Pate Conaway of Chicago, Ill.: Artist, Teacher, Health-Care Provider
I first encountered Pate (pronounced “Patty”) doing performance knitting in the lobby of a hotel! Yes, he also crochets and as an artist, he uses alternative materials like cotton welting, traditionally used for drape cord. Says Pate, “I have crocheted with phone cording, electrical extension cords, string, tinfoil, tinsel, cloth; anything I can get my hand on! I’m still looking for that perfect fiber!

I love the freedom of crochet, especially when I do it just with my fingers,” he explains. “I create sculptures that encase; these basketlike forms are metaphors for community. My ‘community’ encourages me, reminds me of my truth, loves me for who I am and wants me to succeed.”

Recently as an artist-in-residence at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Pate’s role was to create a body of work, to be transparent. He says, “The students witnessed a live artist working and I wanted them to know that not everything has to be a masterpiece.”

A clinical audiologist, as well as an art instructor, Pate remembers his grandmother, affectionately known as Peaches. “She was very creative,” he remembers, “and I watched her crochet as a child. At the time, it was not socially acceptable to teach a boy crochet. She was an artist but we didn’t call her that. Crochet was her language of expression. It is healing for me to be learning and expressing the language my grandmother couldn’t teach me. It is a great way to honor her.”
 

Chris Givler of Dillsburg, Pa.: Professor, Community College
An adjunct instructor in a community college, with a wife and two teenage boys, Chris defies the stereotype of “crocheter.” Self-taught from a book, his mother taught his two sisters when he was young, but left him out. He explains, “At the time, culturally speaking, people didn’t think boys wanted to learn crochet.” Chris has only known how to crochet a short time but he has already completed 25 projects!

Chris observes, “College students are crocheting and I do my part to keep up the excitement by wearing the scarf I have made to class.” This devout and intuitive man believes in celebrating crochet and has researched other peoples’ stories that strengthen his resolve. He heard about a home for troubled boys where the crochet skills they learn help them find calm, patience and control of their anger. He explains, “Lost in the rhythms due to repetitive movements of their crochet, their subconscious is brought forward, in a meditative and contemplative way, to work on their problems and they don’t even realize it.”  Chris has touched lives with his crochet and he would like to include other’s experiences in a book he is writing. If you have a crochet story, you can e-mail him at bright_evening_star_6119@adelphia.net.
 

Jeffrey Michael Grauel: Artist
Growing up in a family that did crafts projects, Jeffrey’s mother and grandmother hesitated to teach him to crochet as they feared he would “get into” the yarn. They preferred, instead, to send him off to play with father’s woodworking tools. He vividly remembers his mother turning to her crochet when she needed a break from her day-to-day work. He struggled to learn on his own and finally they agreed to teach him crochet. “My mother and grandmother told me the story of World War II pilots who used crochet to keep their nerves calm and they insisted that I retell the story to anyone who saw me crocheting,” Jeffrey remembers.

His family was not accustomed to going to museums to see art, so Jeffrey was not exposed to art until he went to college. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture nevertheless! He was encouraged to attend graduate school, but prior to this time, Jeffrey did lots of installation pieces about the environment. He used his grandfather’s tools and other found objects to create sculptures.

Acceptance into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Masters of Fine Arts program brought him to Chicago and it was a bit of culture shock. “Being from California, the common use of public transportation was so different for me and it was the start of a ‘Big Adventure’! My professors told me I should be making art, but nothing was clicking. Often, I found myself sitting in the corner and crocheting. I was making a huge doily, which was worked so tightly that it finally turned into a ball.”

Jeffery realized that part of his discomfort and creative block was from missing his home and family. His solution was to involve his family in his art and he asked them to trace their shadows for him! These shadows were the inspiration for the larger “floor plan work.” Jeffrey involved his draftsman father by cleverly using his house plans as patterns to crochet a huge metaphor for “home.” He also enlisted the help of his mother to search for the vast amounts of black acrylic yarn needed; and as he crocheted and when the packages of yarn arrived, he thought of home. Jeffrey explains how he carried his large project everywhere he went: “I took it to class, on the elevated train and to jury duty. I had some amazing interactions and people would often say, ‘my grandmother did that.’” A homeless man on the El was watching Jeffrey’s hands fly and moved to sit next to him. “Surprisingly,” Jeffrey says, “before I knew it, I was teaching him to crochet with many around us watching in amazement. At first I felt weird crocheting in public, but I guess crochet is familiar enough to many that they feel it is okay for them to talk to a crocheter. We spend so much time defining how different we are that we forget how alike we are. We really do want to connect and bond.”

Still conscious of things around him, Jeffrey created a six-foot pup tent fabricated from 1000 granny squares made of plastic bags. Named, “Thank you,” the work of art honors relationships within his family. Since graduating, Jeffrey has found that in balancing his work and his art, “there is a lot of overlap between the repetitive things I do at work and the repetitive process of crochet. One informs the other. Rhythm and repetitiveness is embedded in crochet as in the yarn, the process and the comfort from doing it.
 

Kyle Pfab, Basalt, Colo.: High-School Student
Although he only learned to crochet about three years ago, Kyle is almost famous now! His grandmother taught him how, but the culture in the Roaring Fork Valley where he lives makes crochet big in his high school. Kyle explains, “We crochet a lot of snowboarding-type hats and it is mostly boys who crochet. It is cool to have and to make hats and they sell for a lot of money in the winter at the ski shops.”

Kyle and his friend Adam were featured in the Aspen times after they made their smashing debut wearing crocheted tuxedos at the prom! Kyle has moved forward by leaps and bounds with his crochet since then and he explains how the idea evolved. “I enjoy the creativity of doing the crochet work. I don’t need a pattern to make something. We had made a bunch of hats around prom time; we were thinking about what would be the next step and the idea of making tuxes jumped out at us! We thought, ‘why not?’ and began to discuss how to make the jackets, from the bottom up or working from the middle around? We agreed, ‘let’s just do it’ and each of us worked on our own tuxedos. We would hang out to crochet, brainstorm and compare notes on the process. We figured out the best strategies together. I am a mathematical person; I count and re-count!”