Gigantic Crocheted Doilies Take Over Gallery Walls Like Beautiful Spider Webs

Crochet Doilies Installation Art by Ashley V Blalock

Since 2011, Californian artist Ashley V. Blalock has been creating site-specific installations filled with gigantic, hand-crocheted doilies. Back in 2014, Blalock’s ongoing Keeping Up Appearances installation series was sprawling across gallery walls, stairwells, ceilings, and floors. Today, the red cotton crochet doilies continue to grow in size, as they spread across indoor and outdoor locations.

Resembling giant spider webs, Blalock’s textile installations sometimes reach as high as 15 feet. Their large scale and intense color transforms the non-threatening, domestic doily into a structure that aims to create a sense of unease for the viewer. Blalock explains, “The doilies themselves represent a certain desire to keep up the appearance of gentility to the outside world expressed through the arrangement of objects in the domestic setting….The red color gives away the futility of such an act and hints at the unease that lurks below the surface of an obsessive need to control and arrange.”

You can see more of Blalock’s Keeping Up Appearances installation, and other works via her website.

Californian artist Ashley V. Blalock fills indoor and outdoor spaces with gigantic, crochet doilies.

Crochet Doilies Installation Art by Ashley V Blalock

The ongoing installation art series, titled Keeping Up Appearances, sprawls across gallery walls, stairwells, ceilings, and even trees.

Crochet Doilies Installation Art by Ashley V Blalock

Crochet Doilies Installation Art by Ashley V Blalock

Resembling giant spider webs, Blalock’s textile installations sometimes span as high as 15-feet tall.

Crochet Doilies Installation Art by Ashley V Blalock

Crochet Doilies Installation Art by Ashley V Blalock

Crochet Doilies Installation Art by Ashley V Blalock

Crochet Doilies Installation Art by Ashley V Blalock

Ashley V. Blalock: Website
h/t: [Colossal]

All images via Ashley V. Blalock.

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Emma Taggart

Emma Taggart is a Staff Writer and Video Editor at My Modern Met. She earned a BA in Fashion and Textile Design at the University of Ulster in Belfast. Originally from Northern Ireland, she lived in Berlin for many years, where she fostered a career in the arts, dabbling in everything from illustration and animation to music and ceramics. She now calls Edinburgh home, where she continues to work as a writer, illustrator, and ceramicist. Her ceramics, often combined with hand-painted animation frames, capture playful scenes that celebrate freedom and movement, and blend her passion for art with storytelling. Her illustrations have been featured in The Berliner Magazine as well as other print magazines and a poetry book.
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