Westville Villagers Yarn-Bombed

“Forbidden Fruit” is now dangling from the upper reaches of a mature honey locust tree in the center of Westville’s fashion and arts district. A large yellow serpent, complete with forked tongue and hypnotic eyes, is up there too.

The burst of color and texture wrapping the tree — which one observer compared to ​“Christmas in July” — is the latest and most monumental piece of yarn bombing to appear in Westville Village, and the largest created to date, by artist Lisa Hanscom of Houston, Tex.

The yarn bombing took place Friday. It started at 7:30 a.m. and ended at 3 p.m., attracting serious rubber-necking as well as honking on Whalley.

The installation brought together members of Lisa’s family: husband Roy, who is exhibiting his ceramic art pottery and sculpture at the nearby DaSilva Gallery, and son Luke, a designer and photographer who lives in Westville and whose collaborations with wife Mistina Hanscom, both of Lotta Studio, have been widely exhibited in the city.

The addition of a scissor lift to facilitate working at the higher levels drew lots of attention as it rolled into position. 

Fashion designer Neville Wisdom exited his shop to check out the goings-on and to model the giant boa-like snake that would soon be coiled in the tree’s canopy awaiting looks of awe and surprise — reactions the artist said she loves to inspire in passersby.

A textile artist from her earliest years, Lisa Hanscom said she learned fiber arts growing up at the family’s sheep farm in Kansas and extended her skills in weaving and spinning to include basketry and other expressive crafts. Before retirement, she owned a commercial embroidery company and said that contracts even included work for the U.S. Secretary of the Navy.

Yards away from the scene of the colorful, guerrilla knitting project, DaSilva Gallery owner Gabriel DaSilva tidied up and watered a young tree outside his shop in preparation for the evening’s exhibit opening, which will feature Roy Hanscom​‘s award-winning work.

The exhibit includes elaborate but functional art pottery, serving pieces crafted from the inside out. From lids with glazed undersides to the use of sumptuous ash glazes made of ceramic detritus, there are no parts of the vessels that have not been carefully articulated and designed.

Hanscom said that his stoneware pieces are high-fired at cone 9 (for the potters among us) and are created using an unconventional approach to lid fittings. Typically, potters create the lids to fit the vessels. Hanscom turns that paradigm around, fitting the pots to the lids using a technique he figured out after much experimentation. Each lid is keyed, or marked, for the specific container portion it covers.

Hanscom said that since figuring out the lid technique, he has continued to push the envelop of possibilities in the creation of his unique forms.

The exhibit also includes several of Hanscom’s mixed-media wall sculptures from his ​“woven coil series.” When assembled, the individual units of the piece become three-dimensional wall tapestries of movement, form, and color. Small blocks or sections of hard-edged, natural mahogany, yellow and purple-heart woods contrast with the densely clustered, intertwining ceramic coils in a display that showcases the medium’s potential for art expression.

During the exhibit opening, stoneware mugs, wine glasses, and martini glasses will be sold with the respective beverage for which the vessels have been created, a two-for-one proposition that will be hard to refuse.

DaSilva said that the out-of-state infusion of craft and creativity inspired by the Hanscom family ​“has added immensely to the fabric of the Westville community.”

While the yarn installation will lure curious eyeballs for as long as it lasts, Roy Hanscom’s lidded wonders will be exhibited from July 17 (opening reception at 6 p.m.) through August 29.