This project was one centered on creativity and community. Inspired by an outdoor art installation of a dozen trees covered in colorful yarn squares at Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park in Hamilton, Ohio, I wanted to create a tree sweater of my own. I spent my free time during the chill of the winter and the isolation of quarantine researching yarn, learning stitches, and creating colorful granny squares. At times, repeating the same stitches felt tedious, but the result was worth the wait. After hours of stitching, and many visits to Walmart with my roommate to buy armfuls of yarn, I created enough squares and baubles to stitch together and display in public.
While stitching my project together at a picnic table in my favorite park in my hometown of Loveland, I had the opportunity to share my love of art by teaching some curious twelve and thirteen-year-olds how to crochet and sew. They were part of a police day camp for kids from urban Cincinnati. There, police officers were teaching many of them how to ride bikes for the first time in the park and on the Loveland Bike Trail in front of me. To my surprise, some girls came up and asked what I was doing, and desired to help. Eventually, ten or twelve more campers joined, and I had the opportunity to teach some of them how to crochet chains and sew squares together. When the sweater was assembled and the campers had left, I stitched it to a tree near the bike trail, where hundreds of bikers and visitors to downtown Loveland could see it each day. Hopefully, this art adds a little joy to the days of those who pass by. I am so glad that this art project brought strangers together at a park to help with the assembly, and that I had the opportunity to share and teach a little bit of art to my community. As a result of this experience, I hope to volunteer and teach art with BLOC Ministries to an after school program in the urban area of Price Hill this semester.
Flip through the slideshow to see the process and the final tree sweater.
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