Knit your own skeleton for Halloween

If you find ghosts and vampires a bit on the spooky side what about a knitted skeleton to demonstrate Halloween's softer side?

To be honest, this intricate knitted skeleton wasn't created to scare people but as part of “Transcending the Material” installation by artist Ben Cuevas, which was exhibited in New York.

We caught up with Ben and asked him a few questions about knitted art...

Any tips for people who want to use knitting as a material for art? 

Don't be afraid to explore and experiment. Get yourself outside the pattern-box. Patterns can be useful for understanding how to create shapes, but when making knit-art, most of the time you just have to wing it.

And were you a knitter beforehand? Who taught you?
I've been knitting since I was 20, so that's about 4+ years. My friend Jessica Charlene Ruvalcaba taught me how to knit. We used to hang out at my apartment in Hollywood and just knit and chat and watch TV... it was quite a lovely way to learn.
»  The art of Ben Cuevas

Recycled fine art

I've just read a piece about two women from Anchorage Alaska, Jacqui Ertischek, an artist and Georgia Blue, a former museum gift shop manager, who have set up an art gallery with a twist, selling art that is recycled from people's unwanted collections.

The gallery is called 2 Friends and Ms Ertischek said the idea came to her when she was fighting through piles of paintings in her closet "Art needs to be seen, shared, loved. That so much art is out of sight is just horrendous."

The women have an interesting approach to commission, dividing the proceeds of each sale between the owner and themselves, with each party passing on 10% to a different local charity each month. The majority of artists are Alaskan, but the pair also take on other works if they fit with their personal vision. They operate from an out-of-town shopping mall, but are planning to expand into online sales as well.

One of their stated aims is to make art more affordable for young people and many pieces are priced below what they would command elsewhere. As well as paintings they sell craft items from Africa, South America and other countries, such as bracelets made by a women's co-op in Burkina Faso from recycled plastic prayer matts.

Does anyone know of any similar schemes?

Picture credit to Anchorage Daily News

Mend at Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn

Proteus Gowanus is a gallery and reading room, housed in an old box factory in Brooklyn. They are currently showing an exhibition that's right up our street, as it's on the theme of "MEND".

In the words of the gallery "From mending a piece of fabric to solving global problems, we will explore the theme from a multiplicity of perspectives and disciplines at a time when “fixing things,” from the mundane to the profound, seems increasingly out of our reach. In a culture that increasingly resorts to throwing things away when they break, we will begin by exploring the disappearing skills and tools of repair, from darning socks and repairing shoes, to fixing watches and mending clothing, including stitching, spinning, and knitting."

As well as the current exhibition, the space also hosts a weekly meeting of the Fixers' Collective, a group dedicated to a social experiment in improvisational fixing and mending. People are invited to bring along their broken objects, which are placed on a large table for a communal inspection and the exchange of ideas and techniques to fix them. Anyone can come along, as long as they are willing to have a go, and there are "Master Fixers" there to lend support, guidance and courage.

We think the Fixers' Collective is a brilliant idea - and one that we at Make it and Mend it are planning to steal joyfully ourselves. More news on this soon.

Proteus Gowanus

Art from toilet rolls

Staying with the theme of art from throwaway materials, we go now to Japan and artist Yuken Teruya who makes his art from toilet roll tubes, plastic carrier bags, McDonalds paper bags and old pizza cartons. Illustrated here is Corner Forest. He aims not only to make political points but also to create things of beauty from very mundane everyday objects. You can check out his work here