KNITTING NATION is ongoing, collaborative performance and site-specific installation project. It explores aspects of textile and apparel manufacturing, laying bare the process of making machine knitted fabric. The project functions as a commentary on how humans interact with machines, global manufacturing, trade and labor, iconography, and fashion.

This concept for performance and process emerged in a series of conversations with friend and fellow fashion designer Gary Graham starting in 2002. As independent and emerging designers working in the fashion industry, we were constantly faced with challenges and frustrations in the quest to build our brands.

We felt that we needed to create an outlet for our aggressions and a platform to reveal the raw, creative energy and the labor-intensive processes that were part of our work. We brainstormed ideas about performances and projects, and proceeded to work collaboratively and successfully on some garments, but we did not perform while making them. Instead, we continued to devote our time to our fashion businesses; but the drive to perform my knitting stayed with me.

The first phase of KNITTING NATION, “Knitting During Wartime” occurred at an art event called “The Muster” in May of 2005 on Governors Island in New York City. This event, funded by the Public Art Fund, was created by artist Allison Smith, as “a call to arms for art”, and was inspired by Civil War reenactments and the crisis of wartime. It was the perfect platform to launch KNITTING NATION as it inspired me to explore the history of knitting in the United States, especially around times of war, and to use the piece to comment on the knitting we are doing during our current wartime experience. The military aspects of the event inspired me: the notion of uniforms and the request to present something I was fighting for. I wanted people to think about the American flag and to see it defaced and mutated on the ground, walked on, as a way to express my pain around the war and to comment on patriotism gone awry. I also wanted people to see how fabric is made, and to think about the people who work in physically taxing manners to produce clothing for our backs, and for our soldier’s backs. I created a noisy, rhythmic, mesmerizing dance of humans interacting with knitting machines, all under a tent made of white lace stockings and natural silk yarn, which infused the scene with traces of nostalgia and antiquity

KNITTING NATION phases 2 and 3 maintained core aspects of the initial concept, and were presented in venues that allowed for additional experiments.

Phase 2 occurred in Felissimo Design House in New York City in the form of a six-day residency during Fashion Week in February 2006. Here, the performative knitting was scaled down to a rotating trio of knitters functioning in a studio setting, who made multiples of sweaters that went directly onto garment racks and were presented for sale to the public in the same space. The atelier area was accompanied by an exhibition of new garments I created in advance of setting up shop at Felissimo. During the closing reception for the show, the knitters created a sculptural installation in the studio space by knitting multiple ropes of reflective material that got attached to the ceiling and to themselves, resulting in a tall, intestine-like mass of luminous knit cords. This piece as well as the event overall were experimental in nature, and provided me with the information I sought about marketing, process, and directional knitting through collective activity.

KNITTING NATION phase 3 was also highly experimental, involving several unknowns in a time-based event. The machines and knitters were set up on the Mezzanine at the RISD Met, with the directive to design and create repeating, sequential stripe patterns with a red cotton yarn I selected and two other colors and materials of their choice. Each knitter would rotate position in the line, similar to a volleyball player rotation, and would bring his or her stripe pattern along to the next position, thereby shifting the patterns across the expanse of the lengths of knit yardage that were generated from four straight hours of knitting. Those who were not knitting were hand stitching the lengths together as they came off the machines, and the banner that emerged was fed over the railing of the mezzanine, growing and falling slowly through space to the floor below.
The piece functioned for me as a game of chance, and revealed new ideas about how intuition, gravity and light affect color and pattern in knit material. I was also stricken anew by the idea of KNITTING NATION as a type of “happening”, drawing spectators into the buzz of activity, where the sound and motion both stimulated and transfixed the participants as well as the audience.

KNITTING NATION has become one of my new platforms of fashion expression, through the costuming of the knitters, sewers and other characters. Phase 4 of the project will occur in June in New York, and will bring a new conversation to the piece around sexuality, gender and fetish, with costumes and connections between the makers and what is made.