The vast, improbable, record-breaking – in which the 1,061-foot-long Andy Warhol Bridge was covered with 580 knitted and crocheted blankets during the second weekend of August – is officially a success, according to organizers, public officials, knitting enthusiasts, yarn bombers and people on the streets of Downtown.

Today [Sept. 6] is the last day to see the largest such “yarn bombing” of a structure in the United States and possibly in the world, before a team of volunteers arrives at 5 a.m. Saturday to start dismantling the project. The bridge will be closed until 7 p.m. Sunday as volunteers undo the thousands of plastic ties fastening the acrylic yarn panels to the structure, said Amanda Gross [91¶ĚĘÓƵ ’07, MA ’13], a local fiber artist who came up with the idea for the Knit the Bridge project.

As the city basked in warm September sunshine Thursday, those strolling near the 87-year-old steel suspension bridge gave the project rave reviews.

“We don’t have anything like this in Seattle,” said Karen Michaelis, a Bethel Park native who has lived in Bellingham, Wash., for the past 30 years and was visiting family. “It gives the city a great ambiance. This is really big.”

“It’s a little bit artsy, a little bit homey,” added Alyssa Knierim, 21, of Oakland, who was power walking along the Allegheny River front. “It just gives Pittsburgh a hipper vibe.”

Craig Davis, president and CEO of VisitPittsburgh, said he was “thrilled” with the media attention given to the project, sponsored by the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh with help from the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

“The news coverage of this fun, art event helped solidify Pittsburgh’s growing reputation as a hip city that is rich in art and culture,” Mr. Davis said.

Coincidentally or not, the , which was not officially affiliated with the project, saw an increase in visitors during the month of August over last year – up from 9,520 in 2012 to 10,560 this year, an increase of 1,040.

“I’ve been here 18 years, and I’ve never seen so much foot traffic on that bridge,” said Rick Armstrong, the Warhol’s director of communications.

Not only did the project showcase the city’s “vibrant arts community on one of our signature Downtown bridges, it didn’t cost the taxpayers any money,” added Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

It might seem a simple enough idea – attaching knitted panels to the side of a bridge – but the project, involving 1,900 people, was a “massive logistical undertaking,” Mr. Fitzgerald added, noting that during meetings of the artists, organizers and members of the county’s public works department, “we couldn’t really ask, ‘How did they do this in St. Louis?’ because nothing like this had ever been done before.”

After the blanket panels are removed from the bridge, they will be laundered and distributed to homeless shelters and nursing homes, said Jay van Wagenen, director of the Fiberart International, a triennial juried exhibition sponsored by the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh.

More than 90 percent of the county’s municipalities had someone participating in the project, “and I was really surprised at the tremendous enthusiasm by the public,” she said.

Ms. Gross, with a from 91¶ĚĘÓƵ, is trained in peace building through the arts. During the planning for the most recent Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh exhibition, she “took an esoteric concept out into a much wider community than we usually do,” Ms. van Wagenen said.

In the past, the exhibition’s community outreach piece might have involved an artist-in-residence at a school, “but Amanda made it considerably larger and more accessible to people. We had teenage boys knitting, we had knit-ins all over the place, we had people saying, ‘Oh, I have a friend from Brooklyn or Seattle who will contribute something.’ It was tremendous.”

Article courtesy

More than a year of work involving thousands of volunteers will culminate in the “yarn bomb” that will clothe the bridge in a massive, colorful art project.

Amanda Gross, 29, who graduated from with a master’s degree in April, is the mastermind behind , a project bringing about 1,500 Pittsburgh area residents together for one common goal.

Residents representing all ages and subsections of Pittsburgh have helped to knit and crochet 630 34-by-72-inch yarn panels to arrange on the bridge in what is possibly the biggest yarn bomb ever.

It’s definitely the biggest art project for Gross, who grew up in Atlanta but has been living in Pittsburgh on and off since 2008.

Gross has been working on the project hands-on since June 2012 and just received the green light from the Allegheny County, Pa., County Council in June.

“Really, the main idea behind it is using an art project to make connections within the community,” said Gross, who also earned her bachelor’s degree at 91¶ĚĘÓƵ. “It’s bridging different communities both through the process of actually making the work and then also in the finished project.”

At 91¶ĚĘÓƵ, Gross focused on studying the intersection of and .

“One thing I really got out of [the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding] is the importance of big vision, something that people can really embrace,” she said. “It’s doable, but it’s pushing the boundaries a little bit.”

The installation will begin Aug. 10, and the piece will be taken down from the bridge starting Sept. 7.

Since the hundreds of panels are roughly sofa-throw size, they will be washed and donated to shelters around the area.

The price tag on the entire project, sponsored by the and , is roughly $124,000. Almost $21,000 of that came from an Indiegogo crowd-sourcing campaign.

Although some of those helping with the project may receive a stipend if it reaches its financial goal, everyone involved is working on a volunteer basis for now.

For more information, visit .

Article courtesy Daily News Record, July 23, 2013

Once complete, , led by Amanda Gross ’07, MA ’13 (), will represent the largest-ever U.S. “yarnbomb,” which Gross describes as a sort of “joyful graffiti” that covers public spaces and objects in knitted artwork. The installation, which will stay up for a month, will include thousands of colorful 34 x 72-inch panels covering the bridge’s superstructure, plus miles of yarn knitted into narrower railing covers.

Gross focused on art as a peacebuilding tool while studying at and came up with the idea of the yarnbomb as a way to inspire wide community participation in a public art project. For the past year, she has been working full-time on the project, which is funded through an and support from numerous organizations.

Process as important as product

“I was looking for different ways to connect people and connect different communities,” says Gross, who organized a much smaller yarnbomb in downtown Pittsburgh a few years ago with other members of the city’s . “The process is just as important as the final product.”

While covering a major and massive physical feature in Pittsburgh with yarn will be a significant artistic achievement in and of itself, both the act of knitting and bridges are symbolic of the connectedness Gross hopes to achieve through Knit the Bridge.

Now entering the final month of frenzied preparations, the community-connecting objective has already been a considerable success. As of early July 2013, some 1,500 people had contributed knitted panels, representing more than 80 percent of municipalities and townships within Allegheny County (home to Pittsburgh), as well as numerous other communities within southwest Pennsylvania.

“It’s really a community project. It’s a wonderful thing, and it’s a privilege to be working on it,” says Penny Mateer, an artist and lifelong Pittsburgh resident who is co-directing Knit the Bridge.

“Amanda is amazing,” continues Mateer. “The initial concept itself was a really lovely design [and] she has quite a vision. She engages people in a way that has been extraordinary.”

All ages, races, ethnicities, classes joining in

Ranging in age from very young to very old, knitters who have contributed panels represent the city’s different racial, ethnic and class communities. Elementary schools have participated; kids in juvenile detention have knitted panels; retirement homes have pitched in. The National Public Radio affiliate in Pittsburgh ran a story in late June about a group of boys in a local program for at-risk teens who are finger-knitting a piece for the bridge.

Gross and her colleagues drummed up support for the effort through social media, word of mouth, and with the help of about 90 people who volunteered to lead outreach and organize knitting parties in their own communities. Other than rules against letters, numbers or other representational imagery, contributors were given free rein to design their individual panels.

The Knit the Bridge installation will remain up through September 8. After coming down, the panels will be washed and donated to charity.

“[Knit the Bridge] connects everybody,” says Sherri Roberts, vice-president of the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh, one of the project’s major supporters. “From start to finish, it has unified, it has made joyful, and it has connected.”

Like Gross, she hopes that new connections made through participation in Knit the Bridge will continue long after the panels come down.

One reason for the project’s wide appeal, Gross says, is that knitting and crocheting are generally seen as accessible “crafts” rather than fine art.

“That part has made it really easy for people to get excited about it and feel like they can be a part of it,” Gross says. “A lot of people are missing that…. They just want an opportunity to participate.”

Hundreds of volunteers doing the logistics

In addition to the knitters, hundreds of other volunteers – a pro-bono attorney, technical advisors, database developers – have pitched in on the formidable logistics of pulling off the yarn bomb, Mateer notes.

Gross said that behind-the-scenes work has been the biggest challenge of the project, particularly the task of shepherding an unusual and never-before-attempted idea through the bureaucracy of local government. (It’s not every day that someone rings the Allegheny County administrative offices asking how to go about covering a major downtown bridge in yarn.) In mid-June, the county council unanimously approved an ordinance to allow Knit the Bridge to proceed.

“I’m really hopeful that the county will figure out some sort of public art policy, and that this will open more doors for more creative, grassroots projects,” Gross said.

Also as of late June, the community-made panels totaled 116,688 square feet of hand-knitted or –crocheted panels. The black border to go around the knitted panels will use 600 miles of yarn, while the bits on the towers – to be installed by a rigging company – will be close to 3,000 linear feet of machine-knitted yarn.

“Participating has meant a lot to people,” Gross adds. “People really jumped at the opportunity to do something positive for their community.”