Reviewer’s
Note: As a participant myself in the very first Coral Reef Project in Chicago,
I also featured the project in my book amazon, The Fine Art of Crochet in the section entitled Era
of Collaboration.
If you also
participated as a crocheter in one of the many and varied Coral Reef around the world, you will want to buy this book which
includes YOUR name, as a keepsake! Even if you didn’t crochet a hyperbolic
model for the reef, you will want to own this coffee table-style book that is full
of colorful fiber art created by activists and collaborations of makers.
The
brainchild of sisters, Margaret and Christine Wertheim, this monumental project
shined a spotlight on crochet. In 2007, hearing of it taking place in Chicago, I
got involved with this thrilling movement that used crochet in such an important
way. I was exceedingly proud that crocheters, lending their skills and their
passions, could create something so important and unique in ways that can only
be achieved with crochet!
After a
decade, eight thousand people and a dozen countries have joined together to
make an “ever-evolving archipelago of crochet coral reefs and it has become one
of the world’s largest community art endeavors.” (Margaret & Christine
Wertheim)
“Corals effortlessly build
hyperbolic structures but for humans it is not so easy to model these shapes.
The best artificial method is crochet. That discovery – made by Cornell
mathematician Dr. Daina Taimina in 1997 – became a seed for the Reef project.” Reviewer’s note: I was honored that Daina asked me to write a book jacket endorsement!
Throughout the past decade
the process melded expert crafters with novices. “Unequivocal acceptance was
the rule. Curators fretted about non-professionalism and participants worried about
submission criteria. In the absence of any expelling criteria, a feral energy
reigned supreme, and like much ‘outsider' or ‘folk’ art, the Chicago community’s
reef harbored a vitality almost impossible for professionally trained artists
to muster.”
Through labor-intensive
collaborative craft, we call attention to the on-going loss of living ecologies
generated through time-intensive collective effort. The Crochet Coral Reef was
self-published in 2015, in part because shopping around to established
publishers resulted in the editorial caveat that printing the names of
7,000-plus contributors would constitute a ‘waste of paper.’”
Margaret is a science writer,
curator and artist in Los Angeles. The Coral Reef Project resulted from her
decades-long concern with gender imbalance in science outreach. Her TED talk about the Reef has been viewed more than a
million times! Christine ia a
poet-performer-artist-critic-curator-crafter-teacher and collaborator based in
Los Angeles, as well. Together, they Direct the Institute for Figuring, a non-profit organization which promotes public engagement with the aesthetic
and poetic dimensions of science and mathematics. Margaret and Christine were
awarded the 2011 Theo Westenberger Award for Artistic Excellence from the AutryNational Center.
This book is 206 pages long and can be purchased directly from the Institute for Figuring. The cost is $50.00 and includes postage and handling
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