A Little Knitting: Knitting for My Soul

Mindfulness is awareness of thoughts, words, and actions in each moment of daily life. When knitting, one is forced to concentrate on counting the number of stitches in each row, repetitively. This meditative focus, combined with the daily interaction of viewers in the gallery, constitutes what Paté Conaway calls Knitting for My Soul.

Exploring the relationship between art and life, Conaway uses his daily existence as source material for his artwork to create humorous and poignant works. Although Pate is a performance artist, for this exhibition, Pate will share his daily life and the creation of his art, which is normally nurtured in private, with the public. Each day during the month of February Pate will knit within the gallery to create a pair of mittens large enough to cover his body. Using handmade four-foot knitting needles and over 500 yards of monochromatic cotton fiber, Conaway creates knitted sculptures—a washcloth, a four-feet-wide and six-feet-long baby’s cap (with pom-pom) and a five-feet-wide and thirty-three-feet-long scarf. By altering the usual scale of knitting—what was six-and-a-half stitches to an inch is now eight stitches to a foot—he makes the familiar unfamiliar to challenge accepted notions of object, scale, and hierarchy.

Crossing barriers of gender and age, Conaway learned to knit during an artist residency at a retirement community, to connect to both personal histories and a rich tradition. Knitting not only connects each stitch to adjoining stitches, but people to people. Whether through the yarn’s large scale or the artist’s personality, the project draws the viewer into the gallery. If Conaway asks the viewer, “Do you knit? Who taught you?,” a wealth of information and worlds are shared through the simple act of knitting.

Conaway’s work addresses the relationship between individuals and objects and how meaning is created and received. In his artist’s book, The Adult-Child Abcedarium, and accompanying slide show performance, Conaway questions society’s modes of learning by presenting images that do not correspond to the letters of the alphabet. His video Training Session further addresses dysfunctional learning by humorously delineating how failure is a result of improperly tying a shoe.

Because of the progressive, performative nature of this exhibition, an on-line component has been created by the MCA Teen Apprentices who will be videotaping Conaway each week. This apprenticeship program offers the students the opportunity to work with artists and staff of the MCA to create a web-based project for the 12 x 12 series.

While taking place over the course of a month, the meaning of Knitting for My Soul is created within each moment. Through his bodily performance, stitch by stitch, day after day, Conaway elevates an everyday activity and craft to an art form and engages the viewer in a discussion of the relationship between art and craft, art and performance, and material and transcendence.

—Tricia Van Eck