Wednesday

Wednesday was the opening ceremony day for the Biennale.  Before it started I added a little colour to some pigs, who I had heard were unpopular around these parts.  Poor little piggies just needed some lovin'.  Oddly enough, once I did my bit, the poor little piggies became quite the focus of attention, with people taking their picture next to them.  See what a little knitwear (or in this case, crochet wear) will do.

This was done at the request of the Biennale artistic director and I swear on a stack of Bibles, or maybe Heart Sutras, that it is the first time I have ever deliberately yarnbombed anything.  Dang it!  It was actually kind of fun.

The opening was full of spectacle - traditional dancing, rock music, speeches from dignitaries and then there was this machine.  It was part car, part musical instrument and part swing set.  A group of young men and women played it and danced around it.  I mostly watched the dignitaries in their black suits as they attempted to jive with music.  The Al Gore School of Dance for Politicians is alive and well in South Korea.

At the end of the ceremony, they released these balloon-like bird forms.  They were very beautiful in the air, swooping and diving the air currents.  I tried not to think wet blanket thoughts about plastic and litter.

Then we were allowed in to see the exhibitions in the Biennale.  It is truly incredible - an amazing assembly of masterworks of craft.  And some fun things too.  I took this photo for Finn and Lucy, who love these figures.  They are some invention coming out of hip hop culture.  People paint and decorate them and, in this case, they are beaded.

This is the installation of my piece, Memorials/The Doughboy.  I knit the cape-like piece for a WWI statue in Woodside, Queens.  The statue is a memorial to the men from Woodside who were killed in that war and is represents the foot soldiers who were also known as doughboys.  I have photographs of the statue without my piece and with my piece next to it.  That is Maegan Black from the Canadian Craft Federation in the photo.  It was very fun to connect with her here in Cheongju!

In the afternoon, we went out the Avenue of Trees to attempt to document the piece.  It was my first time experiencing it and I was very, very pleasantly surprised to see that it actually does what I had hoped, which is that the squares create a colour-changing sequence that is visible in the long distance and in one's peripheral vision.  At the same time, each square does actually have its moment.

The only problem is that it is incredibly difficult to document because the traffic is unrelenting.  I took some very fast pictures and some probably useless video before the light started to fade.  

I will try again tomorrow.  So, with apologies I have to ask you, for the time being, to believe me when I say that it works! It is beautiful and impressive and I hope it is entrancing and mystifying the drivers of Cheongju even as I am writing this.