Monday, August 31, 2015

Black Rock City Shawl


With Burning Man happening this week in Black Rock Desert, I pushed to finish my design for a shawl inspired by Black Rock City, a city created during the festival every year on the playa.  


Every year on the Black Rock Playa a festival of immense proportions takes place called Burning Man. With around 70,000 participants in the festival, a temporary city is created for one week called Black Rock City. It is arranged as a series of concentric streets in an arc around the Burning Man sculpture. Radial streets called Avenues extend from the sculpture out to the edges and are given a clock designation, for example, 6:00 or 6:15.


Such precise city planning creates a beautiful symmetry that begs to be lifted off the playa and wrapped around you. So I created this shawl.



Knit from Malabrigo Arroyo it is soft and warm. I began knitting it in Black Rock Desert during my residency but didn’t finish it until this week. I have never done so much math and geometry on a design as I did on this one!


Pattern is coming soon.


3 comments:

  1. This is one of the coolest Burning Man inspired works of art I've ever seen. It's just so simple and elegant and, holy smokes, I can't say enough about it. Just terrific. [Makes me want to learn to knit! I want to make one.]

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  2. Thank you so much for your kind words. I loved designing it and loved my artist-in-residency in Black Rock Desert last year. You should totally learn to knit, it has been proved to improve your health. And you get a something useful to wear after. -Virginia

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