Renegade Textile Artists Fight Urban Eyesores with Anonymous Crochet

Ever noticed woolly fabric on poles around Chicago? No? Look closer. Scattered throughout the city are more than 30 crocheted art works by a group that calls itself Micro-Fiber Militia. Sharing their passion for woven art with the city, the group is keeping naked poles and freezing bike racks around town warm and cozy. The group was launched last May when its founder came across Internet sites named KnittaPlease.com and maskerade.blogsome.com. She realized she wanted to bring what could be called renegade textile art to Chicago.

"I was looking for things to do, and when I saw [the crochet graffiti link] it was like a lightning bolt hit me," said Kristin, 28, Micro-Fiber Militia's founder. A native of Montana, she is currently studying at the School of the Art Institute. She refuses to divulge her last name, partly to maintain a properly mysterious artistic aura and partly to avoid the long arm of the law, which might frown on midnight crocheting raids on downtown Chicago.

Kristin refers to Micro-Fiber Militia as a group, but when pressed for the number of members, she smiles and declines to comment.

The militia, whose name derives from her native state's ad hoc paramilitary groups, has put up 33 pieces so far, mostly around the Loop and Rogers Park. There are large, bright, crocheted flowers wrapped around bus-stop poles and tree trunks cocooned with colorful wool.

The latest project is a glow-in-the-dark piece. Kristin originally hoped to find a pole in an especially dark location to allow the treated wool to show off its light. Thankfully, finding complete darkness in a well-lit city proved to be futile, and the piece now adorns a security pole in the Prudential Building plaza off Michigan Avenue on Randolph St.

So why the urge to put up pieces of fuzzy wool all around the town?

There are the traditional reasons: The act of crocheting can be soothing, and artists working in textiles use their fabric to convey their artistic vision. But Kristin also has more specific reasons.

There's the matter of mapping her identity and experience in the city. Works are occasionally dedicated to people or locations. One outside the Heartland Cafe in Rogers Park was a thank-you-for-welcoming-me piece. She says the location "made me feel at home," which hasn't happened in her many years of travel from Montana to New York, where she did part of her undergraduate studies, and now in Chicago.

Much of the Militia's crocheted art is located in the Loop because Kristin wants to awaken the dormant beauty in gritty construction sites and scaffolding.

"There are so many interesting lines," she said, "that covering them up even with just one straight color is really appealing. It's also to make something worthwhile out of this temporary construction."

In addition, the dangerous thrill of putting such fragile, time-intensive handicraft out into the open where it may be destroyed in no time also attracts Kristin. It's almost a challenge for her to become comfortable with people ruining her art, pieces that require as much as a week to create. Many pieces have been torn off, burned off, or removed when scaffolding came down. She says she feels rejected by the destruction but will continue to make her presence known through her work.

So is crocheted public art vandalism?

Unlike spray-painted graffiti, which is more permanent and can be considered destructive to property, Kristin argues that her pieces don't actively destroying anything and are more fleeting. She perfers the term "artistic littering."

"I'm sewing it on," she said, acknowledging that her work can be destroyed by a quick snip of the scissors. "It's not buttons or Velcro that people can't take off easily."

The Chicago Police Department tends to agree. "Since there is no criminal defacement to property, it would be difficult to categorize it as vandalism,'' said Monique Bonds, a department spokeswoman.

At any rate, Kristin is not comfortable with the confrontational aura of spray-painted graffiti.

"I've grown up too much of a good girl to be able to do anything with spray paint or anything permanent," she said.

Instead, she prefers introducing the familiar warm and welcoming style of crocheted art into public spaces. But she has trouble seeing the work as simply beautifying the space.

"The simplicity makes it more accessible," said Kristin. "But the simplicity--if people just see it as that--also diminishes or eliminates the opportunity for any more significance."

Crocheting became popular during the 1800s as an inexpensive way to produce lace-like fabric. Recently, however, it has been used as a form of political activism by groups like the Institute For Figuring who refer to their work as "craftivism."

The group crocheted coral reefs to call attention to the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef system located off the coast of Australia, which is being destroyed by global warming and plastic pollutants. The crocheted reef was shown in an exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center last December.

Micro-Fiber Militia may add social-political statements to its artistic goals in the future, said Kristin. But for now, she is simply happy to have the public interact with their work.

"I like people touching it." said Kristin. "Ideally they would be touching objects they wouldn't normally encounter."