The Fine Art of Crochet
Innovative Works from Twenty Contemporary Artists
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Fiber artists around the world have embraced crochet as an inventive medium like never before. Expanding on the creative possibilities, using sculpture, immense site-specific installations, performance and mixed media objects, they have used crochet techniques to explore feminine craft and heritage, to investigate gender codes and show the primal creative expression represented by crochet. In The Fine Art of Crochet, Gwen Blakley Kinsler looks at the art crochet movement from 1915 onward to the crochet revolution of the 1960s. By profiling twenty of the most innovative practitioners working today, including such internationally known artists as Arline Fisch, Leslie Pontz, Carol Hummel, Tracy Krumm, Bonnie Meltzer and Soonran Youn, she examines the concepts and the awe-inspiring works of artists whose medium of choice is crochet. Blakley Kinsler, the Founder of the Crochet Guild of America and a fiber art practitioner in her own right, has been responsible for introducing to a wide audience the concept of crochet as art since 1992 while documenting artists in whose hands the magic of crochet creates cutting-edge art for the twenty-first century. The works featured in this book represent the diverse styles, unusual shapes, and exquisite textures that characterize crocheted art today. Perhaps most importantly, each artist approaches crochet with wonder and the desire to explore its full potential.
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About the Book
Fiber artists around the world have embraced crochet as an inventive medium like never before. Expanding on the creative possibilities and using sculpture, immense site-specific installations, performance, and mixed-media objects, they have used crochet techniques to explore feminine craft and heritage, dissect gender codes, and show the primal creative expression represented by crochet. In The Fine Art of Crochet, author Gwen Blakley Kinsler looks at the art-crochet movement from 1915 onward to the crochet revolution of the 1960s, profiling twenty of the most innovative practitioners working today. Offering insight to those who may not have otherwise thought to go beyond the purely practical aspect of crochet, she features internationally known artists such as Arline Fisch, Leslie Pontz, Carol Hummel, Tracy Krumm, Bonnie Meltzer, and Soonran Youn. Gwen Blakley Kinsler—the founder of the Crochet Guild of America and a fiber-art practitioner in her own right—examines the concepts and diverse works of these artists, in whose hands the magic of crochet creates cutting-edge art for the twenty-first century. Each artist approaches the medium with wonder and the desire to explore its full potential. This study and collection of images presents an exploration of the diverse styles, unusual shapes, and exquisite textures that characterize crocheted art today.
About the Author
Gwen Blakley Kinsler, a.k.a. “Crochetqueen,” is a writer, designer, and teacher, as well as the founder of the Crochet Guild of America. She has coauthored two technical crochet books and has written extensively about crochet as art and the artists who make it since 1994. She currently lives in Arlington Heights, Illinois.