Project: Knit and Purl

• 12 years ago
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Most of us use our hands to master the hand-held rituals required for us to navigate our evolving digital worlds. Today the revolution of technology makes its home in the movement of our fingers texting, touching screens and mouse pads, hitting delete and escape buttons on computer keyboards.

Knit and Purl, a 75-foot long sculpture aloft in the Indianapolis Artsgarden, is an aesthetic meditation on the life and beauty of human hands shaped by an older technology – knitting.

Traced back to ancient Egypt, knitting has morphed from the process by which thread is made into garments into a vibrant form of self expression and community making. This independent use of accessible materials and processes is now more of a philosophy than a way to cloth oneself.

Theater of Inclusion (TOI), the collaboration between artists Dante Ventresca and Rebecca Hutton, conceived of Knit and Purl, as a simple, large scale, post-it note to remember the extraordinary reach of humanity through the behavior of its hands when engaged in a shared practice.

Knit and Purl also serves as an invitation to people all of ages, genders, neighborhoods, and degrees of knitting experience to use their own hands to knit a gesture of hospitality by participating in Super Scarves, a program launched by the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee.