Annie's Attic - Joy Kampia's Reality Crochet

Joy Kampia's Reality Crochet

Chris Givler

This talented crochet artisan’s life-like creations beg the viewer to ask, “Is it real or is it crochet?”

The crochet creations of this visionary artisan are often so realistic that, from a distance, they fool the eye and make one believe they are really what they appear to be.

Dinner anyone?

Eight entrées, each a different meal, sat carefully arranged on an exquisite tablecloth. At one setting, a half-peeled banana lay next to bacon, eggs, toast and a cup of coffee. Shrimp alfredo snuggled next to lobster on a second plate, while a slice of cherry pie patiently waited to bring the meal to a sweet conclusion. A fourth plate boasted a soft sesame seed bun loaded with a burger, lettuce, tomato, and cheese. The effect of eight different meals bursting with shape, texture and color tempted hungry viewers, but this was not a restaurant.

All eight meals were crocheted from thread and yarn, spaced carefully around a large table in the M. Louise Aughinbaugh Gallery at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa. Closer inspection revealed that the plates, spoons, forks, knives, napkins, tablecloth—even the vases and flowers, the salt and pepper shakers—were all crochet! The dramatic effect of the food, plates, utensils and decorations stun a crocheter with wonderment over how the artist so realistically achieved all the different shapes, textures and color shading.

Joy's unique hamburger dress offers a deliciously different style in high-eng nouveau fashion.

Joy's unique hamburger dress offers a deliciously different style in high-eng nouveau fashion.

For the pure enjoyment of the artwork, Joy Kampia created Dinner for Eight as her senior art show. Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in studio art, Joy concentrates in textiles and uses crochet as her primary medium.

Painting pictures of food led Joy to conceive of crocheting the table of entrées. “I wished for a way to combine my love of food with textiles.” She crocheted a hamburger and was happy with the results. “I decided,” Joy explains, “that this could not just be a little experiment and must be pushed to the extreme.”

The reason why Joy uses crochet for her artwork is because she loves it, and “it is a fantastic medium for creating sculpture. I’ve learned so many three-dimensional techniques for functional items such as hats or toys. Now I like the challenge of figuring out which techniques I should combine to create the shapes that I want.”

Joy explains her philosophy of art as a fascination with realism. She likes to use nontraditional media, like crochet, so well-executed that from a distance a viewer thinks the objects are really what they appear to be. Then a closer look reveals the truth that this isn’t food on plates, but objects crocheted out of yarn. “I am a passionate advocate for crochet as an art medium—going beyond its traditional uses and exploring its limitless possibilities. Through this process, I like to create ordinary objects that are familiar to the viewer, yet I represent them in an unlikely reality.”

...and from the back... She enjoys having this element of surprise in her crocheted art—the unexpected combination of crochet and ordinary objects. Such a combination allows Joy to play on people’s expectations. A viewer sees an object as food or a bicycle. Then she discovers that the object is made using crochet, which immediately challenges her expectations of what the possibilities of crochet are. What one is least likely to think about when considering crochet is precisely what Joy wants to make with crochet.

For some time she had harbored the idea of crocheting a bicycle. Then she heard about a bike-themed exhibit coming to a nearby art center. That was all the encouragement Joy needed. A look at the technical execution of her bike leads veteran crocheters to gasp with admiration. A crocheter can’t help but ask how she makes the wheels keep their shape or to puzzle over what techniques she used to create such realistic-looking bolts.

I asked Joy how she determines what detail to put into her work, what techniques she uses to achieve this, and how much experimentation she does before getting the results she wants. Joy says, “I try to keep a good balance between achieving a high level of realism, and accepting the limits of my material and technique.” She likes to make her pieces look real from a distance, but when the viewer looks more closely, he or she “can discover all the texture and fibers that are in my work.”

Incredible, life-like detail makes this bicycle look like it's ready to ride! To create the food in Dinner for Eight, Joy selected fibers carefully, choosing shiny yarns for shiny food, rough yarns for more coarse foods. In order to create more accuracy in the color, she strings sewing thread or thinner yarn along with the main color. She explains further, “When achieving more drastic variance in color, I do a lot more color changes. Sometimes to create even smoother transitions between colors, I might carry a thin strand of yarn along with all the colors throughout the piece.”

Joy doesn’t usually need to experiment with the small pieces to get what she wants. The larger pieces, however, require more planning and measuring. With the bike, Joy says, “I did all the mathematical calculations beforehand so I would not have to redo any parts.” When it comes to items that she has to duplicate (like the spoons, knives and forks), she has to experiment more to get the pattern right for reproduction.

Joy at work on her computer--literally (it's crocheted!). A natural question to ask is how many hours these pieces took her to make. Joy says she spent over 250 hours making her senior show in a four-month period. The bicycle took her about 65 hours in a week and a half. A hamburger dress she made required 28 hours in four days.

Joy learned how to crochet in tenth grade in a handcrafts elective taught by her Spanish teacher. Joy says that she was addicted to crochet from the beginning. She developed techniques through using patterns. Eventually, she began to experiment with her own patterns.

Today, Joy is working to establish herself as an artist, and she uses the inspiration of familiar objects to delight and surprise those who view her work. “One of my favorite subject matters is food, because of how vital it is to every person. To create something that makes people hungry satisfies me, because I know I’ve connected with the viewer.”