the reef makes me very happy. The biggest things that I appreciate are sometimes the smallest things. I love that our healthy reef is populated with such a variety of creatures and I love that our bleached reef contrasts that with its plastic anemones, plastic jelly fish and garbage that has started to become encrusted from being in the sea.

The one thing that I have been asked repeatedly since people have seen the reef in the window is whether we are still collecting corals and creatures. The answer is YES! This is just one window. We have a ROOM to fill!

Help! I am Buried Under a Coral Reef!

I only have myself to blame.

I should be more wealthy and live in a bigger apartment, or better yet, I should have a huge studio, or better yet, I should run a storage facility as my side gig and have ALL THE SPACE I NEED.

Well, those things are not happening. So I sit in my apartment, creating the coral vignettes, getting ready for the upcoming window installation at Footwise in Corvallis on March 1st, and having no space to exist that isn’t covered with corals or critters.

And the upside of this? I am not in possession of all of the corals and critters. It is even bigger than all I survey.

The big difference, from what I can tell, compared to other fiber art coral reefs is that this one is being built piece by piece with vignettes that we are going to slot together once we are building the reef. I have seen other reefs that are built in situ with chicken wire and large forms and have a large group of volunteers over many days to put it all together. These aren’t the conditions that we are operating under. We need to be much more economical with our time and the amount of hands that will be helping.

All that to say, here is a little taste of the vignettes from the past few weeks.

And a New Year Was Born

How did that happen?!

As someone who is frequently surprised by how fast time flies, the fact that it is already 2023 and this is the year that we will be doing two installations of the PNW Community Coral Reef has me just a little stunned. Our big display is in September but we will be doing a practice run in the Footwise front window in Corvallis in March. We have had mini displays at the library in Springfield and this month we will have a display in the window of Cozy yarn shop in Eugene.

For folks who have been making and holding onto their corals, I encourage you to get ahold of me and see if we can’t collect what you have so far in order to include it in the Footwise window display. My next few weeks will be unpacking and re-packing bins of corals and critters to have them in some semblance of order that will allow us to put up our display in Footwise in the allotted two hours. It just might be an adventure!

After getting the display up, I will be heading out on one of my drives halfway across the country as I go back to the Midwest to be with family for a bit. In the past I have driven like a mad woman and slept in the car when I get tired. I’m taking two weeks off work this time to allow a little more breathing room. It will be nice to be able to navigate across the country using yarn stores as my ports of call.

So, here’s to a new year filled with more adventures. Onward!