Mittenfest 2024

For round two of Mittenfest at Washington Park in Cincinnati I was excited to branch out into a new direction. This year didn’t include any knitted or crocheted pieces and I focused on straight lines in creating three separate pieces and the entire effort was called “Funky Fibers.”

I’d wanted to create a piece around the historic bandstand for years and that vision finally came to fruition with the piece “Rose Window.” I struggled picking between that name and “Spirograph” as an alternative due to the obvious comparison with the drawing toy. This piece used more than 14 miles of yarn in a subtle gradient shifting from light green to dark blue. The yarn at the center was unsupported and the hole was created by the lines of yarn continuously passing at a consistent distance from the bandstand structure.

Beneath The Porch, the bar structure in the park, I added the piece “Spiral Flare” beneath the elevated roof section of the pavilion. This consisted of a continuous spiral overlapping onto itself but never reconnecting. The colors and design were meant to resemble the outward radiation of heat from the sun, reminding people to stay warm even though warm sunlight is in short supply during the winter months. The colors from top to bottom were red, orange, yellow, orange, and red. The orange and yellow strands at the middle of the pice were fluorescent to give the feeling that the piece glows from the inside, like a star.

The final section connected The Porch to the bandstand. This piece ran alongside the edge of The Porch to create a ceiling over the lawn area before coming back down to the ground following the edge of the landscaping. There was a color gradient in the yellow with three total colors that intensified in fluorescent brightness. While this was the most subtle of the parts of this installation, it was the most important in its ability to connect all the pieces and maintain a contrast. It created a containment boundary for the whole Porch pavilion area, draws the eye between the Porch and the bandstand, and made the whole group of installations work better together.

The bandstand and the yellow tunnel sections both eventually needed to be removed. However, “Spiral Flare” was able to remain and is still a permanent installation at the Porch at Washington Park (Updated Feb. 2025). To date, it has undergone one repair an a few small adjustments.