SISTER CITY REEFS

The Chicago Reef - at the Chicago Cultural Center, Fall 2007.
Photo by Aaron and Cassandra Ott.

The Crochet Reef project was conceived as a communal enterprise and from the beginning we dreamed about sister reefs spawning around the world. Living reefs themselves replicate by spawning: On a single night, timed to the cycles of the sun and moon in a process little understood, huge tracts of coral release into the water millions upon millions of eggs and sperm which combine to produce planula that float off as the "seeds" to form new reefs elsewhere. So too the Crochet Reef has been sending out spawn.

THE CHICAGO REEF

The first Crochet Reef offshoot took root in Chicago during the summer and fall of 2007. Under the auspices of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, more than 100 Windy City residents came together in workshops and started making coral forms. Chicagoans young and old, male and female, experts and novices in the art of crochet, gathered in community centers, art studios, living rooms and yarn stores to learn how to fashion their own woolly wonders. This city-wide happening was spearheaded by Hull-House's mega-dynamic director Lisa Yun Lee ,and by Catherine Chandler, who acted as crafter-curator-and-wrangler-in-chief to this multi-tentacled marvel. Workshops were held at Hull-House, at the Lillstreet Art Center, at the Arcadia yarn-store and other venues. The Rainbow Angels Girls Crochet Circle - a committed group of teens - got involved. The result was the extraordinary "Chicago Reef," which was shown along with the IFF Reefs at the Chicago Cultural Center in late 2007 in a major exhibition held in association with the Chicago Festival of the Humanities, whose theme this year was "Climate of Concern".

Chicago Reef Contributors

Crocheters at a reef workshop at the Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago - Photos by Lauren Levato.
At left are the fabulous Doublestitch Twins, Erika and Monika Simmons.

The Chicago Reef - at the Chicago Cultural Center, Fall 2007. Photo by Aaron and Cassandra Ott.

THE NEW YORK REEF

The second Sister City Reef is currently being constructed in New York, this time under the auspices of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and is overseen by the indefatigable Molly Sullivan. The New York Reef got its start in November 2007 with a lecture and several workshops at NYU by IFF Director Margaret Wertheim. Since then handi-crafters around the city have been mobilized by the New York Crochet Guild, under the stewardship of Barbara Hillary Van Elfen. The Harlem Knitting Circle has also come on board, led by Anntoinette Njoya Angrum. The New York Reef will make its debut at a double-sited exhibition to be held in conjunction with the IFF Reefs in April/May, at NYU's Windows on Broadway space, and at a soon-to-be-announced second venue.

On the first weekend in March, IFF co-director Christine Wertheim will lead workshops at NYU to begin curating the New York Reef. All interested crocheters and would-be-crocheters are invited to attend. Christine will work with NY reef-crafters to begin shaping the layout of the installation and to introduce New Yorkers to plastic-bag-string-crochet.

New York Lecture:
Saturday, March 1, 1-2:30pm
NYU, Barney Building, Einstein Auditorium, 34 Stuyvesant St (between 9th and 10th)

New York Workshops:
Saturday, March 1, 3-6pm
Sunday, March 2, 12-4pm
NYU, Barney Building, Room 309, 34 Stuyvesant St (between 9th and 10th)