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Ian Danner

@ian.danner

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Textile Artist/Designer, Researcher, and Educator
UW-Madison (MFA)//2027, Penn State (MS-Art Ed.&WGSS), RISD (BFA-Textiles).

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Pop-up Rose, included in k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design is from artist Felecia Davis's "Dreadlock Series" project. This project is part of her ongoing exploration of Black culture, its relationship to technology, and how these concepts translate into architectural design. Pop-up Rose is made of interlocking knit tubes that are an interpretation of a dreadlock. The piece was created on a domestic knitting machine and made to pop up in form following the Fibonacci sequence found in roses. The knitted cord structure used in this piece is sometimes called an i-cord, short for idiot cord, named by Wisconsin knitter Elizabeth Zimmermann. Through working the i-cord on the needles of the knitting machine, the work spirals around itself. Once in tension, Pop-up Rose transforms from a knit that lays flat to a conical shape. Pop-up Rose makes connections from the body to architecture and a look at what new technologies and ideas bring to the world of knit.

Davis works in architecture and textiles connects art, science, engineering and design. Davis is an Associate Professor at the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Pennsylvania State University and is the director of SOFTLAB@PSU. This lab is dedicated to developing soft computational materials and textiles and is used by Penn State students and faculty, industry and community partners engaged in collaborative research and projects. The point of the lab is to establish a culture of hands on making and thinking through computational materials and the lab links together research, teaching and practice. It was with SOFTLAB@PSU that Pop-up Rose was created collaboratively with Davis including the design and fabrication by Ian Danner with a stand designed and fabricated by Hiranshi Patel.

Photos 2, 3: Felecia Davis.

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A red squiggle snakes throughout knit artist Marta Nowak’s Unraveling Myself (2024). Abstracted lightning bolts, organic bubbling surfaces, and interlaced knit strands coexist in her work, It Was Never About You. Nowak combines her skill in painting with fibers to create “knit paintings.” These pieces demonstrate the role knits play not just in fashion and in architectural works, but also in contemporary art.

Nowak integrates analog and digital processes when creating her knit pieces to map out yarn color placement. Row by row, Nowak “paints” with the yarn in her own inventive short rowing colorwork technique, which works as an alternative to traditional intarsia. This is done on a hand-operated flatbed domestic knitting machine. Short rowing, or partial knitting, is when a knitter knits across a section of a row while keeping other stitches on hold, allowing for areas of knits to be built up in one particular color.

In k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design, Nowak's two knit paintings invite a larger discussion on the role of colorwork in knit design. Nowak, an artist and knitwear designer, utilizes here short rowing technique in her sweater collections as well as in her artwork. Her knit paintings ask viewers to see knit as a viable medium and material for abstract art and expressing oneself creatively.

We are thrilled to know that Nowak will be featured in the upcoming @thedomesticmachine documentary about Machine Knitting & Online Craft Communities!

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The exhibition k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design includes ten pairs of socks from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection. Utilitarian and part of our daily wear, socks are also incredible examples of knit design.

Today, as autumn settles in and on a day when so many are doing laundry and matching their own socks, we are re-reading Pablo Neruda's poem in honor of these gorgeous objects.

Ode to My Socks
Pablo Neruda (1904 –1973) translated by Robert Bly

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as though into
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and goatskin.
Violent socks,
my feet were
two fish made
of wool,
two long sharks
sea-blue, shot
through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
They were
so handsome
for the first time
my feet seemed to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that woven
fire,
of those glowing
socks.

Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere
as schoolboys
keep
fireflies,
as learned men
collect
sacred texts,
I resisted
the mad impulse
to put them
into a golden
cage
and each day give them
birdseed
and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers
in the jungle who hand
over the very rare
green deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched out
my feet
and pulled on
the magnificent
socks
and then my shoes.

The moral
of my ode is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool
in winter.

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Woodworker, artist, and educator Alex Clarke is also the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture's preparator. Alex brought k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design to life. Only weeks into the job, Alex built walls, created displays, and thought through challenges and turned them into possibilities. We are incredibly grateful to Alex's work and dedication to highlighting the qualities and design of knit from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection and the contemporary artists who lent work for the exhibition.

Photos courtesy of Alex Clarke.

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First couple of months at the new preparator job! I got to work on a colorful, sock filled exhibition all about knitting curated by @ian.danner & @edowding.

And an exhibition celebrating 100 years of the Child Development Lab, which I got to make a little toy washing machine for 🥹

Stop by campus and check the new exhibitions out!

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The stretch and movement of knit makes it ideal for clothing and fashion, wrapping the body in its interlocked fabric that allows for movement, even its most body-conscious designs. This Nik-Nik shirt, made of knit jersey and included in k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design, was the height of fashion for the 1970s nightclub set. Cut to skim the body and to be tucked in to high-waisted pants, this knit shirt shimmied and swayed with the dancer. And its pattern, a beguiling geometric design with lounging figures strategically placed throughout, meant others were bound to give its wearer a second look.

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Artist Matthew Lyga's Giant Sock hangs in k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design like an exclamation point. A larger-than-life- athletic sock, it's extreme size is a nod the ubiquity of knitted socks that make up daily life and demands consideration to the form. Handmade on a domestic knitting machine, this soft sculpture is both humorous and silly while reflecting on the sophisticated design that goes into making these garments.

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Punchcards for domestic knitting machines became one of the graphic identities for the exhibition k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Designs. These cards with holes punched in them is read by the machine and determines which needle will be used to create a pattern or a design.

These punchcards evolved from the technology developed Jacquard loom. Punchcards used on the Jacquard loom is often considered to be an example of some of the first computer coding developed. These went from the loom to the railway system, the US Census, and informing the IBM Computer Card.

The computational working of knit structures on machines are in presence in k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design in equal measure to the clever works on display made by knitting needles. Knit punchcards like this for domestic flatbed knitting machines let the home knitter work faster while still manually working and making creative choices.

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Czech textile designer Zuzana Smrkovská specializes in knitting and programming on flat bed knitting machines. A graduate from the textile studio at UMPRUM in Prague, Smrkovská has completed professional internships at Knitwear Lab in Amsterdam and the TextielMuseum in Tilburg. Her work combines innovative design with modern production and new materials.

The Svitna Lamp, created in collaberation between Smrkovská and lighting designer, Michaela Doležalová, is included in the exhibition k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design. It is an example of the mathematical and geometric work that goes into the process of knitting. Simultaneously, it shows how knit is used beyond fashion and the home, and knit designers are using industrial machines to utilize the properties of knit for production. Made on a Stoll machine using elasticized thread and synthetic bio-based PLA yarn, the prototype for a functional lamp. Made from shaping short rows in combination pointelle and tube structures, the result is a bouncy form that recalls cleverness of collapsible tents and utilizes the tension and stretch of a knitted form. Svitna Lamp pushes the idea of what knits are used for just as k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design explores the range of knitted forms, challenges traditional ideas, and celebrates knit's possibilities.

Svitna Lamp
Zuzana Smrkovská (Textile Designer) and Michaela Doležalová (Lighting Designer)

2022
Elastane thread, Polylactic Acid (PLA) yarn; machine knit
15.75 x 15.75 x 15 in.

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Artist Jacob Olmedo creates textiles, objects, and wearables that explore dynamics of power and identity. Their work provides a social and environmental commentary stemming from their own circumstances and identity as a queer artist, the child of a Mexican-immigrant father, and a climate activist.

Olmedo's labor-intensive methods include the work second Skin, included in the exhibition k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design. Using wool, glass, and crystals, Olmedo's knit form skims the form the it wraps around, creating a topography of a body. Delicate yet substantive, second Skin shows Olmedo's use of knit highlights the lines of the human form and its connection to the physical features of an environmental landscape.

second Skin
Jacob Olmedo
2021
Metal, Paper, Wool, Glass, Crystal, Acrylic Medium
14 inch X 14 inch x 6 feet

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k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design presents knit as a technique and a form that lends itself to a range of possibilities, solutions, and uses. One of those, naturally, is in clothing the body and creating pieces of fashion. In the exhibition, these matching 1975 Bonnie Cashin doublefaced knit jersey dress and coat show knit can hug and wrap around the body, stretch and give, and move with the woman wearing them.

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Much of our the inspiration for thinking about knitting comes from textile artist Mary Walker Phillips's book, Creative Knitting: A New Art Form. A weaving student under Marianne Strengell at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Phillips moved her focus to experimental and art knitting under the encouragement of Jack Lenor Larsen. Her pieces and her promotion of knitting as an art form changed the way the craft was viewed. In Creative Knitting, Phillips does not provide step by step patterns but promotes knitting as “a creative medium for self expression." Phillips promoted beginning knitters to experiment through making samples, or swatches, to test “the properties of the yarn, its effect on the stitches, and the relationship of one pattern to another pattern.” In k1, p2: from Handknits to Computational Design, sampling is given importance as well. Three European knitting samplers from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, including the long sampler roll here, are displayed as vital works of art in themselves. These record not only the skill and craftsmanship of the knitter, but a document and record of time, a reference tool, and the imagination of a knitter that can be rolled out for use and then rolled back up for later.

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