If you walk by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami in the next couple weeks, don’t be surprised to see that a few of the building’s pillars are wearing colorful scarves.
It’s part of a textile show from students in the MOCA Teens after-school art program called Fresh Threads that includes yarn bombing — a temporary form of graffitti street art that’s removable and causes no damage to the environment.
“It’s kind of quirky and it hasn’t been done a lot in Miami,” explains Pamela Palma, a resident artist at the Bakehouse Art Complex in the Wynwood who has been working with members of her fabric art guild Fantastic Fibers Miami to teach kids to knit and create art with upcycled textiles. “People can see that there is more to working with yarn than your grandmother making an afghan.”
Today is the opening date for the pop-up exhibition in the MOCA Pavillion Gallery, Fresh Threads, curated by Gregory Pierre-Louis (one of the MOCA Teens). The exhibit includes work from students and several textile artists books created by members of Fantastic Fibers Miami, which served as inspiration for the students. Check out the yarn bombing installation and the exhibit at tonight’s opening reception, which is happening from 5:30 to 9 p.m. as part of the museum’s monthly Jazz at MOCA event tonight. The show will be up through February 2.
So how did teens take to learning how to knit in 2017? Palma says that it took a little convincing, but after watching the artists at work, they wanted to learn how too. “I told them, ‘My grandmother taught me how to do this when I was four, so if I can do it, you can do it. It’s really not that hard, it’s just repetition. It’s just a matter of coordinating of where you put the yarn and how you put the needle,’” she says. “Pretty soon, they were going gangbusters.”
- Yarn Bombing at Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami [Official Site]