Yarn, Crowns, and Reality TV: A Halifax Artist's Winning Formula
Abby Spooner didn't set out to make the art world take crochet seriously. She just wanted to give NeNe Leakes a crown.
The NSCAD University student in Halifax recently won an award for her textile portrait of the Real Housewives of Atlanta star — part of an ongoing series called Cohen's Crown Jewels that reimagines the cast of Andy Cohen's reality TV empire as regal, iconic figures deserving of a place in art history.
The result is exactly as magnificent as it sounds.
What Is Cohen's Crown Jewels?
The series takes its name from Andy Cohen, the Bravo producer and host who has shepherded the Real Housewives franchise for nearly two decades. Spooner's conceit is simple but clever: these women — dismissed by critics as trashy television, celebrated by fans as brilliant performers — deserve the same reverence as historical royalty.
By rendering them in crochet, a craft long dismissed as domestic and feminine, Spooner doubles down on the reclamation. She's elevating two things mainstream culture has historically undervalued: reality TV women and textile art.
Her portrait of NeNe Leakes — draped in the visual language of royal portraiture, recreated entirely in yarn — captured the attention of her professors and earned her recognition at one of Canada's most respected art schools.
Why Crochet?
Crochet sits in an interesting cultural space right now. Once the domain of grandmothers and hobbyists, the craft has exploded in popularity among younger artists and crafters who see it as a legitimate medium for serious work. Artists like Joana Vasconcelos have been exhibiting large-scale crochet and knitting installations in major galleries for years, but the medium still carries a stigma in fine art circles.
Spooner leans into that tension. The choice of crochet isn't incidental — it's the point. Housewives are criticized for being fake, performative, unserious. Crochet is criticized for being domestic, frivolous, not-quite-art. By combining them, she creates something that forces viewers to examine their own assumptions about what deserves elevation.
Halifax and the Canadian Art School Scene
NSCAD University — the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design — has a long history of producing boundary-pushing graduates. Founded in 1887, it's one of Canada's oldest and most respected art institutions, known for encouraging conceptual and craft-based work that doesn't fit neatly into conventional fine art categories.
Spooner's win is a reminder that some of the most interesting art being made in Canada right now isn't happening in Toronto or Vancouver galleries — it's happening in studios and classrooms in Halifax, where students are working with yarn, exploring pop culture, and asking serious questions about value and visibility.
Pop Culture as Subject Matter
Using reality television as source material is itself a statement. Pop culture has always been a legitimate subject for serious art — Andy Warhol built a career on it. But there's still resistance in some circles to treating Real Housewives with the same analytical seriousness as, say, a nature documentary or a prestige drama.
Spooner isn't interested in that distinction. For her, NeNe Leakes is as worthy a subject as any monarch or muse.
With Cohen's Crown Jewels, she's building a body of work that argues for exactly that — one crowned housewife at a time.
Source: CBC News, reporting by Meig Campbell. Watch the original segment.
