She’ll be the girl in the crocheted sneakers. She’ll also be the girl surrounded by yards of yarn.
London Kaye, a New York-based street artist and “yarnbomber,” will bring some of her “yarn goodness” to this year’s Tinkerfest at Scott Family Amazeum. The third annual festival of artists, makers and tinkerers is Oct. 1.
“I love crocheting more than anything in the world,” Kaye says.
Kaye discovered crochet at age 13 and fell in love with it. At the time she also studied dance at her mother’s dance studio. She combined her two hobbies and turned them into her first business, making “Nutcracker” themed scarves for her fellow ballerinas, she says.
Kaye continued to crochet and study dance, which took her to New York — she attended New York University on a dance scholarship — and eventually led her to discover the world of “yarnbombing.”
“Yarnbombing is when you take a piece of crochet or knit ‘goodness’ and wrap it around a pole or a fire hydrant or just cover something in yarn,” she explains. “Right when I saw it, I just lit up. It blew my mind. Everything about it. I really dove in full force to starting to make my own style with crochet and make unexpected things out of yarn.”
The day after discovering this new form of street art, Kaye took a scarf she’d made and wrapped it around a tree in the front of her Brooklyn home.
That was four years ago. The scarf is still there — as is and her enthusiasm for “yarnbombing.”
Kaye will be assembling a mural of her bike-themed crocheted pieces at Tinkerfest. She’ll also crochet throughout the day.
“There will be an interactive portion where the little kids will be able to help adorn some of the crochet bikes that I’ve made,” she says. “They will be making pom poms and accessories to make the bikes more fun and [make them] pop.”
While there’s no official question and answer session, Kaye says she will be visiting with people throughout the day while she works on the mural.
“London is a fantastic artist,” says Dana Engelbert, marketing manager at the Amazeum. “[Her work is] different, and it should appeal to a lot of people, not just little girls.”
Engelbert says museum staff has been working with Lion Brand Yarn, a company which also works with Kaye, on “getting more proficient at textile making activities.”
Kaye’s murals will incorporate bicycles — and bikes and gears are an underlying theme — but the entire focus of Tinkerfest won’t be on that, Engelbert says.
“We have lots of new faces as well as friends from museums around the country with us this year sharing what they do,” Engelbert says.
Bicycles will be available for building and fixing and will be used in exhibits such as a rope squirter demonstrated by Kua Patten, formerly of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Toymaker Adam Tobin and local artist Eugene Sargent will turn heads with their gear-related automata exhibits.
New nonbike-related exhibits include hoop gliders, dancing oobleck and a visit from Star Wars droid R2-D2.
“Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid that acts like a liquid when poured, but acts like a solid when a force is acted upon it,” Engelbert explains. Students from Fulbright Junior High School in Bentonville will present that exhibit.
Engelbert also promises some favorite exhibits from previous Tinkerfests will be part of this year’s event.
Bubbles, stomp rockets and car take-apart made the list. Engelbert encourages guests to arrive early if they are interested in taking apart the car.
“We hope to have two [cars] this year. Last year the car was apart by about 10 o’clock,” she says.
Besides Kaye, the Amazeum is featuring two local artists — Dani Ives, founder of Good Natured Art, and David Kersey, executive director of New Design School in Fayetteville.