You may notice that we're standing
in front of a geodesic dome.
Yeah, also the beautiful mountains and the city
of Los Angeles.
And it's not just any dome.
It's the home, studio, and school
of the artist Fritz Haeg.
I'm a really big Fritz Haeg fan.
He did this amazing project Edible Estates,
where he helped people transform their lawns into vegetable
gardens.
He's also shown around the world-- the Walker Art Center,
the Whitney, the Berkeley Art museum, everywhere.
SARAH URIST GREEN: And since the early 2000s,
he's actually been holding a series of events at his home,
called the Sundown Schoolhouse, where invites people in
to take yoga, to listen to music,
and to learn how to do new things.
And we are going to learn how to do a new thing today.
So let's go do that.
Okay.
Hello, my name's Fritz Haeg.
And this is your art assignment.
I've been very aware of architecture
from a very young age.
And all the way through grade school
and high school, my main focus was really on designing houses.
I really would design houses.
I would sit down and draw plans and elevations
and walk through these buildings in my head.
I'm not doing architecture anymore.
I'm not doing buildings anymore.
For years, that I haven't been doing that kind of work.
But the same impetus is still there,
the same general impulse, which has
to do with imagining and creating new ways of living.
A lot of my work recently is involved
institutionalizing the home and domesticating
the institution of the museum.
So when these rugs are placed in museums, especially very
austere, concrete museums, there's
this rich contrast between the formality
of the institution and the warmth
and hominess of the rugs.
I like those moments where people
feel like they can suddenly take off their shoes
and get on the floor and feel at home.
These hard definitions of architecture
and of space in our cities can be broken by us strategically,
when we need to.
It's funny.
This project started two years ago.
And before that, I had never done any work with textiles.
I hadn't been knitting yet.
And for some reason, I think I was going through piles
of clothes and realized how many things I
had here and just started to experiment making these rugs
and really spent an entire winter,
just braiding and crocheting rugs out of this old material I
had around.
And after a while, I got really into it.
And then I learned how to knit, and I started knitting a lot.
So I think over time, once your hands are occupied
with a certain kind of craft, you become familiar with it,
and it's embodied in some way.
Like you get a feel for it.
Your art assignment is to gather up all the old clothes
and sheets and towels and rags that you
don't know what to do with your house
and to make a huge crocheted rug.
And then to use the rug for something,
to do something on it.
And to share your stories and pictures and videos online.
Yeah, Sarah, I've got to say, I don't think I can do this one.
What?
Why not?
You have plenty of old t-shirts, you have hands.
Yeah, but I don't think I can make
my hands do the motion that creates the thing.
Well, I believe in you John.
And I think you have to not focus so much on the finished
product, but how fun it could be to invite over your friends,
pool your resources, and make it all together.
And you know, you could definitely enlist your mother
for this one.
Oh, that's a good idea actually.
If you have a knitting, goat soap maker in your family,
this is the art assignment to collaborate with them on.
I like that idea.
Also I do like the idea that like what happens on the rug
is important.
Right, I think that's where the art historical precedent comes
in, actually.
There are many examples of objects where the thing
itself isn't as key as where it's been
and what you do with it.
In the 1960s, Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica
became involved with the School of Samba
in the Mangueira favela of Rio de Janeiro.
Inspired by the group, he began making capes, flags, banners,
and tents made from all sorts of painted textiles and materials,
all meant to be worn and performed while dancing.
For Oiticica, the sculptural garments
were the way of unleashing dynamic color out
into the world.
He called the series "Parangoles,"
after the Portuguese term that roughly
means a sudden agitation or confusion.
When he first presented the works to the public in 1965
at Rio's Museum of Modern Art, he
invited dancers from Mangueira to perform the capes.
However, museum authorities suddenly agitated and confused,
didn't allow it.
And Oiticica and company paraded out of the museum
and into the surrounding gardens.
Parangoles were not made to lie dormant in hushed gallery
but were things that had to be activated by use.
They were necessarily part of lived experience,
as much for the dancers who inhabited them
as those who were part of the scene around them.
It's been interesting with the rug as it travels.
These rugs that travel to a lot different cities
to have a certain amount of time in one city and then
an entirely different city have another lifetime.
This rug travels around.
It adds a ring with the local people.
It gets bigger, and then it moves on.
So it's become quite a charged space for me.
I go to the rug in Berkeley now, and I look at it.
And I can remember all the people who were involved
and the particular things that they put into it
and see how the rings have added up over time.
I'll show you how to start.
And the thing with crochet is that you have to add stitches.
You have to keep adding stitches.
And you have to have a lot of stitches at the beginning.
And then you add fewer stitches as you go out.
You just start with a simple slip knot to make a loop.
And you pull it tight.
So that's the beginning of the rug.
So here's the beginning of the stitch.
You take-- its finger crochet, so you don't use any tools.
I have fingers sticking through, and I pull a loop.
And now I'm just casting on.
And I've made one stitch, and I'm pulling through another.
So I cast on like four or five stitches.
All right, so it doesn't look like much yet.
But here's my strip hanging down.
Here's the loop between my fingers.
And I'm going to add on a stitch without attaching it,
like I was casting on.
And then I'm going to pick up a loop and stitch.
And I'm going to alternate like that, just at the beginning,
to keep adding stitches and expand it.
But here's the basic stitch.
My fingers-- usually I use three fingers to pull it.
I'm controlling the tension here, with this hand.
I'm using this finger to find the next loop and pull it out,
which maybe at the beginning isn't so obvious.
But it's the outermost loop.
I pull it out with my finger.
And I use these three fingers to find it and then
pull it through.
So again, pulling out with my finger,
these three fingers coming through.
And that's one stitch.
So this is the beginning of a rug.
I like these two extreme possibilities
for the art assignment-- that it could be something very social,
where a lot of people could be involved very quickly.
Or it could be something very solitary that evolves gradually
over time, in your house.
[LAUGHTER]
You can't see him, because he's a big black shadow.