From: http://howtobuyart.blogspot.com/

No, it’s not the title of a Tom Wolfe piece circa 1975. It’s the new travelling exhibit from the Museum of Art and Design.

If you still think knitting is for grannies and retro grrlz, check out the ways artists are now using knitting to make provocative, conceptual works. The MAD exhibit aims to show us that our distinctions between high art and lowly crafts are arbitrary, based on the materials used rather than on the power of the piece.

As regular blog readers know, this a subject dear to my heart. When chauvenist blowhards ask rhetorically where all the great women artists of the past are, I always invite them to see the textile halls at the Victoria and Albert. For centuries, women used fiber and fabric — the only materials available to them — to create expressive art. Women were grappling with abstraction centuries before the Cedar Tavern had a liquor license.

The Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting travelling exhibit will be available starting in July. For booking information, contact the museum.

Photo: Althea Merback’s art, Museum of Art and Design

Adam Neate, self-portrait

Q: When I presented Marc Schiller of the Wooster Collective with your painting he immediately knew that it was your work. After visiting your Web site it became clear you’re a prolific and talented artist. What motivates you to create art and, even more intriguing, give it away by placing it on the street for people like me lucky enough to happen by?

Adam: I paint purely for the love and enjoyment I get from the feeling of creating something, be it a doodle on a piece of cardboard or a 6ft wall. After the process of creating something I lose interest in the final end product. I no longer want to see it. The egotist thrives on completing an acceptable painting. He will stand for hours looking at his own achievment. The egotist will call himself an “artist”… I just paint on stuff. The walls of my home are bare. For me art is not for hanging, but more for experiencing oneself. (more…)