World Urban Art

A knitted sphere cover was installed outside Vodafone side door in Maastricht Friday 23rd April 2010 at about 7.30am The picture gallery from Connielene is here

There were 3 balls and the one closest to the road was covered with the red and white Vodafone logo knitted piece. Vodafone Maastricht Ball Cover

We are about 3 hours from Maastricht so cannot report if the knitted cover remained after 3.30pm on Friday.

A new piece of knit graffiti will be installed on Friday morning in Maastricht, before breakfast even. There are several issues for the installer – it will be daylight, and it hasn’t been tested. Best Beloved did the measurements, hope he recorded them correctly

But the question is “Will it be an Orange piece”, or Will it actually be the Red & White one? Whichever colour it is, it will be round.

Orange or maybe it will be Red & White

First Sculpture in Snow Yes, this is very temporary urban art – a snow / ice sculpture of a horse. Morgan usually draws, sketches and paints – so sculpture is a new art form to him. And you cannot be more temporary than creating in snow and ice.
As a youngster (school boy), he created sand sculptures on the vast 90 mile beach in the North of New Zealand. These were always huge works for a youngster and his creations were incredible. One day we hope we will have some photos of these early works

These Haarlem Balls have now been removed and unless they return before we leave the Netherlands, my custom made Ball Warmers have no balls to call home.

And these photographs may be the only ones ever that record an event, an art installation, a modification of the cold crisp environment with soft coloured yarns to surprise and delight in a winter wonderland.

Alex creates with various metals, including steel. His technique can be spur of the moment, decisions are sometimes on the fly, coupled with some brute force, but not with ignorance.

His desire is to create a beautifully crafted object – whether that is a car grill, rebuilding a car from bits and pieces, or building a kit car and many other objects between, from stair rails, house gates and much much more. Each creation stands alone, requires unique skills, nous and the abilty to work with the metals. There is no mass production in his work.

All his work is beautifully executed, the end result always a stunning piece of engineering. But what gets us at World Urban Art is that his work is always beautifully designed and crafted, yet he does not consider himself an artisan and he surely is.

We are encouraging him to provide photographs of his extraordinary work and will post more of his story here as we extract it from him. Then he will surely set up his own web presence.

Meantime we have his Lotus Gemco piece to marvel at – but trust us there is more.

We hope that the “tree and scarf” series delights you as much as it delighted us in creating or responding to a huge amount of snow here in Haarlem, the Netherlands, January 2010.

An email regarding Altered Environments, Knit Art Graffiti, Land Art, Guerilla Art, Yarn Bombing arrived in my inbox. I knew nothing of those things.

Well that is not entirely true, I had been watching from a safe distance. Now I have jumped in Boots and all – and I so want to do more of this exciting stuff.

Was I bored – no I don’t think I have ever been bored with knitting, was I down, No – have been there. No I was uplifted and transported. This was not a religious experience, so don’t take it the wrong way – I am just plain excited.

I have been considering just what Urban Art is or could be and I found a car – created from a pile of metal pieces, concrete ball covered with a Ball Warmer, and lots in between. So this will be Fibre Art in the urban environment from open spaces, concrete constructions, to vehicles and to whatever else turns up in the discovery process.