Bombshells on the Parkway

Knitting, the stuff of grandma's everywhere.
When you think of knitting you think of quiet evenings by the fire, maybe a cat near by.
That's what you might think of knitting unless you were downtown Wednesday night on Central Parkway when the Bombshells blew your mind clear out of your head, knitted it up and plopped it back in your skull.
Art? Not Art? WFT?
You're not alone, it may be your weft to my warp but at the end of the day it's streetart.
And streetart is as much about, or even more about the process than the final product, people who don't get it probably don't get that.

A few words with Pinky Shears, since I knew they started planning this in March. Yes, MARCH!
What possessed you to go out and bomb Central Ave?

We loved the idea of Central Parkway being in the "center" of downtown.
Did you know it is a city park? There is so much going on in the arts in that area. We wanted to create a magical oasis that is seen often,but under celebrated.
It also allowed so many artists, crafters, DIYers in our posse to have their own piece of art with in the entire installation.

Did you acquire blue prints for central Parkway or did one of you go out and survey the entire place?

The Internet is a wonderful thing. Big Foot and I used Google Earth, and the Park web site. as well as numerous images on the web.
Then Babzy, Rasta Man and I went out on a recon mission to measure every tree, planter, light post and doogy do-do pole. Then the measurements we sent out. Many BombShells went out after and measure later, due to the trees growing a bit.

Do you know how many hours were invested knitting everything?

WOW, great question. The BombShells meet and we gave each other lessons on different types of fiber arts techniques. We had numerous meeting with the Park Board, Artworks and Metro. Before we got to the making. Then each BombShells invited old friends, new friends and family to be on their team as Sidekicks.This is even before the art making began.
There are hundreds and hundreds of hour in the making and creating. Hundreds per teams, per Sidekicks, per BombShells. I think we should come up with a number of yards of yarns and hours of making. Boo Radley and I use Law and Order episodes to gage our time. There is always a station that seem to have reruns on. And the beauty of knitting, crochet is that you can do it at home, with your family and friends and relax as you create.

How many people were involved?

There are 18 Bombshells, our amazing blogger May Hem, our video/photo documentation guys, Orson Wells and Hitchcock. Over 100 INCREDIBLE Sidekicks. We did workshops at the CAC and CAM and numerous participants helped my pom poms for the bus.
Wow, is like a million sound good?

Did you have sponsorship?

The BombShells are completely artist driven. This is the first time an artist has approached ArtWorks with an idea and Tamara Harkvay of Artworks faciliated the process of finding amazing funders. Artworks has been incredible in helping us make this a reality. So much of the supplies were donated, which was great too. The Bombshells and our Sidekicks did this art installtion for the love of creating art and creating community. None of us were paid to create this fete de arte! Additionally, the Cincinnati Parks and Metro partnered with us, the Cincinnati Reds too! The Art Academy of Cincinnati photography students are creating a photo documentary of our process as a class assignment. Lead by the iconic photographer Emily Hanako Momahra, each student was paired with a BombShell, and followed us around to document the goings on. There will be a show next Friday night in the ArtWorks Project Space.
There is a full list on the Artworks website too.
This sound so sugar coated sweetie pie, but I don't know of anywhere that an artist can have a idea and a city can come together to make it happen.
Along with over 100 pretty darn committed artist and craftspersons.

I get an email late last week, don't tell anyone, the Bombshell yarn bombers are going to be out Wednesday.
Sweet!
Except when I get there, there are as many people with cameras as there are yarn bombers. With that many people involved there's no way that secret was going to be kept.
The interview with Pinky explains all the photographers.
Twitpics were flying fast and furious on twitter, it was almost Hudson River proportions in the twitterverse.

Remeber those 3D postcards you'd buy out west on vacation? Yeah, its kinda like that.



How cool is it that the Metro has a sense of humor and loaned the Bombshells a bus?




Alice dropping down the rabbit hole to Wonderland.
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8 purl stitches