Knitting isn’t just for grandmas anymore.

FAU’s newest exhibit in the Schmidt Gallery is Home Mask Relations: A Social Art Project by Isabel Berglund. At the beginning of November, the art gallery on campus was home to needles and yarn.

Students were invited to stop by and help create the art on display. Even if you didn’t know how to knit when you first walked in, volunteers were available to teach you and help you learn.

The exhibit consists of knitted floor plans of participant’s homes that were then sewn together and placed along the gallery walls.

To create these knitted panels, participants first drew the floor plan on a blank piece of paper, creating a template for their final piece. Berglund plans to display some of these templates alongside the knitting as well.

This project was what Danish artist Isabel Berglund calls a social art project. It is all about identity and having people’s handprints in the piece. The exhibit is as much about the process as it is the art itself.

“I could easily make all of the panels, but then the project won’t tell the story of people’s homes,” Berglund said.

Berglund, who has been in America for a few months working on this exhibit, chose knitting because it has been abandoned by most as both an activity and an art medium.

“For me, it’s not even something I think about,” Berglund said. “It is a material I really love to work with. I love the feeling of the material. I love the story it tells.”

Before coming to FAU’s art gallery, Berglund had people create panels off campus. She has also been to Arizona and Indiana to do similar projects. For her, working in different parts of the USA is important.

“Each school is different, each person is different, and each workshop is different. It’s a mix of people,” Berglund said. “I hope that this exhibit helps people who know about knitting but don’t know about the art scene understand the concept of home, participation in an art project, and how all of these can come together.”

Pieces with similar shapes and coordinating colors were placed next to each other as they were attached to the walls. This was to create a feeling of togetherness and made each piece a part of something larger. 

The exhibit will be available at the Schmidt Gallery on FAU’s Boca campus until January 20th, 2018.

Melissa Krupp is a contributing writer of the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, tweet @m31i or email [email protected].