Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Daina Taimina to come to NYSCI




Author, Educator and Crocheter, Daina Taimina, will be giving a talk at the New York Hall of Science. As Librarian there, I advocated for a visit from her and found the perfect venue... the "Staff Science Series" - grant funded professional development seminars funded by Sara Lee (yes, of cheesecake fame).
Her visit will take place sometime in the first week of April.

I told Eric, who gave me the go-ahead to invite her...
"I'm happy!"

His response: "This is all it takes to make you happy?"
Ahh...yeah!

Her book: Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes


We saw her last year at Lion Brand Yarn Store. She is a charismatic speaker with a captivating slide show. Her math allusions (non-Euclidian geometry!) were rather challenging, but I dug the whole scene like crazy.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Now that's yarn bombing!

Olek is a yarn bomber supreme. In this video, she dresses Wall Street's Charging Bull statue.

Click on the bull to see the movie.


There's some other cool stuff on her website: http://agataolek.com/home.html

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Crochet Chairs.. Two vastly different perspectives


This chair is named, Lucy.
It's from a German crochet artist: Check out her blog

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Crochet Chair




Found this "crochet chair" on the cool blog Art Yarn. I especially like the placement of the modern shape next to the castle wall.

"This glorious outdoor seating design by Dutch maker Marcel Wanders, is initially crocheted with rope to create the chairs form. It has then been reinforced with resin and precious metals for structural and detailing purposes."




From Wander's website, this attempt at description of his cube is found. I dig the ideas about contrast, but find the language a bit much. What do you think?
"His Crochet Cube wryly merges homey, handcrafted doilies with spare, minimalist form. Both represent classic studies in contrasts: softness versus rigidity; minimal form versus maximal pattern; handcrafted appearance versus machine aesthetic; and open web versus closed volume."

Comments from Robin (my sister and an artist)

Wow, those chairs are so ..... EXCITING!!!!

They are both so different (as you pointed out) but both so perfect. I especially love the hard one outside the castle, it's such a fascinating use if form & texture. Besides being beautiful, it tickles my intelligence and my understanding of spatial stuff and how hardeners work and sent my brain into trying to figure out how it was molded, etc.

But the other one is just so very...... Pretty. It makes me not have to think, just grin and enjoy it and notice the time and love that went into it. And smile some more because it's just so pretty.

Then the cube..... fascinating by itself (similar to the gold chair) but the verbiage, well, it's so verbose.

I'm really glad you send me these updates, I LOVE looking at the things you've made, and I enjoy seeing what other artists are doing, you find the coolest, kookiest, funnest stuff being done in your medium.