Weather Wisdom: The Tempestry Project

The Tempestry Project, a collaborative “climate art” project formed in 2017 by three friends in Anacortes, Washington, is now functioning in every state of the United States of America and in over 20 nations. Emily McNeil, Justin Connelly, and Marissa Connelly created the project in response to President Donald J. Trump’s threat to exempt the United States from the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change. As worries of the erasure of scientific data in government digital archives increased, the trio sought a means by which climate data could be captured, presented, and preserved.

A tempestry (a portmanteau of temperature and tapestry) combines modern scientific record-keeping and various cultures’ historic storytelling through needlework textiles. A tempestry records and displays a year’s temperature range in one location through 365 knitted or crocheted rows of yarn, each color-coded to a standard spectrum of 32 yarn colors, each color representing a 5-degree temperature range, from a cold black to a hot red. The standardization of yarn color, temperature ranges, and format bridges visually, according to the Project’s founders, “global climate and our own personal experiences.” Kits are provided through KnitPicks, a yarn company, or created individually through a Project-provided color template and data-gathering direction.

This presentation explores how the Tempestry Project’s website, kits, Facebook page, and exhibitions encourage a democratic and mutual pedagogy concerning color, craft, and climate change. Also explored are historical representations of weather in print, art and visual culture, and in textiles.