Scene from Crocodile Dundee.
Hoges (alias Mick Dundee) is walking along New York street with Linda K (alias whatsername). Young guy walks up asking for a light, and … (pulls out knife) … Mick’s wallet.
Linda: Mick, give him your wallet.
Mick: What for?
Linda: He’s got a knife
Mick (laughs): That’s not a knife … (smirks, reaches into pants) … That’s a knife (brandishes huge blade).
*****
Few weeks back got to do one of my favourite things: knit in public. Under a tree. In a Footscray mall transformed by the blue and gold day.
It was at the media launch for the Big West Arts Festival that begins this week, 20 November and continues to 29 November. You could say knitting is a big feature of the Festival.
Kids from a couple of the local primary schools unrolled their bundles, and all them, including the boys, sat knitting in their sunhats. A woman from Africa brought me an espresso she’d made on her little burner. And Marsha Thompson, the Federal member, told us she’d once been a ballerina (after mounting the dias to the music of Flashdance). A slightly stunning admission from someone so decidedly round.
The day was lots of fun.
But I’ve discovered that there’s knitting in public, and then there’s … Dave Cole.
*****
Dave, one of the featured artists in Big West, is from Boston and he makes sculptures from knitting. A man who takes knitting in public to a whole new level. A man with one seriously big pair of knitting needles.
That’s the US flag Dave knitted with his earthmovers in the grounds of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Massachusetts a few years ago. And in the top image on the left is his strange bronze garment knitted with loaded shotguns (“safeties off”).
As well as being a man with a penchant for knitting big things, Dave, as I found out last night at his talk at Craft Victoria is a very entertaining guy. He gave a witty and thoughtful talk about what matters to him, his aims and method. I wished I’d been recording it because he made some great remarks. Something along the lines of knitting being like work made visible. And something about how a knitted product displays its process.
He also talked about how growing up he’d had a marked tendency to perseveration, to doing things over and over, to keeping on keeping on. And though he didn’t make it explicit, I thought this was a good observation about one of the things that appeals about knitting.
In fact, fell a wee bit in love with Dave last night. I could tell cos I laughed at all his jokes. And don’t you reckon his eyes are saying “come up and see my stash” in this photo I took?
*****
Dave is here in Melbourne to orchestrate the knitting of Footscray’s Stockbridge as part of the Festival. The bridge is going to be progressively covered in fluoro knitted PVC sheets from this weekend. And there’s going to be a “cast-off party” on Saturday, 28 November. So come along and check it out.
For more information about the Big West Festival, go here: http://www.bigwest.com.au
For more information about Dave Cole, see his website and this youtube of him knitting the US flag (warning: more phallic suggestions).
Hey, that (the Mass Moca) is right near where I went to college.
What needles.
mmm, yes, very phallic. Or is that just me?
Could you be a Harvard man? Funny, I got the impression you hadn’t lived in US before your latest gig or two for The Economist. SGx
Very nosy, aren’t I? Ignore that last bit.
Williams College.
Very nice. Curious how the US uses the term “college” for university, but not always.