Yarn Bombing Los Angeles is a fiber arts community that engages thousands of people online, worldwide, and locally in the Los Angeles area. YBLA currently collaborates with city governments, museums, alternative art spaces, and public spaces to create thought-provoking, community-generated public art installations.
YBLA's work blends and reinterprets different artistic genres of street art, public art, fiber art, social practice, craft, and high art. YBLA's mission is to create a form of community-generated, site-specific public art that is tactile and accessible, while at the same time initiating dialogue about cross-generation connections and craft history.
All are welcome at YBLA's public events which are listed on our Calendar page.
YBLA's work blends and reinterprets different artistic genres of street art, public art, fiber art, social practice, craft, and high art. YBLA's mission is to create a form of community-generated, site-specific public art that is tactile and accessible, while at the same time initiating dialogue about cross-generation connections and craft history.
All are welcome at YBLA's public events which are listed on our Calendar page.
FOREST FOR THE TREES AT TOM BRADLEY INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL
Old-growth forests exhibit distinctive ecological features and are often home to rare, threatened, and endangered species of plants and animals, making them ecologically signicant. Unfortunately, many of our old-growth forest stands are threatened by habitat destruction at the invasive hands of man. This fiber-based installation hopes to address the wonders and perils of the forest by creating an environment that is at once unique and fantastic, dangerous and bizarre, and by acknowledging that one day, the built environment may be all that’s left.
In 2011, the Arroyo Arts Collective, a community-based cultural organization in Northeast Los Angeles, initiated the Forest, For the Trees project, while its co-producer Yarn Bombing Los Angeles (YBLA) invited artists from all over the world to contribute work. The installation has grown from its debut at the Avenue 50 Studio gallery in Highland Park to an ever-expanding traveling installation, with new fantastical elements added for this display at LAX.
YBLA is a group of guerrilla knitters who have been collaborating since 2010 to stage public installations and performances to help expand the definition of public art by blending and reinterpreting street art, ber art, social
practice, craft, and high art. The eclectic group encompasses all ages, genders and backgrounds. YBLA includes professional artists as well as novice crafters materials range from yarn to cut up garbage bags techniques range from knitting, crocheting, needle work, weaving, collage, and spray painting on knit material. The pieces may be whimsical, humorous, conceptual or political. The common thread is the
creation of work that pushes the knit/crochet envelope, and our presentation of the work in the public realm.
Julie Kornblum, Curator
Artists used standard, recycled, and unusual materials to create trees, ground cover, animals, water, rain, and much more.
Participating artists include:
Edith Abeyta, Amy Bauer, Luisa Bottari, Leslie Brown, Alexandra Busby, Yolanda Diaz, Katelyn Dorroh, Beth Elliott, Jacque Lene Engel, Carmela Gomes, Margaret Hateld, Heather Hoggan, Amy Caterina Hill, Kristen Johannsen, Lisa Jong, Julie Kornblum, Arzu Arda Kosar, Justine Leong, Charlotte Marshall, Tyler Mitzner, Theresa Knopf Morgan, Lauri Mraz, Diane Olson-Baskin, Racquel “Rocky” Ormsby, David Orozco, Olga O’Shea, Adrianna Rianna, Judy Richards, Connie Rohman, Joan Sauve, Erin Shea, Ann Storc, Kacy Treadway, Jane Wang, Jessica Wards, Tracy Williams, Darlyn Susan Yee, and Carol Zou. Threadwinners: Alyssa Arney and Liz Flynn. High Desert Yarn Stormers: Diane Bush, Jeanette Johannes, Linda Leonard, Hui-Mei Ellis, Linda Cahoon, Irene Cochran, Linda Greco, Laura Henley, Rita Poon, Maria Zapata, Terri Lonski, Connie Grifn, Kazuko Tajima.
This exhibition is presented by Los Angeles World Airports and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
In 2011, the Arroyo Arts Collective, a community-based cultural organization in Northeast Los Angeles, initiated the Forest, For the Trees project, while its co-producer Yarn Bombing Los Angeles (YBLA) invited artists from all over the world to contribute work. The installation has grown from its debut at the Avenue 50 Studio gallery in Highland Park to an ever-expanding traveling installation, with new fantastical elements added for this display at LAX.
YBLA is a group of guerrilla knitters who have been collaborating since 2010 to stage public installations and performances to help expand the definition of public art by blending and reinterpreting street art, ber art, social
practice, craft, and high art. The eclectic group encompasses all ages, genders and backgrounds. YBLA includes professional artists as well as novice crafters materials range from yarn to cut up garbage bags techniques range from knitting, crocheting, needle work, weaving, collage, and spray painting on knit material. The pieces may be whimsical, humorous, conceptual or political. The common thread is the
creation of work that pushes the knit/crochet envelope, and our presentation of the work in the public realm.
Julie Kornblum, Curator
Artists used standard, recycled, and unusual materials to create trees, ground cover, animals, water, rain, and much more.
Participating artists include:
Edith Abeyta, Amy Bauer, Luisa Bottari, Leslie Brown, Alexandra Busby, Yolanda Diaz, Katelyn Dorroh, Beth Elliott, Jacque Lene Engel, Carmela Gomes, Margaret Hateld, Heather Hoggan, Amy Caterina Hill, Kristen Johannsen, Lisa Jong, Julie Kornblum, Arzu Arda Kosar, Justine Leong, Charlotte Marshall, Tyler Mitzner, Theresa Knopf Morgan, Lauri Mraz, Diane Olson-Baskin, Racquel “Rocky” Ormsby, David Orozco, Olga O’Shea, Adrianna Rianna, Judy Richards, Connie Rohman, Joan Sauve, Erin Shea, Ann Storc, Kacy Treadway, Jane Wang, Jessica Wards, Tracy Williams, Darlyn Susan Yee, and Carol Zou. Threadwinners: Alyssa Arney and Liz Flynn. High Desert Yarn Stormers: Diane Bush, Jeanette Johannes, Linda Leonard, Hui-Mei Ellis, Linda Cahoon, Irene Cochran, Linda Greco, Laura Henley, Rita Poon, Maria Zapata, Terri Lonski, Connie Grifn, Kazuko Tajima.
This exhibition is presented by Los Angeles World Airports and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
HOW CAN I JOIN YARN BOMBING Los Angeles?
If you're in the Los Angeles area, you can drop by our monthly meetings noting our new meeting location and time.
Beginning April 20, 2019 our monthly meeting on the Third Saturday of each month will be held at at Darlyn Susan Yee's studio #10 from 1-4 pm: Grand View Fine Art Studios 3871 Grand View Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90066 Also check our calendar to see if we have any upcoming events to attend or sign up for, or better yet organize an event that we can all participate in. What if I can't knit or crochet? While you can probably learn to knit or crochet during our meetings, some of us don't actually knit or crochet at all! Many yarn bombers use recycled sweaters and other found materials that they collage together. WHAT HAPPENS IN YBLA MEETINGS?
Our monthly meetings are an occasion to gather, work together, exchange ideas, tips, materials, learn new techniques, see old friends, meet new people, come up with new projects etc. While most people bring along a project to work on, some people just show up to network and be inspired.
Snapshots of our previous monthly meetings can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttactSiSz8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwueVd0ljlw. For more information feel free to contact yarnbombing18@gmail.com or visit our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/yarnbombingla/ |
WHAT IS YBLA?
Yarn Bombing Los Angeles (YBLA) is a group knitters, crocheters and fiber artists who have been collaborating since 2010. YBLA stages public installations and performances to help expand the definition of public art to embrace street art, including self-initiated, ephemeral urban interventions utilizing fiber material. Collaborative art making, community building, public outreach, blurring boundaries between contemporary art practices, graffiti and craft are integral components to YBLA's practice. The group organically grew out of a participatory yarn bombing event organized by the Arroyo Arts Collective in Los Angeles and became an entity of its own during the six month process of putting together Yarn Bombing 18th Street, an interlacement of site specific installations featuring 65 local and international knit graffiti artists. YBLA projects range from the day long urban intervention outside MOCA's seminal Art in the Streets show to conducting knit graffiti workshops for LAUSD teachers, students and their parents. For a brief video featuring recent YBLA projects please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UofiidpN_qA WHAT IS YARN BOMBING?
Yarn bombing is a relatively recent form of street art that employs colorful displays of knits or crochet and other fiber material instead of paint in public space.
Some engage in yarn bombing as a fun and creative way to use up left over yarn, others consider it an urban intervention to personalize otherwise cold and impersonal spaces or to make socio- political statements. Humor is often a major component of yarn bombing, which by its nature embodies contradictory idiosyncrasies within itself. In its seemingly odd juxtaposition of knitting and graffiti, often associated with opposing concepts such as female, granny, indoors, domestic, wholesome and soft vs. male, enfant terrible, outdoors, public, underground and edgy, the practice of yarn bombing redefines both genres. Yarn bombing transforms knitting from a domestic endeavor to public art, recontextualizing both knitting and graffiti, both of which are marginalized creative endeavors that fall outside “high art.” Like all public art, be it sanctioned commissions or self-initiated, unauthorized formats, yarn bombing imposes a particular aesthetic onto an environment that may be appreciated by some, but may not appeal to everyone. Yet, yarn bombing is necessarily ephemeral due to its use of materials and perhaps the most environmentally friendly graffiti because it can easily be removed with a pair of scissors and no damage left behind. |
