Yarn artist and muralist Kern Myrtle creates large scale works made of crocheted acrylic yarn, spray paint – or both. Their work has been shown in Germany, New York, Italy, Canada, Mexico City, and Miami, where they currently live. Kern’s yarn-based street art began in 2019 when they started crocheting small abstract sculptures (that some say resemble jellyfish) and leaving them to be found on the streets. Strongly influenced by the graffiti culture in Miami, Kern began to experiment with writing their name in crocheted yarn on the street. Kern began to merge yarn and spray paint, designing murals that include both spray painted yarn designs and glued or hanging crocheted works. They also combine watercolor and spray paint in works on paper, wood panel, and canvas. The textile arts have long been considered women’s work, and in electing to work with yarn, Kern infuses their work with gender quandaries. Who can work with yarn? Does art on the street created with yarn have the same value as art created with a brush or a spray can? What happens when sprayed acrylic paint and stranded acrylic yarn are combined? Like many street artists, Kern Myrtle chooses to remain anonymous, but regardless of Kern's identity, this work emerges to take an unlikely place as a traditionally female-created art form in the mostly male-dominated world of graffiti and street art.
