Artist’s Statement
Crocheting is something that has always come very easily to me; although I will admit that the task of making this bear was definitely not as easy as I had anticipated. With two tee shirts, I came up with a very basic rendition of the classical teddy bear. To create this I dutifully cut up two blue tee shirts into a long and usually thin strip of fabric. I then treated this fabric as a type of yarn, and began crocheting from the feet up, as the pattern I chose for the bear recommended. About halfway through I realized that I had already used practically all of the first shirt, and thus began to try and reconstruct the pattern to fit the amount of fabric I had left.
He’s a little scrunched up looking, but I think it’s an endearing look. The second shirt I used was one of those “New York City, USA” tee shirts you can find at any little store in this city, and the more I worked with that shirt the more I thought about how this bear may relate to the personality of that shirt.
The Teddy Bear was originally an American invention, in honor of American president Theodore Roosevelt, who was depicted in an illustration with a small bear after a story of how he’d refused to kill a bear on a hunting trip spread around the country. These concepts created an image in my head of who this bear was. He became fat and sort of messy looking, because in my head, that’s what today’s teddy bear is. No longer do we have the merciful and loved president that Teddy bears are named after; instead, our president is a joke.
And so this bear became a joke. I stuffed him with garbage bags and toilet paper; I let the tee shirt pieces start to break and tied them sloppily. This teddy bear was no longer something I wanted to work on, because everytime I worked on him I thought about the news and how there are people dying everywhere because of this country and in this country and our president isn’t even paying attention. It was hard to finish him, especially because while I would work on him I felt that it was my duty to listen to the news, as is a practice I’ve picked up from my mother; but everytime I sat and listened to the news my fingers would feel like they never wanted to work again.
Once finished, I sat this bear among real teddy bears I’ve had for a long time. Sitting in between stuffed animals that I love and that represent my childhood is this current representation of what I feel about this country, and he looks ugly and misshapen in contrast. It’s very apparent how I disliked the ideas that he brought with him as I spun him into creation, and I’m glad that he’s done.
Fun Facts about Crochet
Nobody’s sure where Crocheting came from, but there are three theories. The first, is that it came from Saudi Arabia. The second is that it’s from South America, where they used knotted ornaments that have the same kind of look as crocheting that were used for puberty rights. And finally that it originated in China, where there’s a history of a practice called tambour that is thought to be what later became crocheting.
The earliest written history of crocheting was in a Dutch magazine in 1824, where the magazine tells you to use only your right hand to hold both the hook and the yarn, unlike now where most crocheters use one hand for the hook and the other for the yarn.
Crochet was also first commonly used by men, only becoming a women’s practice with the popularity of laces.
