March for Our Lives “Our Power In The States” ARTivism series hits Philly’s Art Museums Steps

By Maritza Zuluaga

… On a warm Wednesday in Philadelphia, artist Melissa Haims unraveled yarn on the Rocky Steps along with an American flag. 

Three strings laid next to the flag that spelled out “End Gun Violence.”

Rowan exhibit aims to redefine femininity

By Shannon Eblen

… “Between the Threads,” at the Rowan University Art Gallery, showcases the work of Savona and other artists working in fiber, a medium historically associated with the feminine and domestic and regarded as a lesser art.

“I think a lot of people don’t necessarily understand fiber art and they see it as something very specific, like it has to be a woven tapestry,” said Melissa Maddonni Haims. “Tapestries and quilts are where people’s brains go. But there is so much more about fiber than just tapestry and art.”

Wrapped Up : Yarnbombing at Morris Arboretum

By Pam Forsythe

…Artist Melissa Maddonni Haims uses strategically placed safety pins to wrap the edges of roofs. (All photos by Pamela J. Forsythe)

Forget all that and head for Morris Arboretum, where fiber artist Melissa Maddonni Haims has adorned trees with comfy sweaters, peaked roofs with patchwork shawls, and bridge spindles with bright knee socks, as if to ward off the spring chill. She hasn’t yarnbombed the place as much as she’s yarnswaddled it…

Granny vandalism : Morris Arboretum gets yarn bombed in new exhibit

By Sienna Vance

…Morris Arboretum will host an exhibit of what Haims jokingly calls "granny vandalism." In "Wrapped Up," starting Saturday, Haims wraps the arboretum's trees and its structures _ like the Love Temple, the Seven Arches, and the Pump House roof _ in crocheted or knitted blankets. The greenery of the arboretum will be transformed with hot pink and yellow stripes, turquoise zig zags, and quirky quilted shapes.

Haims sews the blankets together at each end to create jacketlike casings for each object. In keeping with many of Morris' ephemeral artworks, Haims' work will be left on the trees and structures until the yarn disintegrates...

Knitters and crocheters ‘Yarn Along’ at Morris Arboretum

By Tara Lynn Johnson

…The work will become part of “Wrapped Up: Yarnbombing at Morris Arboretum,” a collection of knitted and crocheted yarn pieces that will adorn Morris’s buildings, bridges, and trees. The exhibit’s set to debut on March 26 (and will be displayed for six months, weather permitting). Fiber artist Melissa Maddonni Haims, who grew up in Jeffersonville, but now lives in Chestnut Hill, is the creator of “Wrapped Up” and will lead the “Yarn Along” event. She’s really looking forward to working with fellow knitters and crocheters on pieces for a community bridge in the garden, she said in an email interview.

Haims has been working with yarn for about 10 years. She began with small collage pieces and moved on to large soft sculptures and installations over time. Though fiber arts encompasses a number of techniques, like weaving, embroidery, fabric dying, and embellishment, she said, Haims works mostly with knitted and crocheted yarns. She said learning to knit and crochet is fairly easy.

“It’s really just a repetitive motion that you have to get used to in order to feel comfortable and confident,” she said. “You have to really want to learn and find someone who can teach you where you are.”…

Stitch by stitch : Knitter yarn-bombs trees for exhibits

By Virginia Smith

Melissa Maddonni Haims knits or crochets while she's walking, talking, dining out, or watching TV. She does it during meetings and even - shhhh - when she's in a car.

Driving.

"You can get six stitches on at a red light," she says, "three at a stop sign."

Stitch by obsessive stitch, this is how she created "The Foragers," a new yarn-bombing exhibit at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in upper Roxborough, which runs through the end of March, and "Wrapped Up," a similar yarn fest at Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill that runs from March 26 to October - or until it disintegrates, whichever happens first.

"This is what I was meant to do," says Haims, 44, a Norristown native and third-generation knitter/crocheter who lives in Chestnut Hill with her husband and their 13-year-old daughter, Noa. She works out of the Herman Street Studios in Germantown, fashioning her yarn bombs and other soft-sculpture art that has been shown at galleries and museums in Philadelphia and beyond…

Fungi-inspired art the Schuylkill Center a feast for the eyes

By Pam Forsythe

Twenty years ago, inspired by the nutty, meaty flavor of Morel mushrooms, Josh Haims and Melissa Maddonni Haims took a walk in the forest to search for the notoriously elusive fungi. Instead of Morels, the couple found art.

That walk in the Wissahickon set Maddonni Haims, a fiber artist, and Haims, now a partner with Deloitte Consulting, on a creative course that has resulted in The Foragers, Fiber & Fungi in the Gallery…

Art review : ‘By Hand 2016’ weaves together winning works

By Victoria Dalkey

…Several other fiber works, including woven textiles, embroidery and quilted objects and collages, form some of the strongest pieces in the show. Among them is Melissa Maddonni Haims’ “Creep,” a quirky installation of crocheted yarn balls that form a cluster of hairy, podlike organisms that disperses downward over a white wall…

The Foragers : A World of Enchantment and Intimacy

By Catalina Lassen

The Schuylkill Center is proud to present Melissa Maddonni Haims and Josh Haims’ latest venture, The Foragers, a whimsical exhibition featuring photographs and delicate yarn sculptures of regional fungal life. In my time helping prepare and install this exhibition, what has stood out to me the most has been the enchantment and intimacy of the world the Haims’ create. As I step into the gallery now, the show completely set and ready to go, I sense myself stepping into the deep of the forest. Quiet, but flourishing, The Foragers takes the viewer on a charming adventure through a magical wood grown from the investigation and imagination of this wife-husband duo.

Although sporing from a place of academia, scientific curiosity, and a fascination with fungal forms, the exhibition is artistic and romantic. While Josh’s photographs create immersive expanses of forest imagery, Melissa’s sculptures work as an anchor between image and space, completing the illusion and bringing the forest to us.

As can be seen in Melissa’s Shelving Tooth sculptures, there is an exciting fusion of gentility and action occurring within each form.

Even Melissa’s more subtle, soft pieces—which allow you a quiet moment to reflect—are vibrant and alive, rich in color and texture.

On the other hand, Josh’s photographs work to set the scene and create an overarching tone. One of my personal favorites lies at the entrance of the show. Depicting a small toadstool in a large, green wood, this image is welcoming—it happily invites viewers into the world of The Foragers, a world mimicking and so closely related to our own beautiful earth.

Please join us January 28th at 6:00 pm to unearth for yourself the fascinating fungi-filled forest brought to you by Melissa Maddonni Haims and Josh Haims,The Foragers.

in retrospect : 10 years of fiber arts

By Holly Otterbein  

Melissa Maddonni Haims has yarn-bombed her husband’s head. She’s yarn-bombed a child’s cast, the lauded Uffizi Gallery in Italy, and the historic Mount Pleasant mansion in Philadelphia. She even yarn-bombed a municipal employee’s bicycle as part of April Fools’ joke concocted by Mayor Michael Nutter.

Not all local officials have been thrilled with her grandmotherly graffiti, though. Once, while retouching one of her yarn-bombed works that was wrapped around a lamppost in LOVE Park, the police approached her. She was on an eight-foot ladder at the time, which she hastily leapt off of and threw in the back of her car. She then made a getaway.

“I took off,” she said. “The whole time I kept going, ‘I have a kid. I have a mortgage. I have a kid. I have a mortgage. I can’t go to jail.’”

Haims, 42, is showcasing 10 years’ worth of such yarns in the exhibit “in retrospect,” which features photographs of her most beloved yarn-bombings, a live yarn-bombing performance and, believe it or not, a number of works that are not yarn-bombing-related whatsoever.

In fact, those are among the most poignant pieces in the exhibit…

Hits with Knits

By Natalie Pompilio  

The fiber arts never stuck with Melissa Maddonni Haims. Although her mother was a master knitter who even stitched suits, Haims never mastered a straight line.

Until 2008. Haims' mother, dying of cancer, asked her daughter to finish a scarf she'd started making for her best friend.

"She had about 10 days to live," remembers Haims, 41, a trained artist who was working in found-object mixed media at the time. "I finished the scarf in record time, about two days, and she said, 'OK, go into the living room, behind the yellow curtain, in the blue bag, I have another one for you.' "

As Haims mourned, she worked her way through her mother's unfinished projects, completing scarf after scarf, casting off on a navy blue sweater that clearly had been intended for Haims - it was in her high school colors.

And she found a new artistic calling, one centered on knitting and crochet. Now, she's known for her soft sculptures - some top 7 feet tall - and her yarn bombings, the "knit graffiti" that surprisingly appears wrapped around signposts, bike racks, and trees…

Street Art, Fine Art, or Both? Let’s Talk Yarnbombing

By Fran Wilde

Recently, my friend Melissa Maddonni Haims emailed from the hospital. She was fine, but my first response was: “What’s wrong? Do you need yarn?”

You see, Melissa is a fiber artist and unrepentant yarnbomber. Last winter, when she and I took our daughters to New York, she crocheted on the ice at Rockefeller Center (see the fine .gif evidence, below). She may or may not have yarnbombed a few signposts, too.

Melissa agreed to talk to GeekMom about yarnbombing: what it is, and whether it’s street art or fine art or something else. She also agreed to show us some of the projects she’s done.  Her daughter, Noa, joined us to talk about what it’s like to have a mom who always carries yarn.

Philly's Mount Pleasant mansion gets yarn bombed

By Emma Lee  

Fiber artist Melissa Maddonni Haims leaned precariously over the railing of the widow's walk atop historic Mount Pleasant mansion. She was checking her work, a yarn-bombing job commissioned by Philadelphia Parks and Recreation.

"You know, usually this takes place in the middle of the night," Haims quipped, as she returned to safer ground.

A fiber artist since 2006, Haims once saw yarn bombing as a way to keep busy between projects. She didn't even bother to take pictures of her work, never thinking she would one day have the opportunity to bomb a historic house.

"I've loved it," Haims said of her time at Mount Pleasant. "It was an opportunity to manipulate a space that doesn't usually get touched this way."

Haims and another fiber artist, Rachel Blythe Udell, were chosen by the city to decorate two historic houses in Fairmount Park, Mount Pleasant and Lemon Hill. Their challenge was to call attention to the buildings' spaces and architectural details without damaging them. Spring Forward: Contemporary Fiber Art in Historic Houses opens May 18.

Artists at 3rd Street Gallery confront loss, healing, life and death

By CSchwartz

Two artists at the 3rd Street Gallery approach their (mostly) fiber-based artworks with similarly heavy-handed topics that are poignant and at times quite emotionally charged. Carol Wisker and Melissa Maddonni Haims split the space and fill the interior with textile creations which, although loosely related, address concepts that are not so easily put into words.

Haims creates a site specific installation, which includes performance elements, entitled “Offering.” The project is intended to pay draw on the many forms of respect and memorial that grieving individuals use to remember and connect during their time of loss. The installation is especially heart-wrenching since Haims constructed it for her friend Melissa Mary Benner, who was killed by a drunk driver little more than a year to the day prior to the show's opening.

Melissa Maddonni Haims fills the corner of the gallery with crocheted rocks as part of "Offering."

As temporal creatures, we all encounter the loss of those close to us and the accompanying grief that sometimes lingers. Although we may feel alone in our sadness, coming to terms with mortality is something we are all faced with, and each of us has our own ways of expressing our emotions related to this healing process. Haims attempts to tap into the universal aspects of this experience and also traces her own very personal journey as she embarks down this path…

Scenes from Saturday's Maplewood Mall 'knit-bombing'

By Aliana Mabaso

…For the closing day of the gallery's multimedia "Spectacle" show, writer, filmmaker and artist Bonnie MacAllister teamed up with fellow fiber artist Melissa Maddonni Haims for a public "knit bombing" at Maplewood Mall.

Everything in the mall was fair game for yarn, except the trees, which Haims said are "already beautiful."

"This is all her fault," said Haims of her longtime collaborator MacAllister.

"I couldn't think of anyone better to come knit-bomb the place than Melissa," added MacAllister, whose art show included 118 photographic, yarn, fabric and multimedia pieces designed for viewing with 3D glasses, which were provided. "I'm pretty sure it's the first 3D fiber show in Germantown."…

Existential fiber art at 3rd Street Gallery

By CSchwartz

…Some of the first pieces noticeable in the gallery are by Haims. Her work in the space all comes from a series, which introduces short, yet powerful phrases embroidered onto vintage fabric. There are creepy patterns of children in lederhosen and other traditional, ethnic costumes frolicking together, as well as gaudy yellow and orange flowers which look straight out of a '70s wallpaper catalog. Haims then accents these patterns with yarn, mimicking the flowers and adding ample plumage at the bottoms of many of the canvases.

The focal points of her works, though, are the text elements that she embroiders onto the background cloth. These snippets of words are all heavy-hitting sayings that many of us have heard or uttered before, both ironically and perhaps with a tinge of seriousness: “you repulse me,” “I don’t miss you,” and “kill me now” are among the pleasantries. The juxtaposition of soft, harmless yarn with these hard, sometimes hurtful phrases is jarring, but it’s also quite funny. The draped cloth of her larger works could almost verge of some sort of poetic vision … and then you read the caption. “did you REALLY just say that to me?” she asks to some hypothetical offender. With a lack of context and an excess of space for more words, the phrases demand to be seen. In a real-life setting they could represent someone seriously offended, but here they are just absurd…

'Plarn' - plastic bag yarn - puts those ubiquitous bags back to work

By Sandy Bauers

…Philadelphia artist Melissa Maddonni Haims started with the material about four years ago. At first, she was fusing plastic into what she called “plabric” and sewing things with it. But since the process used heat, she began to worry about what toxins might be in the fumes she was breathing.

So she started cutting the bags and joining the pieces to make long strings. “At first I thought I was creating this brand new thing,” she said. But then she googled “plastic bag yarn” and realized it wasn’t just an idea, it was a phenomenon. She even found a YouTube video on the subject.

People were weaving it, crocheting it, knitting it.

“My hopes were dashed ever so slightly at not being the creator of this new found item,” Haims said. But with the tips she learned, “it became much easier to create. It’s a very long and difficult process, but once you’ve got a big bulky ball of plarn in your hand, it’s worth every second.”…

A kinder, gentler kind of bombing

By Maleka Fruean

"Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti" by Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain. My kids and I went to the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education this past weekend to check out the yarn-bombed trees up and down the path by fiber artist Melissa Maddoni Harris. The outside exhibit will be up for a few more weeks, and if you have younger kids, it is so worth it. My almost three-year-old lit up with excitement at every single tree covered in beautiful crocheted and knitted designs created in yarn, plastic bags, and grasses. There's an inside exhibit too, with photos of Melissa's yarnbombing work in other areas of the city. Yarnbombing makes sense to children. They see parking meter stands covered in a yarn cozy and think, "yes, that's exactly what that needed!"…

Schuylkill Center trail gets wrapped in "Cold Comfort"

By Max Matza  

…The exhibit, called "Cold Comfort," features 30 separate installations of brightly-colored "yarn bombs" covering tree trunks throughout the center's Widener Trail in Upper Roxborough.  It's part of FiberPhiladelphia, an international festival for innovative fiber and textile art.

Artist Melissa Maddonni Haims created the local site's display.  She refers to the art, which is also known as knit graffiti, as "very dark humor."

She laughs while picturing a confused motorist, who pays his or her parking meter, and upon returning, discovers that the meter has been covered in a wool sweater.

"Yarn bombing" is an art trend which has gained international popularity throughout the last few years. The brightly-colored yarn transforms public objects into works of art. One of the 30 decorated trees at the SCEE is made from more than 400 plastic bags. Another tree features stitching made by both Haims' mother, grandmother, and herself…

Yarn Bombing : Cold Comfort at the Schuylkill Center

By Julia

We've been watching Melissa Maddonni Haims’s installation of Cold Comfort take shape over the last couple weeks at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. I love yarnbombing.  The kids do, too. There have been some great patches of this downtown and a couple around our neighborhood. It is so fun to see something handmade (and colorful) like this crop up on parking meters, telephone poles, and bike racks.  But in the woods? It is magical.

It's been amazing to watch her progress.  Tree by tree. We ran into her one afternoon as she was wrapping up and the kids were fascinated.  We were able to see one of the 'sweaters' all rolled up and ready to go before it was stitched onto a tree.  It was massive. She told us she was aiming to do 30 trees. 30 trees! It's like a fairy tale forest.

They are just incredible.  One more thing to make me want to crochet.  Or knit. Or do something with yarn. And to watch which ones the kids were drawn to. (It looks like recycled plastic bags were mixed into that one)...So cool.