correlation: Pittsburgh Satellite Reef is an installation created by local Pittsburgh-area artists and is part of the worldwide Crochet Coral Reef project by Christine and Margaret Wertheim and The Institute For Figuring. The museum will host a series of workshops with local community organizations to introduce experienced and beginner makers to the techniques of making reef organisms out of fiber. The individual corals made through these workshops coalesce in a singular seascape in Carnegie Museum of Artâs Charity Randall Gallery. Launched as a response to the devastation of living reefs due to global warming and ocean acidification, the Crochet Coral Reef resides at the nexus of art, science, and environmentalism. Programs around the exhibition bring participating makers and scientists into conversations about what it is like to engage in a large-scale Pittsburgh-based community project surrounding a global issue.
correlation: Pittsburgh Satellite Reef is organized by Alyssa Velazquez, curatorial assistant of decorative arts and design.
About the Crochet Coral Reef
The Crochet Coral Reef is a research-oriented project by sisters Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim of The Institute For Figuring. Residing at the intersection of mathematics, marine biology, handicraft, and community art practice, the project responds to the environmental crisis of global warming and the escalating problem of oceanic plastic trash by highlighting not only the damage humans do to earth’s ecology, but also our power for positive action. The Wertheimsâ Crochet Coral Reef collection has been exhibited worldwide, including at the 58th Biennale di Arte aka Venice Biennale, Helsinki Biennial, Hayward Gallery, London, Science Gallery, Dublin, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. The project also encompasses a community-art program in which more than 20,000 people around the world have participated in making 50 locally-based Satellite Reefs â in New York, Chicago, Melbourne, Ireland, Latvia, Germany, UAE and elsewhere. The Pittsburgh Satellite Reef on display here is the latest addition to this ever-evolving wooly archipelago.
About the Artists
Margaret Wertheim is a science writer, artist, and author of books on the cultural history of physics. Christine Wertheim is an experimental poet, performer, artist and writer, and former faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts. Margaret and Christine conduct the Crochet Coral Reef project through their Los Angeles-based organization, The Institute For Figuring, an interdisciplinary practice dedicated to engaging audiences with the poetic dimensions of science and mathematics though materially embodied activities. The Institute For Figuring is at once an art endeavor and a framework for innovative public science engagement