Crafting art out of tradition

Sabrina Gschwandtner, lover of all things knit

Chelsea’s Sabrina Gschwandtner knits a new artists circle

By Kaija Helmetag

Sabrina Gschwandtner fits none of the stereotypes that one associates with a New York artist who keeps a studio in Chelsea. Seated on a recent afternoon at a large table in her white-walled space on West 26 Street, she flipped through a spray-painted copy of the limited edition craft magazine that she publishes and chatted about conceptual art and knitting without a hint of pretension.

“I’m really passionate and interested in this idea of what it means to take hand craft and to put it into a contemporary art context,” said Gschwandtner, a slight and soft-spoken 29-year-old brunette. “And I think a lot of other people are interested too.”

The popularization of craft is nothing new. Debbie Stoller’s “Stitch ‘n Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook,” was a New York Times best-seller in 2003. Today, handcraft is practically a religion for members of the Church of Craft, an association of craft-lovers, and do-it-yourself craft and design magazines like ReadyMade have never been more popular. But the idea of elevating handcraft to fine art is Gschwandtner’s domain.

“There are all these ways to push it — play with expectations about it. I think it’s really exciting,” said Gschwandtner, who is animated about all the handcraft-oriented projects she has in the works, including a book, public speaking engagements, and a current exhibit called “Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting,” at the Museum of Arts & Design in Midtown.

Gschwandtner is one of 27 artists in “Radical Lace,” which is curated by David Revere McFadden. According to the museum’s wall text, it “explores knitting, crocheting, and lace-making by contemporary artists from around the world” who use materials and techniques that defy traditional classification as craft, fine art or contemporary art.

Gschwandtner’s piece, “Wartime Knitting Circle,” is “a public knitting circle dedicated to wartime knitting.” During the opening, Gschwandtner sat with other women at a table and knitted helmet liners, recovery blankets and mittens. Surrounding the table in the exhibit are machine-stitched blankets of photos taken of people knitting during WWI, WWII and Vietnam, to remind us “that knitting has been used for civic participation, protest, therapeutic distraction, and even direct action” through the years. Machine-knit photo portrait blankets, for instance, are currently popular memorials for families of American soldiers who served in Iraq.

As the artist consultant for the exhibit, Gschwandtner helped cull artists from her ever-expanding network of fine artists and crafters, many of whom have discovered each other through KnitKnit, the handcraft zine she publishes and distributes to over 40 stores internationally. Each handmade issue of KnitKnit includes interviews with artists and craftspeople and do-it-yourself project patterns.

Gschwandtner, who had been knitting for several years when she created KnitKnit in 2002, says she wanted to develop a more critical relationship with the activity. “I started to center my artistic activities around the idea that handcraft could challenge long-held artistic and social values, and I wanted to gather together a community of people who were thinking like me,” she explained in an email. Her undergraduate training at Brown in film and semiotics, the study of symbols and meaning, has heavily influenced her art.

Gschwandtner’s work has “an emphasis on objects of provocations and contemplations,” said curator David Revere McFadden. “It’s the idea that tangible and handmade materials have content in themselves.”

The “Radical Lace” show, arranged on multiple floors at the Museum of Arts & Design, is eclectic, featuring everything from a bright green knitted orchid by Yoshiki Hishinuma to sweaters smaller than a thumb. Indiana-based Althea Merback’s tiny “Picasso Cardigan” is knit with medical wire and silk thread, but Merback doesn’t consider her work to be as radical as the show suggests. “Extreme is more of how I describe what I do,” she said. “I love tricking the brain into thinking that things aren’t miniature.”

Janet Echelman’s “The Expanding Club” is an enormous hand-knotted net shaped like a mushroom cloud — a nod to the nuclear bomb using only the colors of the countries that have detonated one.

In “Lace Meander,” Piper Shepard used an X-Acto knife to cut an intricate lace pattern onto reams of paper that reach to the ceiling. A photograph of David Cole’s “Knitting Machine” proves that John Deere excavators can be used to showcase knitting. In it, aluminum light poles serve as knitting needles to weave a giant American flag.

Back in her studio, Gschwandtner is preparing a book about artists who knit that will be published in the fall by Stewart, Tabori & Chang. Five of the artists in “Radical Lace” are featured in it. To write the book she traveled to art studios around the world to interview artists and to collect do-it-yourself patterns to publish alongside each profile. In addition to her book and the current exhibit, Gschwandtner has frequent speaking engagements to discuss knitting and handcraft in the context of contemporary art. She recently moderated a panel discussion on alternative yarns at the museum.

Gschwandtner’s work, said McFadden, “is part of a general resurgence in the world of handcraft. Most people live in front of a computer screen, but people are interested in getting their hands in the process.” Gschwandtner, McFadden explained, “is bringing the knitting community together under the umbrella of an expanded definition of what art is.”