The Chicago Reef Project

The Great Barrier Reef, one of the acknowledged wonders of the natural world, stretches along the coast of Queensland Australia in a riotous profusion of color and form unparalleled on our planet. But global warming and pollutants so threaten this fragile monster, that scientists now believe the reef may be dead in 30 years. In homage to the great one, the Institute For Figuring has undertaken to crochet a handmade reef. This woolly testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world duplicates the strange hyperbolic geometry of the oceanic realm.The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and the Chicago Humanities Festival hope to galvanize Chicagoans through a series of workshops that will allow any level of crocheter to conribute to what is becoming a nation-wide feminist, environmentalist, and artistic movement. The Chicago reef will eventually be on exhbition in one of the cultural institutions of our fair city.The implications and motivations of the reef project are many. To learn more, visit www.theiff.org and click on coral reef.