Detroit’s Shadow

LOVE LACE: Powerhouse Museum International Lace Award 2011 exhibition views

This is the overall winner from our Love Lace exhibition, which was made by artist Anne Mondro. This sculpture was made using thin steel and copper wire crochet.

The artist statement reveals more:

Crocheting wire enables me to create interwoven forms that are structurally strong, yet visually and physically light. The forms allude to ethereal silhouettes associated with shadows, ghosts or decay.

This work was inspired by a recent visit to Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. Fascinated with the abandoned machinery on the island, I began to think about Detroit, where my family has worked in the auto industry for generations.

I have used wire to crochet a representation of Henry Ford’s first four-cylinder engine housed in the Model N. The development of this engine in 1906 sparked a split between Henry Ford and business partner Alexander Malcomson, leading to Ford’s creation of the assembly line for the Model T. Similar to Cockatoo Island, Detroit bears the abandoned machinery and relics of an earlier industrial era. An era when Detroit was ‘the car capital of the world’. In replicating this engine, I am paying homage to Detroit and the people who built it.

Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski
© All rights reserved

Tags: artwork, crochet, engine, Love Lace, motor, winner

The Powerhouse Museum's Photo of the Day blog features a new image each day, chosen from the Powerhouse Photo Library.

The majority of these images have been taken by Museum photographers for a variety of purposes such as for exhibitions, of objects in our collection, events, behind-the-scenes and location shots. We also feature many images taken by our Flickr community and from our visitors. We hope you enjoy the photographs and stories.

The licensing of each image varies however we are trying to release as many as possible under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 license.