The Fine Art of Crochet

Book excerpt: 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 Kinslerthe founder of the Crochet Guild of America and a fiber-art practitioner in her own rightexamines 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.