Crochet Coral Reef Exhibit

Last month, I just happened to be in Roanoke, Virginia and luckily saw the coolest Art Exhibit at the Olin Hall Gallery on the Roanoke College Campus featuring the most colorful array of Crochet Sea Creatures!  The Institute for Figuring out of Los Angeles, CA gets local citizens to create handmade Hyperbolic Coral Reef objects and then they are assembled into art displays.  Each community creates their very own creatures and exhibit.

The premise of the exhibit is to creatively generate community awareness about scientific and environmental matters.  Coral reefs are experiencing severe damage due to man made environmental toxins. To illustrate this, crochet sea creatures and their habitats were created by hundreds of volunteers giving a fascinating look at the beauty of the reef and the devastation that occurs when environmental damage destroys them.  The bright colors in a healthy natural Reef were juxtaposed against the large display of a stark white sick Reef.

The haunting mass of the stone cold white Reef illustrates what happens when pollution takes it's toll.  The life of the Reef is sucked out and replaced with a dead barren floating dead barge.

One display used a sewer pipe as the focal point with crochet sea creatures amassed around the foreign object.  It was the only sound in the exhibit - the sound of constantly running sewage dripping from the pipe.

It was a beautiful and thought provoking exhibit and sadly it has been taken down.  This had to be my favorite exhibit I've ever seen.

Communities can apply to host a project just like this, maybe a gallery in Charlottesville will take it on.

-Rebecca