Craft Art

While I was in Portland last week, I visited the Museum of Contemporary Craft and was lucky enough to see Mandy Greer's installation Dare alle Luce, just days after it had gone up.  (Image on the left is of the installation, at the Museum of Contemporary Craft's website: www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org)  Because Greer's work is difficult for me to describe (though easy to admire), I rely on pictures to speak for me.  The green one below (a detail of one of the vegetation chandeliers) is from her own website, which is a work of art in itself and gives a sense of what it is like to be standing in one of her installations: http://mandygreer.com  

Dare alle Luce was inspired by an ancient (Greek or Roman) creation myth, in which spilled mother's milk creates stars in the sky and lilies in the fields.  I loved the sparkly stars, covered in mosaics of glass and beads, but I was most drawn to the chandelier-trees.  Made up of tangles of vines, decorated with beads, and adorned with velvet and satin fruits and leaves, some were more than 10 feet tall.  (For a 5-foot-tall person, this was very magical!)  They moved slightly in the room's ventilation and, I imagined, in the wind of my breath and excitement.  My favorite part: each had a slightly different color scheme, illustrating how imprecise the word "green" is and how many possibilities are contained within that one word (emerald, sage, mint, grass, etc.).

And as a knitter-- oh! what can I say?  Each vine was crocheted, each leaf stitched, and each bead threaded.  When I think of the time spent on my modest knitting projects, I am in awe.