52 Weeks of PNW Community Coral Reef Patterns and Ideas-Week 1

What better time than January 1st to begin digging into the PNW Community Coral Reef Project! My goal for this year is to post weekly with pattern ideas for people interested in creating corals and creatures for the reef.

Today I thought I would talk about seaweed, Bladderwrack, Sea Moss, Channell Wrack…whatever you want to make. These “dangling bits” will be used in the reef to add punches of color and texture and will drape and dangle all around the installation. It’s a freeform sort of simple piece that you can do, even as a beginning crocheter or knitter. The drawing below provides a pretty good roadmap for what you will want to create.

Crocheters can choose their favorite color and simply make a single crochet chain for as long as you desire. Keep in mind that the wandering nature of this piece can make it deceptively time consuming. You can easily get a substantial piece of seaweed from a 12 inch chain.

Once you get to the end of your chain, turn and start coming back. Wherever you want a dangling element, simply single crochet a chain “off the beaten track”.

When you are crocheting your new chain to dangle down, you can split this chain into as many “side tracks” as you desire. Each branch can branch again and again. It can be a very meditative “mystery tour”.

The longer you make each dangling bit, the more branches you can create and the more impact your seaweed will have. Making this in sparkly novelty yarn can be very fun!

There are written patterns for knitting Bladderwrack and Channelled Wrack.

For the piece below, I simply knit a three stitch I-Cord out of novelty wool for several inches (12? Maybe more?). I then cast off and picked up three stitches along the I-cord and started making another I-cord to dangle down. I continued in this manner until I had branched out on each I-cord as many times as I desired. You can see how to knit an I-cord here. When I was done, I threw it in the washer and felted it.

Here are some photos of how I have incorporated seaweed into my smaller pieces.

What are some other patterns and ideas that you would like to see this year? Let me know in the comments!

Grand Plans

I’m thrilled to announce that I have been awarded a Centrum artist-in-resident slot for November 2022 in Port Townsend, WA. Getting the residency was the first step in my grand plan to collaborate with the aquarium in the area as well as the fiber community to gain inspiration for my canvas work and to recruit more fiber folx to participate in the Community Coral Reef Project.

Back before Covid hit and I was still living in Wisconsin, I had applied to an artist-in-residency program at a lighthouse on the Great Lakes. My plan was to work on a fiber art shoreline landscape from the lighthouse and if course, it would have been glorious. The sun would have shone every day and I would have completed 18 months of work in seven days. (Or at least that’s how I felt once Covid shut everything down).

This time, I applied for the residency with my current idea of a triptych in mind. As I talked about earlier, I have been considering a Giant Squid and a Sperm Whale locked in battle in the extreme ocean depths. Now that I have received the three gigantic canvases (each are 72 x 60”) I am rethinking that design. Now that Coral Canyon is sold, I am considering making another coral reef but on a grand scale with the reef fading out to bleached on one end. The thing about Coral Canyon that I enjoyed the most was the immersive experience that it could provide even though it was only 40 x 48”. Imagine being able to walk along a fiber art reef that is 72” high and 108” long. Frankly, it has me very excited!

A Fond Farewell to a Favorite Friend

I learned this week that Coral Canyon was being purchased by Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital . It’s an interesting experience, selling a piece that you have invested so much physical and psychic energy into. I am very pleased that it will be on display to people at their most vulnerable times (I am hoping that it will go to the pediatric ward) but I can’t deny that I will miss having it around. As I am taking Deception Pass up to Canada next month and Hegira is currently hanging out at the Lincoln City Cultural Center, I find myself with only The Reef and my current canvas which is currently unnamed.

I did, however, invest in three stretched canvases 60 x 72, for my “squid and the Whale” triptych. I am moving next weekend to the apartment above where I currently live which will give me more room to have an actual studio space. As I work on my current landscape, I plan to start gathering the yarn for the triptych and then eventually giving myself 3-5 years to complete it. With every canvas, my goal is to challenge myself with some new aspect of creation or biological interpretation. Giant Squid and Sperm whales have battles thousands of feet below the waves in areas of the ocean inhabited by wondrous bioluminescent creatures. It will be a new experience to create a canvas filled with the darkness of the abyssal depths but still create the necessary canvas of colors to keep everything interesting. I am also considering using the occasional glow in the dark yarn as a secret “Easter egg” for the canvas.

My canvases have their own stories. Hejira was all about holding human kind responsible for the actions it takes, positive and negative, towards marine creatures and environments. My new triptych will showcase the powerful struggle of two creatures in their natural environment, miles below the surface, hidden from the gaze of human kind. It will take humanity out of the equation and it’s size will dwarf the human viewer. It will send the message to it’s human viewer that humanity is not on top of the food chain and in this instance, humanity is completely irrelevant.

As someone who seeks experiences that make me realize my fragility in the natural world, I am very excited about this project.

The Best Birthday!

Let’s face it, it seems like 75% of the human population has a birthday in September. I put it down to too many people celebrating Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Out of curiosity, I tracked my own creation myth back to the major news story around that day, the Tet Offensive.

Since the pandemic, things have seemed incredibly unsettled and off kilter. I have learned that prolonged isolation is incredibly detrimental to someone with PTSD and moving during a pandemic is incredibly hard. I am also approaching my birthday, which I’ve never been a fan of.

Fortunately, I feel like I am starting to find my feet here, after nearly a year of being in Oregon. Hegira took a first place at the Oregon State Fair and I will be bringing her over to the Lincoln City Cultural Center to hang in their fiber art studio until she has a next date somewhere else. I’ve also begun recruiting fiber folx for The Community Coral Reef Project and have started to hear back from yarn stores in the PNW and elsewhere who will be sponsoring donation points for reef makers. Additionally, I will be providing a virtual presentation on October 9th to the Salem Fiber Arts Guild about my art and The Community Coral Reef Project.

Another positive note? Deception Pass will finally be able to fill her mission of going to an auction to support marine research. Right before the pandemic, I had connected with an Orca non-profit and we were trying to work out an auction for the piece with proceeds going to the organization. It was difficult since they didn’t have a history of doing auctions and then Covid hit. I hadn’t given up on the idea of donation and then I found the Marine Education Society. I have been following them on social media for some time and appreciate their engagement and research. They also have a robust online auction and funds go to keep their three person staff in working order. I will definitely be shouting out about their auction in spring of next year as the time approaches.

Finally, I am taking a long birthday weekend to explore the southern Oregon and northern California coast. I have some whale watching planned, a visit to the Washed Ashore gallery (Seriously, watch their movie. It is incredible!) and some wandering among the Redwoods and beaches. When I get back, I will be moving from my tiny apartment upstairs to a “less tiny” apartment. It will have an extra room that I can use as a studio and I will be able to start addressing this sketch that I made of the next crazy project I have rolling around in my head:

Watch This Space

For the past few years, I have been wanting to create an undersea exhibition. My vision has been of a walk through installation where the viewer will be immersed in a fiber art marine environment. The Institute for Figuring’s Crochet Coral Reef Project has been hugely inspirational for me and I definitely see the installation as moving from healthy reefs to bleached reefs and parts of the exhibition should be made out of plastics and perhaps recovered and recycled marine materials. I started creating larger corals two or three years ago with this project in mind and quickly realized that one person doing it alone would never finish before they died of old age.

The difference between my vision and what is created through the satellite crochet coral reefs around the world is the immersive experience of actually being in the ocean and seeing not only the coral reefs but also the critters living among the coral reefs. Thankfully, I went to a fiber art retreat a few weeks ago and met someone with similar inclinations and connections in the local Oregon fiber art scene.

As we begin to formulate our plan for a location for this installation and the myriad of details that come along with getting the word out and encouraging community participation, all I can say at this time is WATCH THIS SPACE!

Of Maidens, Art and Solitude

I just got back yesterday from a three day trip to my beloved stomping grounds in Washington State. My Deception Pass canvas had been displayed at the Schack Art Center for their 22nd Biennial Exhibition. I visited on the last day of the exhibition to see it in situ and then went back the next day to pick it up. I must say, the thrill of seeing your art in the wild never gets old.

I also took a purposeful trip to see the Maiden of Deception Pass. I became aware of this statue at Rosario Beach on Fidalgo Island a few months ago, long before getting accepted into the art show at Schack. It felt important to me to seek her out and so I made a visit early on Sunday morning.

I didn’t know the story of The Maiden before visiting but I am always interested in the stories and myths of women across cultures.

The statue is a beautiful piece of art in the most amazing setting. Perhaps it was the gift of early morning solitude when the noisy and indifferent crowds have yet to arrive but reading her story and seeing her as a guardian to the land all around her made me tear up. The statue depicts her two forms and her water form is carved with shells and fish and her lower body has a sense of a fish or a mermaid. She has given her mortal existence to protect those that she loves and eventually she learns that this sacrifice means she can never return to them.