{ 22 décembre 2005 }
knitta, please!
there are some crafty taggers in houston. and by crafty, i don’t mean they’re really good at climbing onto overpasses and not getting caught; i mean they’re actually crafty. there is a group called knitta who tag by attaching knitted items around objects, such as door handles, car antennas and trees. it was started by a couple of moms in their 30s who were frustrated by all the half-finished knitted projects they had lying around their houses. they came up with the idea of knit graffiti as a means of getting rid of these half-done pieces, and the movement just sort of started from there.
i absolutely love graffiti when it a] is clever, creative & well-done and b] isn’t on an important landmark. [check out banksy’s work for a good example; he’s amazing.] graffiti can really give an area character that would otherwise be lacking. it also gives the sense that the city is alive, communal and not static.
well, the work of knitta definitely fits my requirements for good graffiti: their tags are exceedingly creative, plus it doesn’t matter what they tag because their tags are removable. also, the concept of knit graffiti is hilarious because the stereotype of a tagger is a young inner city kid who’s kinda tough, and this is putting a soft edge on graffiti.
as a calling card, each knitted item has a paper tag attached to it with the message “knitta, please!” or “whaddup knitta?”
for more information and an interview with the 2 main knittas, check out this article from the houston press.
this quotation sort of sums it up: “one night she went out with another montrose mom and stitched a pink-and-purple cozy onto a boutique’s door handle. it was an act of artistic defiance, a soft, warm tag in a part of town dominated by aerosol arrogance.”
posted at 10.24