If you notice colourful threads of yarn artfully wrapped around bike racks and decor in downtown Toronto, it’s the work of yarn bombing. This is a type of street art where knitted or crocheted yarn adorns objects in public spaces. Local multi-media artist Martin Reis, who is known for transforming this plain downtown street pole into a colourful LEGO art structure, as well as his ‘Crosswalk Referee’ performance artwork, is responsible for a few yarn-decorated bike stands you’ll spot around the city.
He calls his work ‘Bike Parking Lollies’, and you can spot some of his creations alongside the ‘Tour Lego’ pole outside of 297 Harbord St.
“Time to make this city a bit softer, cozier, fuzzier and more colourful. Dressed in merino & lambswool, silk and acrylic yarns these three joyful single crochet stitch lollies pay homage to the long history of yarn bombing around the world. Crochet Your City” the artist wrote in a recent Instagram post, alongside a yarn-adorned bike rack.
According to Reis, while other forms of graffiti may be expressive, decorative, territorial, or even part of socio-political commentary — yarn bombing was initially almost exclusively about reclaiming and personalizing sterile or cold public places.
“It has since developed with groups graffiti knitting and crocheting worldwide, each with their own agendas and public graffiti knitting projects being run,” Reis said in his post.
The start of this movement is attributed to Houston artist Magda Sayeg, who transforms urban landscapes “into her own playground” by decorating everyday objects with yarn (she first got the idea nearly two decades ago when she yarn-bombed the door handle of her boutique). The movement spread, and today there are hundreds of Instagram posts of people using yarn as their canvas across the globe.
Unfortunately, some Torontonians aren’t sold on the idea. In a recent Reddit post about Reis’ creations, some users complained that the concept of yarn bombing borders on vandalism and littering.
“[It] looks nice for about 5 seconds before it gets wet / greyed / polluted / stretched and becomes apparent it has always just been.. litter,” one user stated.
“I f&%ing hate yarn bombing with a passion. No one should be modifying city infrastructure because they feel like it. Especially since I have yet to see any of the “artists” come back and clean up their mess when it degrades,” another user added. “I also don’t want to use a sopping wet yarn covered bike ring.”
Others argued that this type of street art works great, as long as the logistics are worked out.
“I think it’s wonderful when the clean up is planned in advance, give it a few week, a season at most on non-organic objects — but there have been precious few cases of that happening.”
