trends gallery: This Week from Lisa Congdon: I Love This Book!

Monday, August 10, 2009

This Week from Lisa Congdon: I Love This Book!

I'm so happy to be back this week with another of my beloved books. This one is called Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting.

I was lucky enough back in 2007 to see the actual Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan. It was so thrilling for me to see this show in person that I risked taking photos of the pieces (even though it was clearly stated that this was not allowed) and was caught by security. I was, after all, viewing the exhibit myself (I was visiting New York alone that time), and just had to take photos to share with those back home. In the end, being yelled at in front of about 20 other people for taking photos off my hip was not really worth it. I should have just been patient, and waited until I got to the MAD book store. Because, there, of course, I found the catalog (accompanying book) for the show waiting for me to purchase it--a book filled with exquisite photos from the exhibit (plus more from the participating artists) of better quality than I ever could have taken with my camera.

Lace making, crochet, knitting, knotting--are all traditional crafts employed in mostly predictable ways. The participating artists in Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting use these crafts in unexpected and unorthodox ways. You can read a New York Times review of the show here .

One of the things I love most about the book Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting is that the work is organized first by "category" (i.e. Corporal Constructions, Matters of Scale, Light Constructions, etc), but then within each of these sections, it is organized by artist. One has the opportunity reading this book to see not just piece(s) of work made by each contributing artist, but also to read about their work and their processes. Be sure to read the introduction to the book, which explains each of the categories and how each artist fits within.