{"id":25762,"date":"2024-12-14T08:23:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-14T13:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=25762"},"modified":"2024-12-17T12:51:27","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T17:51:27","slug":"molteni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2024\/12\/14\/molteni\/","title":{"rendered":"Maria Molteni At The Intersection Of Basketball, Craft And Mysticism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Maria Molteni<\/a> grew up playing basketball. \u201cI think I\u2019ve always felt really close to the process of shooting free throws,\u201d Molteni says. \u201cAny kind of meditative task is opening your brain up to that kind of therapeutic. \u2026. If you access the presence in your body, you could say it gets you access to healthy brain waves, you could say it gives you access to other realms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molteni says, \u201cI think that\u2019s where you get free because you\u2019re reclaiming your own brain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molteni\u2019s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d<\/a>\u2014on view at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, from Jan. 13, 2024, to Jan. 5, 2025\u2014shows how the Boston artist operates at the intersection of sports and art and craft and spirituality and mysticism. The exhibition showcases hand-made basketball nets, custom-designed basketballs, an oscellating fan that blows five white pompoms mounted on the wall, documentation of murals painted on public basketball courts, and a mural painted on the museum wall that seems to be looking down through clouds\u2014outlined by curving metal basketball hoop rims welded together\u2014down to one of their basketball court murals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maria
Maria Molteni paints her \u201cStorming the Court\u201d mural in Salem, June 13, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in Nashville, Molteni began playing organized basketball at age 7, and played for 10 years. \u201cI played a bunch of sports,\u201d Molteni recalls. \u201cThat was just a huge part of my identity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molteni\u2019s mom\u2019s side of the family was Scotch Irish farmers, Molteni\u2019s dad\u2019s side was Italian. Growing up Roman Catholic, Molteni felt on the edges of the local Protestant majority with the Catholic Irish-Americans, the Italian-Americans, and the Latino-Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI ended up choosing to go to an all girls high school because I used to get in fights with boys on the playground.\u201d Both of Molteni\u2019s parents were coaches. Molteni was impressed by the nuns playing basketball. When asked what Molteni wanted to be when they grew up, Molteni would say, \u201ca pro basketball player, an artist, and a saint.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t identify as traditionally Catholic,” Molteni says. “I always say Catholicism is the gateway to witchcraft. I took that route.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maria
Maria Molteni’s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Molteni studied painting at Boston University\u2014self-portraits, people posing, painting from observation. It felt like an internal project, working alone in their basement studio. After graduating in 2006, Molteni began making friends among students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (now part of Tufts University) and found performance art and social practice art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molteni felt a need to be more out in the community, so they began painting portraits of houses in their Allston neighborhood. And Molteni began learning to knit\u2014which had a familiar feeling, which Molteni connected to basketball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first basketball stuff I ever made was about the rosary,\u201d a Catholic prayer cycle guided by a necklace of beads. \u201cI practice a body-based mysticism. Even the rosary itself is a tactile type of prayer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRaised a religious person, I was thinking about serving my community,\u201d Molteni says. Molteni began knitting, crocheting and macram\u00e9ing nets for basketball hoops\u2014nets of roughly regulation size and nets that dangled down low from the hoop, in oranges and reds and purples and pinks and fluorescent greens. And around 2008 or 2009, Molteni began doing performances \u201cpraying the rosary and shooting free throws \u2026 because that\u2019s what I did as a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maria
Maria Molteni’s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“Yarn Over, Double Dribble: Ball Handling Score” is a video projected on a museum wall of Molteni dribbling and passing a basketball around their body and between their legs in a classic ball-handling practice\u2014the moves derived from pattern for hand-knitting basketball nets created by Andrea Sherrill Evans, and included in their publication \u201cNet Works: Learn to Craft Handmade Basketball Nets from Empty Hoops in Your Neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou find ways to reclaim some of these practices for yourself,\u201d Molteni says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The performances, \u201cThey were like ceremonies, ritualistic,\u201d Molteni says, including candles and wearing gold clothes and sneakers. The performances evoked the \u201cstomp clap rhythms\u201d of basketball practices and cheers from their playing days, \u201cRepetitive, rhythmic, meditative practices.\u201d The focus and rhythm in the neighborhood of \u201cinducing trance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spirituality and sports, \u201cIt\u2019s always been kind of inate in my mind,\u201d Molteni says. \u201cPeople show up to sporting events to find trance. That\u2019s wonderful, that\u2019s what\u2019s great about it. But it\u2019s all tied up in the market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt connects the mind to the body. Generally in the U.S. or Christian Westerners, the dominant ideology tries to separate the mind from the body, that\u2019s also part of patriarchy, shaming the body, shaming women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molteni felt themself trying to undo and become liberated from Puritan shame. \u201cIf I make things that are exciting to me, it really affects people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molteni moved into collaboration with an exhibition that reimagined MEME Gallery in Cambridge as a sort of tiny basketball court in 2011, inviting a couple people to teach people how to knit basketball nets. The collaboration evolved into New Craft Artisans in Action\u2014or NCAA\u2014a pun on the college sports league the National Collegiate Athletics Association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe wanted it to be more of an open source, do this for your own neighborhood, make it reflect your own aesthetics and values,\u201d Molteni says of their NCAA. Making nets was useful, a gift to games on public courts, where nets often go missing. Players would use them and making nets seemed a way for folks who aren\u2019t sporty to be involved. \u201cThe net is a public piece of fiber art that has its own lifecycle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maria
Maria Molteni’s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Molteni personalized Molten brand basketballs by hand-letting an \u201cI\u201d on the end to make them into \u201cMolteni\u201d balls. The exhibition includes basketballs manufactured to Molteni’s custom designs. \u201cI\u2019d always wanted to do a court,\u201d to paint a mural on a public basketball court floor. \u201cI\u2019d mention it to people, but people didn\u2019t get it. \u2026 I want to do the nets and uniforms and courts. \u2026 Not in a commercial way, in a dreamy, surreal way, what some people would call utopian. \u2026 I wanted to reinvent the game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an aside, \u201cI have a bit of a bone to pick with utopian right now, so I\u2019d rather talk about it in a dreamy way.\u201d The issue is \u201cutopia is the perfect world that doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d So let\u2019s call it a desire to make a better world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maria
Maria Molteni painted \u201cHard in the Paint\u201d across two side-by-side basketball courts in Harambee Park outside the Perkins Community Center in Boston\u2019s Dorchester neighborhood during the summer of 2017. (Photo by Alan Shapiro)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Molteni began painting murals on basketball courts around 2016, increasingly operating as a \u201ccreative director\u201d leading kids and crews of artists\u2014friends, queer folks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Athletics, Molteni says, was one of the ways \u201cI was able to find my own queerness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Identity, accessibility, shared values. \u201cQueer always has a little bit of political world-building too. \u2026 When we talk about queer, we\u2019re talking about deprogramming certain constructs and building a new world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe context and community I\u2019m working in is very queer,\u201d Molteni says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was not very prepared for the splash that this kind of work was going to make,\u201d Molteni says of the basketball court murals.  Molteni didn\u2019t think to monetize their advice. Corporate athletic ware companies funded basketball court murals. Molteni says, \u201cSome just stole my work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maria
Maria Molteni’s \u201cStorming the Court\u201d mural on Ward Street in Salem’s Point neighborhood, June 12, 2018. (Photo by David Valecillos of the Punto Urban Art Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs the basketball court thing started exploding in general,\u201d Molteni thought, \u201cMaybe now I can get more weird.\u201d Painting a basketball court in Salem\u2019s Point neighborhood in 2018, kids suggested a witch theme. Molteni proposed they reinvent the witch, and turned the free throw line into a mystical third eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a New Bedford court in 2019, community members suggested a whale theme. Molteni figured out how to write messages using nautical flag motifs. Molteni wondered, \u201cWhat do whales want to say to the sky?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maria
Maria Molteni’s \u201cGateway to Infinity (An Anti-monument)” mural on Boston’s Greenway, 2023.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Molteni painted \u201cGateway to Infinity (An Anti-monument),\u201d<\/a> a mystical, 40-foot-wide mural of spirals within a circle on the ground along Boston\u2019s Greenway, between Christopher Columbus Park and Faneuil Hall, in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molteni began thinking of the basketball courts as \u201chorizontal monuments,\u201d as \u201caltars to the sky.\u201d Molteni says, \u201cI began incorporating astrological imagery. \u2026 I now do what I consider spells that I activate. \u2026 If there are spells on the court they are always spells for social harmony.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molteni often leads art workshops with kids, asking them, \u201cWhat\u2019s your dream mascot?\u201d Among the challenges of making basketball the locus of a better world is that basketball is generally \u201call kinds of competitive and it\u2019s all corporate.\u201d Molteni aspires to reconnect people to faith without the commercial institutions in the way. On basketball courts, Molteni sees \u201cpossibilities, the infinite expression of joy and gender, if you want, and values.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe liberation of recreation,\u201d Molteni says. \u201cParticipation over spectatorship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat I need it to do is deprogram children\u2014their allegiance to brands and even teams. I want to deprogram the way they have to chase art or sports, chase to be a girl or a boy, behave like a girl or a boy. I think there\u2019s a place for public art that honors individuals who are great. One of the reasons I started calling courts horizontal monuments is I don\u2019t like monuments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re programmed to put humans on a pedestal and worship them,\u201d then rip them down for their flaws, \u201cand lose faith for humanity. We should look inside ourselves and see the hero and the divine and the better world in relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previously: 2018:<\/strong> Maria Molteni Brings Art, Feminism And A Witch To The Basketball Court With Her New Salem Mural<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2024 or the respective creato<\/em>rs.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maria
Maria Molteni’s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Maria Molteni\u2019s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Maria Molteni’s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Maria Molteni’s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Maria Molteni’s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Maria Molteni’s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Maria Molteni’s “A Sea Bird” basketball court mural at Fort Point\/Seaport, Boston, 2021.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Maria Molteni’s “Cosmic Court!” basketball court mural at Fall River, Massachusetts, 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Maria
Maria Molteni’s “Courting the Sky” basketball court mural at New Bedford, Massachusetts, 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Jena
Jena Tegeler (left) Maria Molteni and Kristine Roan (background) paint the \u201cStorming the Court\u201d mural in Salem, June 13, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Maria
Maria Molteni’s first basketball court mural at the (now defunct) art and sports Clubhouse at 471 Somerville Ave. in Somerville in 2016. Caleb Neelon painted the wall. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Maria
Maria Molteni\u2019s exhibition \u201cSoft Score\u201d at the Fuller Craft Museum, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maria Molteni grew up playing basketball. \u201cI think I\u2019ve always felt really close to the process of shooting free throws,\u201d Molteni says. \u201cAny kind of meditative task is opening your brain up to that kind of therapeutic. \u2026. If you access the presence in your body, you could say it gets you access to healthy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[226,1288],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25762"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25762"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25812,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25762\/revisions\/25812"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}