| Prevalent throughout the domestic decorative arts, the tea cozy remains an oft-visited tradition for novices and seasoned practitioners alike. Knit, crocheted or quilted, the purpose of the object is two-fold: it functions as an insulator keeping the tea warm, and is also a decorative and creative expression of its maker. Extending its utility, artist Mary-Anne McTrowe embraces the “cozy” as a device to approach ideas of domestic production, protection, and decoration. In her growing collection the requisite tea cozy is joined by cozies for miniature liquor bottles, individual pieces of fruit, a light bulb, and a host of other unexpected and amusing selections. |  |
Christina Cuthbertson
Prevalent throughout the domestic decorative arts, the tea cozy remains an oft-visited tradition for novices and seasoned practitioners alike. Knit, crocheted or quilted, the purpose of the object is two-fold: it functions as an insulator keeping the tea warm, and is also a decorative and creative expression of its maker. Extending its utility, artist Mary-Anne McTrowe embraces the “cozy” as a device to approach ideas of domestic production, protection, and decoration. In her growing collection the requisite tea cozy is joined by cozies for miniature liquor bottles, individual pieces of fruit, a light bulb, and a host of other unexpected and amusing selections.
The innocuous production, protection, and decoration embodied by this domestic craft become, in McTrowe’s hands, over-production, over-protection, and over-decoration. In this light, Decorate and Protect can be seen as an imperative—an order to viewers or a set of instructions for the artist herself. As she continues to crochet individual covers for a diverse series of everyday objects, she speaks to a compulsion to beautify, but in the process, renders these objects useless. The once functional and innocent tea cozy becomes a charged symbol, a feminist celebration of domestic production, as well as a parody of Western culture’s fetishization of protection and beautification.
As an extension of the Cozy body of work, McTrowe has created a series of “proposals” for ever-larger cozies for well-known architectural and natural landmarks. Using archival photographs, postcards, calendars, and her own photographs she produces images that wryly propose the decoration and protection of buildings, public sculpture, and the natural environment. In the process, McTrowe draws attention to the preservation of these sites through imaginary large-scale public intervention, and takes the usually modest domestic act of crochet into the domain of the monumental.
McTrowe’s most recent series of proposals uses archival photographs of Lethbridge, Alberta, which feature landmarks and buildings that no longer exist. The building or landmark in question is cut out of a copy of the original photograph, a bubblegum-pink crochet surface fills the negative space and the resulting image takes the form of a two-dimensional collage. At once absurd and nostalgic, Cozies for Destroyed Lethbridge Landmarks undertakes the potentially futile task of preserving and reclaiming the past. The crochet surface both protects and obscures, signaling a conflicted desire to simultaneously remember and forget.
