“It really boils down to this: all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of identity. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Meet Angela. She works for the U.S. Forest Service and is on temporary assignment in New Hampshire. She’ll be returning home to the warm South this week. When a friend told her about this personal project, she contacted me. She was happy to contribute to the project and support its message by sitting for a portrait. I’m so happy to have met her. Family, community, and faith are important to Angela.
Knitted Together is a collection of individual digital portrait photographs of people knitting or crocheting different red garments. Each portrait is printed on canvas and framed. In each portrait, the red yarn goes out of the frame at the bottom, to be displayed as a 3-dimensional work with a single strand of yarn coming from the bottom of the piece, connecting visually to the strand in the photograph. Each piece of yarn leads to a single large ball of yarn on the floor of the display.
Some red garments are at their beginning or short, some are near the end or long. One wraps around a person’s neck. One person holds her garment in front of her body. The garment is riddled with holes.
The knitted or crocheted piece is a metaphor. These portraits each give the viewer an insight to an important element of a person’s life, hinting at subjects from birthing to caregiving, to sexuality, health, or how they live their lives – muted or bright, perhaps guarded or on display.
One portrait from Knitted Together on exhibit in Exeter, NH (right)
This is a body of work that is meant to grow, with new portraits added periodically. This work is about individuals, humanity, and the idea that we are all connected. Our lives are different, we approach life differently, but exist on earth together.
of the Knitted Together project
You can see more about Knitted Together HERE.