Akeen Kidder, known to many as the Yarn Art Guy, has a knack for turning ordinary yarn into extraordinary art. His unique journey began when he saw Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" and noticed that the iconic brushstrokes looked like strands of yarn. This spark of inspiration ignited a passion that would soon become his life's work.

Akeen's art isn't just about creating beautiful pieces; it's about inspiring others to explore their own creative potential. He believes that art should be fun, accessible, and a bit quirky—much like himself! With a playful approach, he challenges the norms of traditional mediums, showing that even something as simple as yarn can be used to create masterpieces.

Beyond the canvas, Akeen is dedicated to fostering a community of creativity. He shares his process and passion through online content, encouraging his followers to get crafty in any way that speaks to them. Join Akeen on his artistic adventure and be inspired to see the world through a yarn-tinted lens!

Website: ArtWithAnAK.com                        Instagram: @yarnartguy

'places to which i cannot go' is a representation of plants and places throughout the US South (especially the southern half of the Appalachian mountain range), focusing on representing the natural beauty of these areas. However, the laws governing many of these locations mean they are not safe for all people: this project is both a commemoration of beauty and an expression of deep sadness at the role of political displacement in separating people from the places they love.

Andy Stowers Forest is a trans fiber artist and political scientist from Tallahassee, Florida, currently residing in Manhattan. After moving to escape political, professional, and familial violence, he began utilizing knitting and crochet to represent plants and places, as well as to positively connect to traditional skills from his own family's Appalachian and German roots. His academic research centers on educational and arts-based approaches to mitigating extremism, with focus on traditional skills. 

The vast majority of the materials used are recycled (probably 90% by weight), and the vast majority of the yarn was either discarded by other crafters or upcycled from abandoned projects.

Anna Hrachovec is a Chicago-based designer and artist who is obsessed with knitting little toys and bringing them to life through stop-motion animation. She named her woolly world Mochimochi Land after learning to knit in Japan, which is also where she fell in love with the cute, minimalist characters that inspired her early designs.

She has published five books of knitting patterns in addition to hundreds more independently-published patterns and knitting kits. Anna’s first picture book, Catside Up, Catside Down, was published by Feiwel & Friends in September 2023, with a follow up, Short Dog, Long Dog, that will be published in February 2025.

Anna’s animation clients have included Nickelodeon, The Washington Post, and Sesame Street. A new animated series based on her knitted world, Woolly Woolly, is set to debut on television in France and Canada in 2025.

Carol MacDonald is an artist and printmaker who has brought her love of knitting into her printmaking. She prints with the fabric that she knits and reinterprets the stitches into rich metaphorical images. Carol tugs at the threads of our shared humanity, making visible what we all know and intuit about the power of knitting. In her Vermont studio, she works in monoprinting, etching, silkscreens, relief printing and mezzotints.

Carol has shown her work in galleries and museums throughout the US and internationally. She is represented by a variety of galleries and her work is in many museum and private collections.

 

Website: carolmacdonald.com  Instagram: carolmacdonald7

Courtney Cox is an award-winning international artist working in fiber arts with a specialization in hand embroidery. Using the humble tools of needle and thread, Cox turns thousands of stitches into vibrant pieces rich in intricacies. Often focused on portraiture, her work embraces color, which, unlike working with other mediums, cannot be mixed when using thread. Studying the planes and angles of the face, she leverages texture and stitch direction to communicate about her subjects. Her non-figurative pieces utilize tiny vignettes and a variety of stitches to indicate emotion and movement. 

 

Cox’s work has been exhibited, awarded, and published across four continents. Courtney Cox currently resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In addition to her hand embroidery, she is a knitwear designer and pattern writer. 

 

www.courtneycoxart.com            instagram @courtneycoxart

Out of the blue and submerged in the Andromeda, Warmer Waters drifts from currents not yet known. Created by emerging artist Dante Cioffoletti, questions arise of survival, reminiscing on emotions all too animal and experiences all too human. What comes after survival? And eventually, what comes after that?

Inspired by the alien ways of life under the ocean, and the endurance of the creatures who call her home. Cioffoletti explores the search for one's own niche in the vast world around us. Using the soft and slow practices of knitting, weaving, sewing, and crochet to create a fabricated reality far yet familiar to life on land. A new perspective to exist in, even for a moment. Instead of floating away from the world that has been so harsh, what if we sink?

 

Explore deeper: DanteCioffoletti.com           Instagram: @PraiseForTheUrchinEel

 

Hi, I’m Ellie d’Eustachio, a Brooklyn-based textile street artist. My solo and community yarnbombs have been published in the AP and Gothamist and are seen by thousands on scaffolding across NYC. I have been commissioned to produce large-scale installations for live events at Lincoln Center and in Prospect Park, and my art has been on exhibit both here and abroad. I am the recipient of an Awesome Foundation NYC grant and I run a community art project teaching knitting and making yarnbombs for Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Whether leading others in creating public art or crafting complex knit pieces that uplift, I believe art is vital to our wellbeing. Many of my projects are driven by working collaboratively with others and creating meaningful, emotional visuals accessible to children.

Buy my art on my website, purchase knitting patterns in my Ravelry store, or stickers and patches of my yarnbombs on Big Cartel. 

 

www.elliedeustachio.com               instagram: @MadeByEllieBklyn

 

Emma Oliver, born in Salem, MA, is a full-time sculptor and part-time sculpture professor with extensive experience in both studio practice and academia. With a background in studio management and guiding students at Illinois State University, Emma is passionate about shaping artistic talent and fostering creativity. Known for her skill in combining traditional sculpting techniques with contemporary concepts, she has exhibited their work in various galleries both nationally and internationally and collaborated on numerous art installations.

As an artist, Emma explores the complex interplay of boundaries and vulnerabilities, focusing on the intricacies of human communication. Her work delves into how people connect, protect, and expose themselves to one another. Through large-scale knit and crochet sculptures, she physically manifests these themes, using the tension and elasticity of fibers to symbolize both the fragility and resilience found in relationships and personal boundaries. The repetitive, meditative process of knitting and crocheting mirrors the ways in which communication unfolds—slowly, carefully, and with the potential for unraveling or strengthening over time.

 

emmaoliverart.com

Françoise Danoy is an Indigenous, neurodivergent, and queer fibre artist who operates her creative studio, The Practice of Fibre, in San Antonio, TX. Her work delves into themes of creativity, spirituality, decolonization, and growth, exploring not only the medium of fibre but also what the craft can teach us about these important concepts.

 

Her punch needle pieces were showcased at the Waikato Museum as part of the Wharenui Harikoa exhibition in December 2023 in Hamilton, New Zealand. As a knitwear designer, her creations have been featured in third-party publications such as Knit Picks, Pacificus, Making Stories, amirisu, and tinyStudio, and highlighted in Peggy Orenstein’s book “Unraveled.”

 

Françoise is dedicated to helping other fibre artists transform their creative hobbies into intentional practices, thereby fostering more creativity, well-being, and purpose in their daily lives. She offers practical tips and shares insights to help makers unravel their own creative processes. Ultimately, Françoise’s greatest hope is that her work will resonate with you, inspiring you to take action and create!

 

To explore more of Françoise’s work, visit her online Creative Studio at www.thepracticeoffibre.com

 

Sue Hunter and Karima Sundarji began the collaboration for the Straphangers Lounge while standing on a New York City subway platform admiring the mosaic tile signs.  They had long admired the gorgeous artwork of the mosaics in the subway stations—they would visit new ones as they were installed, admiring them as though they were an art exhibit in a museum. The women found it thrilling to see this ancient technique continued in new subway platform designs like those by Vik Muniz, Xenobia Bailey, William Wegman, and Nancy Blum.

 

Realizing the graphic quality of subway signs and the square motif of the mosaic tiles directly relate to knitting graphs, they began to ideate. It was a natural leap to represent these familiar and appealing mosaics in a textile format, to follow the mosaic pattern as a knitted object. Acknowledging the time, handiwork, and artistry that went into creating those mosaic signs, they were inspired to dedicate the same to their textile arts. Rendering the mosaics in a textile format evolved into the idea of recreating the subway in textiles as a reading and knitting space, and the Straphangers Lounge emerged. With the Straphangers Lounge project, they created a textile installation of a New York City subway car and platform.    
 

While it started with the mosaic tiles, there is so much more to the subway. There is Poetry in Motion, MTA arts, the graphic design of the subway map, the different color palettes of the subway seats, and advertising posters within. It’s an inspiring muse: in fact, a mobile museum. The Straphangers Lounge is their homage to the many artisans who created this mobile museum.
 

Sue and Karima met through an Astoria, Queens-based knitting group. One of their favorite places to knit is on the subway. their favorite places to knit is on the subway.

 

Katherine the Creator is an Australian based Fibre artist who gained recognition from her yarn bombing Tree Jumpers at the Annual Jumpers and Jazz in July festival in Warwick, Queensland.

A left handed crocheter, Katherine uses her art to bring joy into peoples lives through installations or garments that spark a conversation. Whether it's a life size Mario cartoon character or Crocheted Converse Sneakers, Katherine's use of colour and design combined with her out of the box thinking has brought a fresh perspective to the Australian Fibre Community.

 

Katherine started her crochet journey in 2017 following a life changing motorbike accident that left her with injuries requiring months of recovery. Crochet quickly became her saving grace and replaced the creative joy she could no longer achieve from sewing couture gowns. It is this very joy that drives Katherine the create all of her installations and unique garments.

 

Katherine is based in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales and shares her skills of sewing, knitting, crocheting and embellishment with her community at campus based Crafternoons and from her home studio.

 

Website:katherinethecreator.com                    Instagram: katherinethecreator_craft

 

Threadwinners is a crochet collaborative that aims to subvert the status quo through the vehicle of crochet, often with a disarmingly whimsical and lowbrow aesthetic. Their collaborative pieces often ruminate on the body as landscape, the intersection of memory and loss, and the constant overwhelming sensory overload present in modern society.

 

Threadwinners began their collaborative art practice in 2016 and are currently based in OC + LA. Their work has been shown in galleries across the US and internationally.

 

Website: threadwinnersart.com       Instagram: @thread.winners

 

 

Going Gnome

Going Gnome began quite by accident. Sisters Jennifer and Melissa VanSant had been running their bead and scrapbook store since 2005 and frequently spent time needle felting in their shop. They began needle felting gnomes and their woodland friends. Customers in the store were constantly asking: “How do you make them?” and “What is needle felting?” This prompted the sisters to begin teaching felting classes and producing their own felting kits to allow people to start creating their own villages of gnomes, and to take a stab at needle felting. What began with a gnome and 2 felting kits has expanded to a line of 30 needle felting kits, including several limited-edition kits each year and an annual mystery kit club. 

 

As artists, Melissa and Jennifer have expanded the depth and breadth of their needle felting to push the boundaries of what this technique and medium can do; creating life-size animals and many large solid-wool dragons. Melissa and Jennifer take each step in this amazing business with gratitude that people far and wide are embracing their artwork and vision of this gentle, though sometimes scary, place called Going Gnome.

 

Mitsue is an Amigurumi artist and crochet sculptor born in Okayama, Japan, in 1973. When creating her amigurumi, she doesn’t follow any charts or patterns, allowing her to capture the moment and let her inspiration flow freely.

She prefers using unique, vintage, or deadstock yarns rather than ordinary ones. Her guiding principles are to explore the potential of each yarn and to enjoy every step of the process as she transforms a single line into three-dimensional art.

When crocheting creatures, Mitsue thoroughly researches their forms, ecology, and environments. While working on her amigurumi orangutan, Orang, she learned that orangutans are endangered, which inspired her to think about how knitting and crochet can raise awareness about environmental issues.

Mitsue dreams of becoming an amigurumi nomad—traveling the world with just a crochet hook in hand, creating amigurumi with local communities, and sharing the joy of crochet wherever she goes.

 

Website: https://mitsue-amigurumi.com/            Instagram: @mitsue_amigurumi

 

 

 

It is believed that it was the Victorians who were responsible for changing attitudes toward domestic animals, in particular – cats. Queen Victoria herself commissioned artists to paint pictures of her family cats. Cats became status symbols and an important part of the family and everyday life. It is not unimaginable that Victorians would have assigned a particular cat to a particular room (or family member), at least insofar as the cat would let them.  Step inside the Morgan Family parlour where cats from every room of their large upper class home are, at this moment, spending an eventide together.  

 

Sara Elizabeth Kellner has been designing knitted toys and animals with realistic, yet whimsical charm for many years.  Combine that with her love of the 19th century and what do you get?  A new book entitled Victorian Housecats to Knit.  Look for it Fall of 2024.

 

Website:  www.rabbitholeknits.com

 

Sarah Divi creates hand-knit artwork that blends the comforting feel of a beloved sweater with the vibrant energy of graffiti. Her unique fiber artwork transforms entire spaces into captivating, immersive experiences, ranging from living room walls to chain-link fences to multiple city blocks.

 

Sarah's passion for fiber art began when she unraveled unwanted sweaters to knit into a maze for her college thesis. Since then, she has continued creating innovative site-specific installations using traditional craft techniques on a grand scale. Her work is not just to be viewed from a distance but to be experienced up close, inviting viewers to complete the artwork by stepping into it and becoming part of it.

 

Sarah holds a BFA degree from the Purchase College School of Art+Design and resides in Westchester, New York. She has completed art fellowships and teaching residencies with several organizations, including ArtsWestchester, Hudson River Museum, and WUJS Arad.

 

Website: www.SarahDivi.com                Instagram: @SarahDiviArt

Shiying Dong is a pioneering fiber artist merging mathematics and art through abstract sculpture. With a background in theoretical physics and mathematics, Shiying developed Topological Crochet, a groundbreaking style translating algebraic topology concepts into yarn. This innovative approach unlocks artistic freedom, enabling creators to craft complex forms previously challenging to achieve with traditional methods.

 

As an educator, Shiying teaches online workshops at the National Museum of Mathematics and has led sessions at the Bridges math art conferences. Her work has been showcased at Bridges and the Joint Mathematical Meetings. Shiying shares her techniques on YouTube and is co-authoring "Unravelling Topological Crochet" with math artist Eve Torrence.

 

Expanding her creative horizons, Shiying explores laser cutting, earning the prestigious 2023 Einstein Mad Hat Award Grand Prize.

 

Instagram: @clay_mushi      YouTube: @epimono

 

Will Chatlosh (he/him) is a New York based artist, but is originally from Grand Rapids, MI. Will received his Bachelor’s in Fashion Studies from Kendall College (KCAD) and associates in Fashion Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, NY, graduating with honors in both programs. Will’s mission has always been to change the way that people view crochet in the field of arts and crafts. He has grown a community by sharing his work on social media under the name @wccrochet, and has been posting his crochet projects since 2017.

Will taught himself to crochet at are eleven, using Youtube as his main resource. Will began within the field of amigurumi (Japanese for "crocheted or knitted stuffed toy"), and has since created unique crochet patterns and designs of his own. Will has been motivated to grow his skills: he now pushes his ideas with crocheted portraits and fashion. He has sold his artwork at local markets and art galleries, was featured in the December 2022 issue of Crochet World Magazine, was awarded in the nation-wide art competition ‘ArtPrize’ in Fall ‘22, and more.

Will Chatlosh also puts an immense amount of work into garment construction: he has worked for multiple installation artists and international fashion designers, and is always excited for every new opportunity to further his creative spirit.