A brush with death and a breathtaking sunset steered Rebekah Younger on the path to become the Gradient Queen of the knitting world and the founder of Younger Knits, a clothing company she runs from her home in Woolwich.
“Color is energy, fresh moments of seeing in the world,” Younger said. “I offer that back to people through clothing.”
Younger spent her childhood in Cleveland and received Fine Arts training at Beloit College in Wisconsin. After college, she purchased a do-it-yourself framing company, The Great Frame Up, in Chicago and devoted her life to being an entrepreneur for the next nine years.
She learned she had Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of lymph tissues, at age 30 in 1985. As she fought the disease into remission, she realized that it was time to focus on her art.
“I’m definitely working on my nine lives here,” she said, smiling.
Younger learned to knit when she was 7 years old, but considered painting on canvas to be her artistic medium. Sometimes it took her months to complete a painting, but she would knit into the wee hours of the morning, excited to see the end product. Eventually, a fellow artist said to her, “Why don’t you put your artwork into your sweaters? You’ll get more art done.”
California’s warm colors led her to the Pacific Coast where she worked as a production knitter and sample maker. Younger Knits was born in 1988, but production was slow.
A particularly glorious sky as the sun set over the Pacific Ocean in 1990 at Point Reyes, Calif., inspired Younger to jump into the Art to Wear moment. She knitted the sky’s bands of peach, orange, lavender and violet into a kimono with 17 shades of silk yarn in a Fair Isle pattern. The majestic kimono, titled “Point Reyes Afterglow,” was exhibited at the Textile Art Centre in Chicago.
After spending more than 100 hours switching yarns and tying up the kimono’s loose ends, an idea hatched: Younger could knit the yarn, dye the knit a gradient of colors, unravel the yarn and knit it into a garment. The method not only worked, Younger also became known for it.
She began selling at wholesale and regional craft shows in 1995 and now has her clothing in a number of shops and galleries throughout the country, including a shop in Hawaii. Her Meditation Scarf won a NICHE Award in 1999 and was included in “FiberArts Design Book No. 6” and “The Complete Book of Scarves.” The same year, she was the front cover feature of international “Ornament Magazine.” And one of her colorful patchwork shawls earned a page in “Artwear: Fashion and Anti-fashion” by Melissa Leventon.
“I surpassed my original expectations long ago,” said Younger. “I’ve been in this business long enough to experience ebbs and flows.”
A year later, Younger and her husband, Guy Marsden, moved to Maine.
“My husband wanted to live rurally, which is very expensive in California,” Younger said, who was constantly flying across the country from California to attend East Coast craft shows.
This year, she has already planned shows in Baltimore; Marlborough, Mass.; New York City; Highland Park, Ill.; San Francisco and Chicago.
“It’s a good thing I like to travel,” she said. “It keeps me fresh in my own creativity.”
She calls the influence of environment “tyranny of place,” and feels that traveling helps her remember that her artwork is about more than just the frozen Maine landscape outside her kitchen window.
When Younger and Marsden moved, Younger’s life philosophy and approach to knitting changed. Younger, who had been ordained as a minister in the nonsectarian church Unity of the Spirit in California in 1999, discovered that the practice of Buddhism better fit her spiritual beliefs. She became a member of the local Buddhist community and learned that some of the teachings applied to her art.
“Art-making in itself is a fairly meditative process for most people,” she said.
This summer, she will lead a “Mindful Knitter Retreat” July 17-22, at the Cloquet Forestry Center in Minnesota.
She has located Buddhist centers in Portland, Ellsworth and Brunswick and now teaches a class in Shambhala art, combining meditation with the creative process, drawing on the teachings of the Tibetan Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The idea is this: If the artist creates art with an awakened state of mind, then that will be gifted to society and anyone who views the art.
“What does it take to make art? How do you relate to the world as a creator, whether it’s how you brush your teeth or how you cook a meal?” she said, giving examples of the thoughts that Shambhala art practitioners contemplate.
At Younger’s home studio, she works at a nearly extinct Brother knitting machine and linker with the help of assistants Sara Holmes of Belmont and newly hired Ashley Nadeau of Bath. Debra Smith of Charleston also has knitted for Younger Knits since Younger moved to Maine.
But the dyeing of the clothing is one aspect of creation that Younger always does herself.
She stands in front of a salvaged darkroom sink under shelves lined with a rainbow of jars. In meditation, she clears her mind — “square one” — and in the open space she waits until her hand goes free across the sweater stretched across a drying rack. With her brush saturated with colored dye, she paints over sections of wet cloth, forming a gradient of colors just as an artist would create a watercolor painting.
“That’s what gives me the most joy — playing with colors,” she said.
Rather than watching color trends, she uses hues she takes in from the environment, blends hues within color families and juxtaposes colors that “sing together.” She takes in color of any form, natural or man-made, landscape or cityscape, sunlight on snow or rust on a light pole.
“My color sense has been the strongest seller of my work all along,” she said. “Colors can make people feel good. Each color has a specific energy.”
And she sees her customers’ personality types as relating to colors. Younger’s personality is karma-evoking green — enthusiastic and active in the world —mixed with a calming blue, she said.
She treats certain pieces with bleach to form distinct lines. In the same meditative state, she moves her brush over a dry garment so the bleach solution won’t bleed throughout the cloth. Seconds pass before a line begins to appear, but her muscle memory and intuition keeps her moving without pause. Thirty to 40 brush strokes go into the creation of one expressive line. And within minutes, she must neutralize the bleach with hydrogen peroxide so that it doesn’t eat through the fibers. Each piece is unique.
“Nothing gets duplicated,” she said. “And I know when it’s done, it’s an intuitive sense.”
Her bleached lines often resemble simple hieroglyphs or Chinese characters, but “it means whatever you want it to mean,” she said. “It’s an expression of a moment.”
From Christmas to February, Younger designs new lines of clothing — then sets to work making them. This year, her new bamboo and linen designs are embellished with carefully placed rectangles of bright, swirling colors. Each garment costs $200-$400.
The lightweight garments are breathable pieces, perfect for layering. The soft bamboo and rayon are mixed often with linen for added structure and a flattering shape.
“To invest that kind of money, it has to be something that you just want to live in,” she said.
Since her fight for life at a young age, Younger hasn’t stopped creating and has only found ways to enrich her experience. She paints, photographs and sculpts, but most often, she’s in her basement studio, sitting next to her knitting machine or standing in front of her dyeing sink in a meditative state, expressing a moment in time through line and color.
For information, visit www.youngerknits.com, www.rebekahyounger.com and www.rtyart.blogspot.com.