Every year after the full moons in late October and November, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef begins its annual spawning — first the coral species inshore, where waters are warmer, then the offshore corals, the main event. Last year, this natural spectacle coincided with the woolly propagation of two new colonies of the Crochet Coral Reef, a long-running craft-science collaborative artwork now inhabiting the Schlossmuseum in Linz, Austria, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. The Linz satellite reef unites some 30,000 pieces by 2,000 crocheters.
To date, nearly 25,000 crocheters (“reefers”) have created a worldwide archipelago of more than 50 reefs — both a paean to and a plea for these ecosystems, rainforests of the sea, which are threatened by climate change. The project also explores mathematical themes, since many living reef organisms biologically approximate the quirky curvature of hyperbolic geometry.
In the artworks, marine morphologies are modeled — crocheted — with loopy verisimilitude. A bit like Monet’s water lilies, the crochet corals are abstract representations of nature, said Christine Wertheim, an artist and writer now retired from the California Institute of the Arts. Dr. Wertheim is the driving artistic force behind the project, which she created with Margaret Wertheim, her twin sister, a science writer who is in charge of scientific and mathematical components as well as management. The Wertheims, Australians who live together in Los Angeles, spun out the mother reef from their living room many moons ago, in 2005. Another crochet-coral incarnation recently emerged from a pond of creativity organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, a city known for its three rivers: The Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers converge to form the Ohio, which empties into the Mississippi, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico, where coral spawns after July and August full moons. This show, organized by Alyssa Velazquez, a curatorial assistant of decorative arts and design, features only a satellite reef made by 281 community crocheters.
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