Super Share Sunday : Nathan Vincent
Welcome to Super Share Sunday. The other day I posted about the manly art of knitting, but what about the manly art of crochet?
I recently found an amazing male crochet artist. Nathan Vincent crochets wonderful work that questions stereotypes and expectations of masculinity and femininity. The exhibit is an entirely crocheted male’s locker room. He meticulously (with very specific detail, like woodgrains) crocheted lockers, benches, urinals, and showers.
I admire this particular exhibit’s meshing of the masculine and feminine. Locker rooms express a very hard, testosterone-driven atmosphere—at least all the ones I’ve ever been in and the people I talk to have been in. Vincent’s art, on the other hand, draws on the traditionally feminine position of fiberarts—in this case crochet—to craft a locker room that becomes, literally, softened. Yet, I don’t think he feminizes the locker room in traditional ways. We tend to get caught up in binaries—especially masculine and feminine. This exhibit’s brilliance comes in deconstructing these binaries. Crochet is not feminine and a male’s locker room is not masculine because of the way that Vincent engages both discourses of gender that subvert this dichotomy.
Check out the detail in those lock and that bench!
Yet, this project is not the only one of Vincent’s I loved. I found myself spending hours looking and relooking at the work he has posted on his website. Most of my dear readers know my impulse to embroider beefcakes, this guy crochets them… ON LACE! And he is a bad-ass beefcake crocheter!
Again, the juxtaposition of the masculine and feminine (whatever that means) really inspires me and creates a very specific critique of the methods of representation. The “hard” you-can-only-get-these-muscles-through-testosterone physique that traditionally epitomizes the male body gets undermined when crocheted on the delicate lace. I’m really excited to see what this artist will do next!
If you are in the Bellevue area, be sure to check out the exhibit before June 26th. Opps! I mean, if you are at Rawlins College this fall, be sure to check it out! As has recently been happening to me, I have time warped us into 2011. I blame the Myans. If you are not, be sure to go over to the artist’s website and check out ALL of the really interesting stuff that he has crocheted and knitted (taxidermy, urinals, tool belts, lawn movers—just to entice you). Also, check out this really smart interview he did with Dwell.
Domestigay 