INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Soulful yarns

Knitting and lace: They’re not just for girls, and they’re no longer domestic acts alone. This isn’t exactly a groundbreaking notion;  knitting, crocheting and the like have increasingly become popular both as crafts and as media for artistic expression, often blurring the boundaries between them, particularly over the past decade or so, but they have finally come into their own in the world of contemporary art.

Such is the conceit of Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting, organized by the Museum of Arts & Design in New York City, on view for its first appearance outside New York City at the Indiana State Museum. Among the most memorable shows I’ve seen all year, the exhibition lives up to its claims: There’s nothing sweet about it — and yet the work is, almost without exception, beautiful.

The show’s intent is not just to challenge the perception that knitting, crocheting and lace-making are domestic acts only. Rather, it’s more of a celebration of the quality and diversity of contemporary art springing from these media, from an evening dress knit from U.S. dollar bills to scraps of metal from a car bomb imprinted with a lace pattern.

The exhibition includes roughly 40 works by 27 artists from around the world, including Bloomington, Ind.’s Althea Crome, who creates “nano-knit” garments from surgical needles, which are displayed in a glass case to resemble doll’s clothes.

Even knitting isn’t immune to technology: Anne Wilson’s “Errant Behaviors” makes thread dance through the use of stop-motion animation and video. Intended as a commentary on urban sprawl, black thread multiplies and deconstructs in an endless loop.

Iceland artist Hildur Bjarnadottir’s “Untitled (Skulls)” is a tabletop doily punctuated with crocheted skulls outlining its perimeter: not exactly what you’d use to serve tea and crumpets. Bjarnadottir acknowledges knitting and sewing as common school subjects for both boys and girls.

Dave Cole’s aforementioned “The Money Dress” is provocative enough — the dress is knit from 879 dollar bills — but his “Knit Lead Teddy Bear” is something else entirely: The bear is knit from lead ribbon, an apt commentary on today’s toxic toys. In another extreme gesture, a video shows the creation of Cole’s 35-foot-wide American flag knit from telephone poles.

Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting is a stunner, not just for its monumental proportions going in each direction, from grand to miniature scale, but for its complexity as well as its sensibility. Artists shatter stereotypes with a mere click of needles as they explore social consciousness, gender roles, supply and demand, notions of beauty, the environment and other relevant issues through the visual aesthetic of lace patterns and knitted materials, these employed both thoughtfully and provocatively.

Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting is on view at the Indiana State Museum, 650 W. Washington St., through Aug. 24. For more information, visit www.indianamuseum.org or call 317-232-1637.