The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is a project created by Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring in Los Angeles. Launched as a response to the devastation of living reefs from global warming and ocean acidification, the Crochet Reef resides at the intersection of art, science, mathematics and environmentalism. Engaging people around the world, the Crochet Reef is an unprecedented invocation of a natural wonder that has become in itself a new kind of wooly wonder.
The Institute For Figuring is proud to announce that the Autry National Center has awarded Margaret and Christine Wertheim, co-creators of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project, the first Theo Westenberger Grant for Women of Excellence, an honor that recognizes “innovation in any field of art” by a living female artist.
In conjunction with the Grant, the Wertheims will present the first Theo Westernberger Lecture in the Arts about the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project and its unique intersection of art, science, environmentalism and community art practice. The lecture will be held at the Autry on Saturday, April 30, 2011 @ 2pm.
The Grant and the Lectureship are new programs the Autry has created in conjunction with the Center’s recently established Theo Westenberger Archive. Theo Westenberger (1950-2008) was a “trailblazing feminist photographer whose versatility in portraiture and travel images made her both one of the leading magazine photographers and a respected artist.” In keeping with the Center’s mission “to explore the experiences and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the American West, the Autry created the Theo Westenberger Archive to honor and build on the legacy of this important female artist.”
When the first exhibition of the popular Melbourne Reef opened in October of 2010, the Institute For Figuring was thrilled to learn that the festivities included a 'Squid Dance', replete with ornate costumes and lively performers. Hailing from Belgrave South Primary School, the students 'swam' gracefully through the colorful Melbourne Reef. This video gives us an idea of the evening's celebration, an embodied tribute to the many moving organisms of the deep.
Visit the Melbourne Reef's website for more information about the many accomplishments of this Satellite Reef.
Despite our furious preparations for the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef’s exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the IFF continues its blog tributes to our most prolific core contributors. This month we spoke with Nadia Severns, a New Jersey-based crafter who is definitively our most skilled contributor. She is innovative, as well—known ‘Reef-wide’ for her delicate crocheting around discarded plastic bottles, Nadia was kind enough to speak with us from her home on the east coast. We discussed her extensive professional experience, her radicalization as a crafter and citizen, and other various topics including her family, Quakerism, and disparate communities brought together through embodied experience.
Until fairly recently, Nadia had an extensive and varied career writing knitting and crochet patterns for large commercial companies. She did this for many years, in addition to her business making custom knit garments (seen by many on The Cosby Show!) and jewelry. Of late Nadia has worked for much smaller organizations, including one group of Uruguayan women who spin and dye their own wool. Nadia creates patterns from which crafters who buy the wool from Uruguay can work.Engaging with a company that helps women achieve financial independence is very meaningful to Nadia. Indeed, when you talk with her for any length of time, you come to understand that crafting is not only a professional and artistic activity for this thoughtful artisan, but also a feminist undertaking that allows her to keep the company of other strong women!
Nadia very much appreciates the ‘eco-consciousness’ of the Reef project, and long before she became involved with the HCCR, she was tuned into environmental issues and how her craft relates to the planet and how we occupy it. Nadia’s community in New Jersey is particularly sensitive to these topics, as a nearby missile base contaminated local ground water. This, combined with present-day consumption of bottled water, puts water issues at the fore for Nadia and her neighbors. Thus Nadia’s inventive re-use of plastic water bottles, as well as her predilection for incorporating bubble wrap and dry cleaning bags into her pieces. A new item for possible incorporation into her crochet are pipettes used for in-vitro fertilization! Form and function are always given equal weight by Nadia; she is constantly balancing her interests in maths and science with her materials-based inspiration and eco-mindedness.
A practicing Quaker, Nadia always considers the utilitarianism of the Quakers when working in her various crafting realms. To this end she expresses pleasure that she found the Reef (and it found her!), as the HCCR is an enterprise in which beautiful forms carry in them messages about important and timely politics. When she creates new coral, Nadia can work intuitively and in response to materials, all the while giving voice to her ideas and beliefs about conservation. Nadia’s varied experiences, considerable skills, and thoughtful studio practice synergize to make her an extremely beloved friend of the IFF. She’s a wonderful person to get to know.
Photos of both finished and in-process works from Nadia's studio kindly provided by the artist.
We at the Institute For Figuring would like to draw your attention to oceanographer Sylvia Earle’s important new book The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s are One. Ms. Earle, who has been called the Rachel Carson of our time, is explorer-in-residence at National Geographic and is one of the most powerful voices on the planet today speaking on behalf of marine ecosystems.
Amazon describes the book as follows:
A Silent Spring for our era, this eloquent, urgent, fascinating book reveals how just 50 years of swift and dangerous oceanic change threatens the very existence of life on Earth. Legendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a planet teetering on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis.
June 8th 2010 is World Ocean Day and this year our oceans are facing more than the usual challenges. In March, a Japanese oil tanker sank off the coast of Queensland, Australia, near the Great Barrier Reef, while in the Gulf of Mexico oil continues to spill from the Deepwater Horizon rig. In a sad twist of fate, June 8th marks the 50th consecutive day since the spill began and by most assessments this will be the worst oil accident in history. It might already be five times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster off the coast of Alaska.
Since Deepwater Horizon blew its top on April 20, scientists estimate that between one million and four million gallons of oil has been gushing into the sea every day. As of June 4th, the New York Times estimates that the total amount of oil spilled so far is between 50 million and 100 million gallons.
Oil gushing out of Deepwater Horizon has already reached the Louisiana shore where it will soon meet the state’s wetlands, and now seems certain to reach the beaches of Florida. In the past week scientists have further predicted, based on models of ocean currents, that the oil may also move up the eastern seaboard and may even cross the Atlantic to Europe.
As a response to this environmental tragedy, our singular Reef Contributor, Dr Axt, has begun to make a black version of her Reefer Madness series of giant coral mounds. She calls this haunting black elagiac installation her crochet “island of shame”.
See here for important New York Times article on oil spill rates:
Our friends at the Science Gallery in Dublin received a lovely email and photograph from Amanda, who'd recently seen the Crochet Coral Reef exhibition. We were thrilled to hear about her experience and to see a colorful hyperbolic mobile giving little 'Elvie' something to smile about. Here's what Amanda wrote:
My friend and i came to your exhibition and loved it. We loved all the thoughts we had about our lives, we loved seeing the blokes crocheting and taking time to consider the impact we have on the planet by how we live our daily lives and then we came to the workshop. We came with a baby who gurgled at the corals (she was 7 weeks old and hadn't spoken too much yet).. .. so we went home and made some for her to wake up to... and this is her waking up to the corals...... beautiful.
I then took the slow journey home on the ferry having been stranded in Ireland and as i sat and crocheted my way home i was distributing your cards to enquiring passengers and teaching some of them how to crochet hyperbolic spheres. Thank you for getting us hooked! We hope to have some to send you after we have satisfied the babies in our lives.
The crafters of Albany, Western Australia, have been busy. Since the Albany Reef’s inception in November 2009, it has been shown in three different formations at the local library and the Western Australia Museum, with plans for a fourth exhibition at the University of WA. Initiated by the artists’ group, MIX for an annual festival, the Reef has taken the region by coral storm. The organizing artists worked with the Museum to hold how-to workshops in a most relevant location: the beach! The IFF very much appreciates this enthusiastic site-specificity, and imagines at least some of the Albany Reef’s beauty was fueled by all the salt and sand encountered during the windswept hours spent by seaside Reefers. Congratulations on your many successful installations so far!
Photos of Emu Point workshop and Reef installation by Kate Campbell-Pope and Barbara Madden.
The IFF is recently back from Ireland, where we installed the Reef exhibition at the Science Gallery in Dublin. It was a pleasure to watch the various elements of the Core Collection take root in the galleries, and we especially like how the wall of windows on busy Pearse St. create an "aquarium" effect for framing the Toxic Reef in its ground-level spot.
One of the best aspects of our time in Dublin was meeting all the Irish Reef crafters and seeing their splendid creations. Coordinated by Irene Lundgaard and Orla Breslin, the Irish Reef is an inspired instance of how every Satellite Reef has its own personality and regional flair. From delicately-calibrated lacey coral to graphically-colored brain corals, each of the hundreds of individual elements of the Irish Reef came together to form a refined yet lively terrain!
In addition, Irish Reefers added their own "isola" to the Toxic Reef, creating dozens of innovative pieces using plastic bags, video tape, bottle tops, and various found/recycled items. We welcome their attention to the special importance of this part of the Reef project.
As many of you might imagine, the setting-up of the Reef each time it’s exhibited is no small task. Our site-specific installations require several pairs of hands and eagle eyes to organize, place, and tweak each of the thousands of individual elements, usually working for several long days in a row. When the IFF installed our Reef exhibition in Scottsdale, AZ, we had the pleasure of getting to know and work with a number of devoted crafters of the Scottsdale Public Art Program (SPAP) and its surrounding community. It is to our delight and keen interest that the Scottsdale “crew” is currently showing their Reef again, this time at Waterfront Gallery, ARTscene, on the Scottsdale waterfront. We’re thrilled to see the Scottsdale Reef transplanted into a whole new “ocean,” this one with beautiful Moorish architectural details.
Wendy Raisanen, of the SPAP, reported that they “loved seeing the same elements from the previous exhibit coming to life in new formations in a different space. The work is totally fluid, and could probably be installed anywhere.” By all accounts the process of reconfiguring the colorful and sprawling Scottsdale Reef for a new space was “an inspiring labor of love.” Wendy and company experienced a “complete and total submersion in the crochet world while we were installing and creating the exhibition. It was like we were inside a very colorful, chaotic, creative, crocheted world, and when it was time to go home, I didn’t really want to leave, even though I was totally exhausted.”
Congratulations to all the Scottsdale reefers on your second exhibition of 2009! We’re glad your Reef is out and about for all of us to enjoy once more.
As this blog is intended not only to highlight the many Satellite Reefs around the world but to introduce you to some of the talented “Reefers” behind the crochet coral, today’s entry concerns a devoted and ever-surprising Texan crafter, Evelyn Hardin. Since first learning of the Reef through an announcement in a science magazine, Evelyn has faithfully contributed countless inspired creations to the Core Collection.
Evelyn’s home in Cedar Hill, TX provides her with both the quiet needed to focus on her craft, as well as plenty of wide-open views that give her space for her creativity to flourish:
I usually have a nice breeze goin' on in spring and fall and it's quite pleasant.There's a Methodist church next door that rings bells on the hour from 8a.m. to 6p.m. so I'm very aware of hours going by. Across the street there's a lumberyard to my southeast and a counseling center to my southwest. Directly across the street from the front of the house is a triangular piece of property that belongs to the city.It's not big enough for much so it's mostly grass and weeds, thus the unobstructed breeze from the south.The railroad track runs next to the lumberyard, to the east side of the triangle, and the east side of the house.I'm like a kid when the train goes by.I like to see it but also my dogs howl at the train whistle and I find that highly amusing.
When not observing what’s going on around her, Evelyn examines art books and various science texts for reference as she designs her often madcap pieces. From the refined, elegant “White Spires” that form a vertical field striking in any exhibition space, to more idiosyncratic one-offs that resemble everything from a rasta hat over dreadlocks to a cascading wallwork made of items from her recycling bin, Evelyn’s crochet is always diverse and inventive. She says,
Inspiration is everywhere.Ernst Haeckel's work is great, Nikon has a microscopy photo gallery that's good.Most any botany book that has enlarged diagrams of plant structures.Found an Io moth caterpillar on a rose bush that is lovely colors.Way more inspiration than time to turn it into crochet.
When asked about her process, Evelyn reveals that she views
…the hyperbolic increase as a growth rate so I try to crochet intuitively how I suspect my current piece would enlarge over time.And since I consider it a growth rate, I use Fibonacci numbers for increases, spacing, petal counts, and starting chain counts.Another thing about growth rates is they are subject to change because of season, nutrition, age, etc. so if I want to change things up a bit or if I forget exactly what I was doing the day before, it's not a catastrophe.
We think this is a wonderful articulation of the Reef’s exciting blend of art, science, dreams, and “thinking big” on an everyday scale. We have been surprised and inspired by Evelyn’s contributions over the years, and count her among the many wonderful friends generated by the Reef’s proliferation.
One of our newest Satellite Reefs, the Latvian Reef got off to a roaring start this year, with the creation of a general Latvian Reef as well as a Latvian School Reef project that involved 500 students between the ages of 8 and 18. The School Reef was exhibited with great success at Gallery Consentio this summer, while both Reefs were recently on view together at another Riga venue, Gallery Azur.Both initiatives have been lovingly overseen by Tija Viksna, an impassioned and talented handicrafter and organizer, who is now faced with the challenge of guiding the Reefs through a hectic exhibition schedule. The recent show at Gallery Azur was just the first stop on a Latvia-wide tour of the Reef: already the traveling show is installed at the Art School of Kekava. From there it will move to Ventspils, then Mazsalaca, and Liepaja.Tija recently took time from her many creative pursuits to share with us some thoughts about installing and exhibiting the Latvian Reef.We asked Tija about the flat, hanging panels that display all the students’ contributions to the Reef. She explained,
I had to give a strict format of the work for the school project, so I decided, let it be not like the usual A4 (3,2,1,0) standard, but something a bit different. So the kids had to make their works 1meter wide and 30cm high. It's about 40x12 inches. I knew that the first exhibition of the Reef will be at my gallery where there's not enough place for horizontal display. And the only place I had seen living coral reefs are some aquariums, like the one in London, so I had this impression of a vertical cliff all covered with corals like the contemporary vertical gardens. That is why we went for vertical display….The corals crocheted by the grown-up's I tied to a garden fence net, shaped like icebergs or islands and hanged down from the ceiling. We had to think of some simple arrangement, which will be easy to take to the next place the exhibition goes.
When asked about the possibility that the Latvian Reef’s journey will extend outside of its home country, Tija is very pragmatic. She spoke of a need for significant financial support if an international tour is to happen. Even as the Reef travels around Latvia, however, it continues to foster a community of diverse crafters. Tija had the opportunity to meet again several of the reefers who began participating in the project after attending one of the workshops Tija ran, with--Ilze Sauleskalne--at Day Care Centers for the mentally challenged:
…My favorite moment - I was very happy to meet the patients of one of the Day Care Centers we've been to with our hyperbolic crochet workshop. They all came to the exhibition opening and Daina Taimina performed a special crochet workshop for them just after the official opening moment. They were very happy to find their creations among all the Reef elements - on our flying/floating islands. It was a truly touching moment. Actually, I could say, this was the moment when I felt that all the effort was worth it.
We at the IFF greatly appreciate Tija’s continued efforts with the Latvian Reefs, and hope that the project continues to bring community and sustenance to everyone involved.
Welcome to the Crochet Coral Reef Blog, created to keep you up-to-date with this internationally celebrated project that is a merging of art, craft, science, mathematics, and the participation of thousands of enthusiastic and talented crafters worldwide. The Reef is ever-growing - there are now satellite projects on every continent! The newest locales are Cape Town, South Africa; Bogota, Colombia; plus Melbourne and Perth, Australia. We are thrilled to get to know new Reefs, and reefers, in so many different cities. We begin our blog with a special mention about Latvia, where women and girls across the country have been crocheting reefs throughout 2009, under the extraordinary guidance of Tija Viksna. The Latvian Reef is currently on show at Gallery Consentio in Riga. We'll be doing a post on this amazing show soon.
Check back with us weekly to hear the latest updates on and additions to Reef efforts worldwide, as well as meet some of the brilliant individual crafters who contribute around the world. We hope the blog can serve as an informal gathering place for the many faces and personalities of this expansive project.
Top photo: The Toxic Reef as installed in The Gallery @ The Library, Scottsdale Civic Center, 2009. Photo by Alyssa Gorelick. Bottom photo: Hyperbolic crochet workshop at the Musturs knitting club in Riga, Latvia, led by Tija Viksna. January 2009. Photo courtesy of Ingrida Birkante.
The Institute For Figuring is proud to announce that the Autry National Center has awarded Margaret and Christine Wertheim, co-creators of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project, the first Theo Westenberger Grant for Women of Excellence, an honor that recognizes “innovation in any field of art” by a living female artist.
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