Category: Exhibitions

Mochimochi Land at H+H Americas

Posted on by Anna

Mochimochi Land is headed to H+H Americas next week! This is an industry show for those involved in the business of handicrafts. I’ve attended in previous years, since it’s held in Chicago, but this is my first time as an exhibitor. I’m so excited!

via GIPHY

If you’ll be there, be sure to pay a visit to Mochimochi Land at booth 1505 (all the way to the right once you walk into the exhibit hall). I’m bringing a world of knitted toys, plus a display of the cats from Catside Up, Catside Down. 😺
If you’re a local yarn store owner, you can learn about stocking Mochimochi Land kits and books 😀
I’ll also be on a panel about craft book publishing on Friday 5/3 at 12:15 on the main stage. 🤓
See you there, yarn industry friends!

The Wooly Woods was a while ago!

Posted on by Anna

The Wooly Woods happened TEN YEARS AGO this spring!

This was a project that started when Superstorm Sandy came through Brooklyn, where I was living at the time, and among its milder effects were lots and lots of downed trees and branches in nearby Prospect Park. I saw a lot of beauty in the scattered wood, and started taking pieces home to use as little landscapes for my creatures to play in.

It was a meditative pleasure covering the twigs with colorful stripes of yarn, and I loved finding nearly endless ways to use the happy twists and bends in the wood as places for perching, nesting, and play.

The pieces were displayed at smallspace gallery in Berlin, where the show was part of the character walk accompanying the Pictoplasma festival. (The gallery is no more, but Pictoplasma is still going strong!)

I still love this concept, and I’ve come back to it a couple times over the years. (I also still have several pieces hanging in my house.) And I still feel like there’s lots more to with wool and woods! How fun would it be to fill a space with more branches and creatures hanging every which way around you? There could also be adorable stumps with little scenes happening on them 😀

The only tricky thing is shipping, but after this show I felt like if I could figure out how to ship delicate twigs from NYC to Berlin, I can ship anything 😤

Thank you to Jenna Teti for many of these images! More after the jump.

Continue reading “The Wooly Woods was a while ago!” →

10th Anniversary of Gnomes vs Snowmen

Posted on by Anna

Ten years ago today, the gnomes and snowmen of Mochimochi Land faced off in an epic battle. Snow heads rolled. Gnomes were squashed flat. Santa’s sleigh was commandeered for aerial snowball drops. It was not pretty, but it was pretty cute.

These events took place for a few weeks at the wonderful gallery hanahou (RIP!) in NYC in 2011, thanks to Koko Nakano and her team, but they live on in our memories. And in some photos!

Continue reading “10th Anniversary of Gnomes vs Snowmen” →

Greetings from Mochimochi 10 year anniversary

Posted on by Anna

Greetings from Mochimochi was ten years ago this month!

Ten years ago I brought Mochimochi Land into the real life for the first time at gallery hanahou in NYC. Putting together Greetings from Mochimochi got me exploring a big interconnected world of knitted weirdness, and my subsequent installations at venues like Vogue Knitting LIVE were based on this first one. And it had a working model train!

I couldn’t be more grateful to KOKO Art Agency for making this magic happen and helping inspire so much Mochimochi Land fun in the past ten years.

Love is 2,000+ knit and crocheted balls

Posted on by Anna

Final ball count: 2,383!

The Knit Ball Pit accomplished its first mission at Vogue Knitting LIVE in NYC last weekend: serving soft, squishy, massage-y experiences to all who ventured to enter it! We had many takers of all ages—check out all the #knitballpit posts for more photos and videos of this interactive exhibit. 


Anna with Tanya Weaver of AFCA

After a thorough cleaning, the balls will go on to their next adventure with the American Foundation for Children with AIDS (AFCA). Tanya Weaver, founder of AFCA, visited the ball pit herself and shared more about the amazing work her organization is doing in Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Uganda. AFCA will use the balls as packing materials when they send medical supplies to their partner hospitals (we love this!), and the balls will be distributed to kids receiving treatment for HIV and to AIDS orphans throughout this year and beyond.

To those of you who sent in balls from all over the world, thank you for making this project such a success! If you didn’t have a chance to participate and would still like to contribute, you can donate funds directly to AFCA, or you can organize another group knitting project directly through them. (See contact info on their website.)


Tiny Ladianne, Gayle, Louis, Cecilia, and Kristy

Further big thanks go to Ladianne Henderson of Cheers To Ewe!, who connected us with AFCA and helped make this project possible. And thank you to Kristy Glass, Gaye Glasspie (@ggmadeit), Cecilia Nelson-Hurt (@creativececi), Louis Boria (@brooklynboyknits), and to everyone else who helped spread the word and organized knit-togethers. And thank you to Vogue Knitting LIVE!

This project was a success beyond my wildest expectations—it’s truly magical what knitters and crocheters can do when we put our needles to work together. I would love to do another group project again in the future, whether with a charity connection or just for fun and happiness-spreading, but first I want to take some time to celebrate this one and recover. Because of all the energy and organization (very worthwile!) that this project took, I’m probably going to hold off on doing a photo and video contest this year, but will probably bring it back in 2020. In the meantime, I’ve got lots of other fun stuff planned for the rest of 2019, so please stay tuned!

Group Show: Hello Kitty & 99 Friends

Posted on by Anna

Sanrio has now created a total 100 adorable characters over the years, and to celebrate this achievement, PiQ has invited 100 artists to each re-create one of them in their style. I was thrilled to be invited to participate in this group show, and for my character I chose a little-remembered group called Polar Picnic.

There aren’t too many images of thee guys online, but it seems that there are always a few listings on Ebay, so that’s where I started.

polarpicnic_ebay

Penguins and Polar bears are right in my wheelhouse. Here’s the Mochimochi Land version.

polarpicnic_main614

I couldn’t resist include Kitty Chan herself—she’s hiding toward the back of the piece, disguised as a snowman.

polarpicnic_hk614

I’ll add more photos of details soon! I can’t wait to see the other works in the show.

HELLO KITTY & 99 FRIENDS
APRIL 16TH-MAY 14TH
PIQ GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL
SHUTTLE PASSAGE

Playful at Melbourne’s City Library

Posted on by Anna

playful_melbourne

Now that I’m back from leave, I have a whole backlog of things to announce, but I wanted to get this one up quick: a group exhibition that I was invited to be a part of in Melbourne!

The work I’m contributing are gnomes from 2015’s Gnome Genome Project, but I also made these tiny eggs with legs to go in a capsule machine that the show will include.

playful_eggsonlegs

Here’s all the show info:

​PLAYFUL GROUP EXHIBITION

Celebrating National Youth Week 2016 at Melbourne Library Service

Opening: 7 April, 6-8 PM

Location: Gallery at City Library, 253 Flinders Lane, Melbourne VIC 3000

Exhibition dates: April 2 – 29, 2016

Curated by: Sophia Cai

Artists: Anna Hrachovec (USA), Ashley Ronning, Beci Orpin, Christina Gordon, Cat Rabbit, Evie Barrow, Erica Fustero (Spain), Hiné Mizushima (Canada), Holly Leonardson, Isobel Knowles, Kenny Pittock, Luke Temby, Misako Mimoko (Spain), Philippa Rice (UK), Rosaleen Ryan, Soreureubear (Korea), Tessy King, Yiying Lee

PLAYFUL is a group exhibition that celebrates the power of play and imagination. Curated by Sophia Cai for National Youth Week 2016 at Melbourne Library Service, City of Melbourne, PLAYFUL features leading Australian and international artists with works in soft sculpture, ceramics, textiles, toy design, animation and illustration.

PLAYFUL is an exhibition that encourages fun and play. Come along to a series of four curated workshops during the month of April, and learn from artists Beci Orpin, Kenny Pittock, Luke Temby and Holly Leonardson to sew, sketch, make and cut your own works of art. (Workshops for ages 15+).

Local small press Helio Press and Sophia Cai are also producing limited edition catalogues for the exhibition that feature colouring pages by more than ten artists. Last but not least, the exhibition is also home to the exclusive PLAYFUL Gashapon toy vending machines, co-curated by Rosaleen Ryan. Bring $2 coins to join the fun!