HOOKED ON A FEELING
AN ARTIST HAS FOUND JOY AFTER GREAT HEARTBREAK BY CONNECTING PAST AND PRESENT WITH LOOPS OF HOT-PINK YARN
Artist Lissy Cole is at home in Ōtāhuhu crocheting, her huge hook looping in a hypnotizing flurry of wrists, fingers and wool
LISSY COLE UNDERSTANDS “first up, best dressed”. The youngest of eight daughters learned early on how to get the pick of the clothing pile. Her evenings were a similar battleground, her older sisters calling dibs on the only telephone, its cord stretched to the limit from the hallway to the privacy of the front room. It was engaged for hours. And poor Dad, the late fashion designer Colin Cole, was everfrustrated trying to arrange a ride from his Parnell workplace to the family’s Epsom home.
Sunday mornings were a different story. Then, little Lissy went to her father’s studio to watch him working overtime designing gowns for the likes of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. He was often “so blimmin’ busy”, he didn’t see Lissy sitting in the corner cutting ragged chunks out of eye-wateringly expensive imported silk and chiffon. “I just loved touching the fabrics — beaded trims from France, delicate lace from Switzerland.” On Monday morning, the seamstresses cursed the holes in the silks and the missing bobbins and broken needles on their Singer machines. But Lissy’s teddies were always the best-dressed in town.
These days, Lissy has moved on from her penchant for Swiss lace. Her current affliction is neon yarn. But there’s a problem. The yarn brand, Love Crafts, has discontinued her favourite shade of fluoro-pink. She used it to crochet a cover for a one-metre high tekoteko (carving of an ancestor). She also used it for the crochet overlay she made for her 1991 Mitsi Mirage. The car, called The Joy Ride, attracts high-fives, honks and selfies wherever it goes. Its multi-coloured outerwear took three weeks to make. “When people ask me why, I say, ‘Did it make you smile?’ ‘Yes?’ Then job’s done. Dad would get it.” Colin died of heart failure when Lissy was 15, and while her crochet work is streets apart from his couture gowns, she knows he would love it. “I crochet because this world is crazy, and crochet brings me joy. It is a thread that connects me to my past, my present and my future. I feel my dad intensely whenever I create anything.”
Lissy picked up the crochet hook for the first time four years ago, and it has barely left her hand since. Her hook is huge, a number 20, and it loops in a hypnotizing flurry of wrists, fingers and wool. Often when she sits in her Ōtāhuhu home crocheting, she zones out in a trance. “It’s a great activity for clearing an anxious mind.”
SPINNING A YARN
Yarn-bombing, also known as guerilla knitting or “kniffiti”, is a form of street art where colourful crochet or knitting covers urban spaces. The crochet and knitted installations are designed to add warmth and a human touch to cold industrial areas dominated by steel and concrete. The art form started in the 1990s when Houston artist Bill Davenport had an exhibition of crochet- covered objects and sculptures. It became street art in the early 2000s when American crochet artist Magda Sayeg began covering bus stops in her hometown of Houston. Yarn-bombing has since gone global. Large-scale installations include crocheted bridges in Italy and buses in México. Many yarn-bombers have permission from city authorities but, like tagging, unauthorized bombs could be classed as vandalism, although they are always easily removed.
Yarn-bombing is often described as feminist as it transforms a traditionally female craft into public art. Statues of patriarchs or symbols of patriarchy are targets of cheeky and irreverent installations. Famous guerilla-knitting examples include a scarf and yellow sunglasses for the statue of Thomas Jefferson at Wichita State University and a knitted pink bikini for the statue of Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo. The yellow togs and cap knitted for sculptor Max Patté’s Solace in the Wind in Wellington in August 2011 (left) is one of New Zealand’s most famous examples.
Before crochet, she had a job in communications. She was so unhappy she often wrote emails handing in her notice, which she never intended to send. Whenever an email announced a resignation, she fantasized about it being her own. One day, with encouragement from her daughter Jazmin and husband Rudi, she plucked up the courage, pressed “send”, and began life as a full-time artist.
“None of us is getting out of this world alive,” says Lissy. “I had to be brave. I couldn’t live with that quiet desperation of doing a job I didn’t love.
“I have always felt depression is quite close. It feels like there are sirens in the water that want to pull me to my death. I’ve felt huge grief in my life — my dad’s death when I was 15, my mum’s death a few years after him and, in 2004, my sister Annabel was killed in a car accident.
“Those sirens have been so alluring at times, but I’ve been able to turn my back on them.”
After quitting her job, she had a few “what-on-Earth-am-I-doing?” moments. But a chance encounter with former fashion designer Annie Bonza in an empty movie theatre felt like a sign she was on the right path. Annie, a contemporary of Colin’s, encouraged Lissy to persevere and is now a mentor and friend.
Making a living as an artist is another story. Creative New Zealand funded several public crochet installations, called yarn-bombs, including #CrochetYouStay. This involved Lissy working alongside Ōtāhuhu’s first contemporary art gallery, Vunilagi Vou, and three more South Auckland artists to create three public yarn installations for the Suffrage 125 Community Fund. The state-backed fund recognized women who have led the way in women’s rights. Recipients were announced earlier this year.