Sam Barsky doesn’t knit with a sample. When you don’t knit and so don’t know, that’s a giant deal—mind-blowing, actually. And he doesn’t make blobby sculptures or something, simply among the most advanced pictorial sweaters that I’ve ever seen, all freehand.
Barsky first picked up knitting in 1999 after being identified with a power sickness and dropping out of nursing faculty. (I too discovered to knit on medical go away, however by no means acquired practically nearly as good). Barsky went to the library, checked out a ebook, and taught himself—then rapidly outdid lifelong knitters. His very first sweater has a cloudy sky, a lined bridge, and a waterfall, and he made it after knitting for under 17 months.
Barsky has been knitting sweaters ever since. Usually, they’re scenic, depicting locations he’s visited or needs to go to, or recollections he has. Shortly earlier than 9/11, he knitted wearable Twin Towers. Another sites-turned-sweaters on view in his current solo present on the John Michael Kohler Arts Middle in Wisconsin had been simply recognizable: Central Park; the lighthouse in Portland, Maine; the London Bridge. The sweaters hung from the ceiling on steel wire hangers, armatures extending the arms outward, and there was one you would put on, even take a selfie in. Selfies, by the best way, are a part of Barsky’s course of: he takes footage carrying his sweaters, usually within the locales that they depict, making them one thing between site-specific artworks and souvenirs. Truly, he wears his personal sweaters each day, and so knits them in wool and in cotton, with lengthy sleeves and as tanks, ready for any climate.
View of Sam Barsky’s 2025 exhibition “It’s Not the Identical With out You,” 2025, on the John Michael Kohler Arts Middle in Wisconsin.
Knitting all however calls for that Barsky translate his imagery into color-blocked abstractions. The best way he handles that is each extremely refined and really foolish. Typically, he introduces completely different textures or multicolored yarn. A sundown sweater of his might go for Missoni, however his Hoover Dam sweater seems extra like an Ellsworth Kelly portray. A waterfall sweater seems completely distinctive—and easily excellent.
In the meanwhile, Barsky is extra well-known on the web than within the artwork world: after struggling to slot in socially, he discovered that his sweaters and selfies had been good methods for him to search out group. Quickly, folks began messaging him and recognizing him within the wild. And it’s true that when talking of sweaters, his humor shines: in a wall label, he calls a sleeveless army sweater “a tank on a tank,” including “I’m no fan of conflict, however I do like historical past.”
The present that closed this week on the Kohler Arts Middle was Barsky’s first museum present, and it was vital for asking viewers to understand his actually extraordinary craft as artwork, to marvel at his supplies within the flesh, and to present his work a slower look than the Web encourages. A pair months after seeing it, I’m nonetheless surprised. His sweaters figured too in “R U Nonetheless Portray???,” a sprawling and hip present not too long ago put in in an deserted workplace constructing in Manhattan. Amongst works by assume vivid astro focus, Uri Aran, and Elizabeth Neel, Barsky’s sweaters hung from the ceiling each few yards or so, punctuating the present. Levitating over the colourful work by cool folks, they exuded effortlessness, as if daring artsy sophisticates to have some good clear enjoyable.
