art candy

A Sweater Lovely as a Tree

Isabel Berglund’s City of Stitches, installed at the Charlottenborg Exhibition Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark (2003). Photo: Christoffer Askman

Isabel Berglund’s cuddly City of Stitches should be the avant-garde mascot for environmentalist types the world over (though we suspect they’d oppose to the cotton medium — is there such a thing as soy yarn?), and pretty much the only tree we’d ever actually hug. For this fairly massive undertaking, the Copenhagen-based artist enlisted the help of fourteen fellow knitting enthusiasts to craft the colossal structure using size 17 (12.75mm) needles and twenty strands of yarn per stitch. Berglund is one of 27 artists featured in a new survey of knitting’s avant-garde, “KNITKNIT: Profiles + Projects from Knitting’s New Wave.” Berglund’s tree isn’t on display (look for work by fellow “KNITKNIT” artist Jim Drain), but join a handful of the artists tomorrow night for a book signing and reception at Chelsea’s Greene Naftali Gallery. —Rachel Wolff

A Sweater Lovely as a Tree