The Guerrilla Art of the Yarn Bomb Goes Natural

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Relax. They didn’t come from Mars or some distant, undiscovered galaxy. The 10 aliens (and their 24 tents) that appeared in the backcountry of Santa Barbara, California, in late January were conceived in the backyard of a hedge-fund manager turned yarn bomber.

“Yarn bombing,” for those out of the loop, is a public and oft-times guerrilla art form in which all kinds of objects, from parking meters to hulking vehicles, get covered in brightly covered yarn. Some may remember the Mexico City bus stitched over in 2008 by Magda Sayeg, often called the “mother of yarn bombing.” Typically, yarn bombers ply their craft in urban areas for maximum exposure.

But Steve Duneier, a 47-year-old Brooklyn, New York, native, is bringing it to the wild. “My goal is to draw more people into the wilderness, which I do by detonating massive, colorful yarn bombs in nature,” says Duneier. (For the record, this project can’t really be termed guerrilla, since he got a permit from the Los Padres National Forest folks.)

If the wording sounds a tad violent, rest assured: Duneier’s public installations induce a calm, even meditative experience. His latest, Alien Campsite, sits on a meadow carpeted in lacey wild grasses with views extending to the Santa Ynez Mountains and the distant Pacific. It didn’t hurt that the day I viewed it the sky was boundless blue and temperatures were in the ’70s.

Indeed “bombing” is the last word I’d associate with the peaceful scene featuring Duneier sitting cross-legged, clad in his trademark cowboy hat, watching clumps of visitors strolling amid the works. One of them, Jeff Wing, a 55-year-old writer, says it’s not at all what he expected. “It’s more striking than I really pictured. Even though the colors are jumping, it seems almost like an organic extension of the landscape,” Wing says.

This was the second of Duneier’s yarn bombs for Emily Baum, a 20-year-old Santa Barbaran studying environmental science and animal ethics at New York University. “I was at the one he did last year at Lizard’s Mouth [a boulder-strewn field in the foothills overlooking Santa Barbara]. It was really cool to see how the whole space was transformed. I mean, I love it. This one is ka-razy.… I’ve never been to this spot before, and it’s beautiful; so it got us up and out, which is supercool.”

With no publicist, Duneier relies on word of mouth and social media to get people to his events. Still, it’s the chance encounters with his creations that most excite him. “My favorite part of the whole process is when I hear people walking up a trail, bantering back and forth and they turn a corner and their conversations cease and I hear these gasps and the ‘Holy cow!’ That’s what I’m looking for—to really surprise people in a good way.”

Duneier’s transformation from high finance to high-altitude art can be traced back to a series of New Year’s resolutions he concocted in 2012. While most individuals focus on losing weight or organizing their offices, Duneier took the concept to a new level by committing to a list of “Giving” and “Learning” resolutions. Among the 12 items on his “Giving” list: building homes for the Apaches of Arizona and donating bone marrow. But while compiling his “Learning” list—among them mindfulness, veganism and unicycling up a mountain (which he did)—his wife suggested knitting and proceeded to teach him the basics. Duneier hated it. “It was supposed to be this Zen-like thing that I heard people describe, but it was aggravating and frustrating for me right up until I stopped doing it,” he says.

He botched his first knitting project, a scarf. Somehow though, he powered through stitch after stitch to launch his first yarn bomb—on a giant Eucalyptus tree two and a half miles up a popular hiking trail. Unfortunately the date he’d set for the event didn’t leave him enough time to complete the 400 square feet of yarn he needed, so he sought help from the knitting community.

Some 12 people from around the country ended up contributing, not including the three friends Duneier enlisted to lug the yarn and his rented ladder up the mountain.

The multi-hued trunk wowed hikers as they caught sight of the solitary tree dressed in every imaginable color. The yarn bomb became an Internet sensation, with the knitting community sharing stories and posting photos of the Cold Spring Tree.

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