A Sculpture Divides Oakland & Berkeley, Knitters Protest
Rogue knitters … yes, knitters … encamp along the Berkeley-Oakland border to protest a public sculpture, inspired by a Gertrude Stein quote, they believe insults Oakland.
Don’t mess with the knitters of Oakland. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Rogue knitters encamped along the Berkeley-Oakland border with lawn chairs, tea cakes and knitting projects to protest the city of Berkeley’s order that they remove an 8-foot knitted tea cozy they sewed over the T in a public sculpture they believe insults Oakland.
The sculpture depicts two 8-foot-tall steel words, “Here” and “There” [and was installed by artists Steve Gillman and Katherine Keefer in 2005]… the work is a riff on writer Gertrude Stein’s famous description of Oakland, her hometown, as having “no there there” … proud Oaklanders have dotted the city over the years with signs and flags proclaiming “There.”
