Summer Art Walk

Last June sometime, there was an art walk through downtown Flint one Friday evening. Tracy (of The Lunch Studio) asked me to display "something knitted" as art on the walls of her restaurant. I have been toying with a lot of ideas for really big knitted pieces (using the knitting machine) but I hadn't really had time to think anything through. I had made a felt heart last Valentine's Day but it wasn't very detailed. So I made another, this one has more valves as well as floods of blood coming out. These are two long pieces of red wool, both knitted up from 4 stitches and gradually increasing to 100 stitches. I attached one to the aorta and the other to the major vein going into the heart. Here it is on the left side of the photo:
On the right, and pooling onto the floor, is another piece I did on the knitting machine. It is about 30 feet long, 100 stiches across. It has an unfinished end and is hanging from two knitting needles, and the yarn being worked goes right to the 1 pound blue spool on the floor under the piece. I had originally hoped to write out the script of my thoughts while I knitted this thing (which took me about 4 hours without stopping) because my thoughts were so repetitious, inane and unproductive. The idea would be that, while one end is being knit, the other end is unraveling, ultimately leaving nothing accomplished therefore mirroring the repetative and unproductive (and slightly insane) thoughts I have as I go through most of my daily activities. Unfortunately, I was so rushed making this (knitting it up at midnight the night before) that I didn't get to write up the script. There's something very telling in being too rushed with the mundane to have time to transcribe one's thoughts about the mundane.

I enjoying making these things and get a kick out of having them on display, but I don't really think they are art. (I can't think of myself as an artist. I'm not sure why. Is "artist" too noble a term? Would it be hubris to refer to oneself as an artist?) Nonetheless I have gotten positive comments (one person from the Flint Institute of Arts calling the blue thing "powerful"--that was nice but weird) which leave me bemused.