A queer artist in Boston crochets basketball nets and paints whole courts like quilts. This is what happens next.

Maria Molteni makes hand-crocheted basketball nets and paints full-size basketball courts at the kind of scale you can only see from a drone. Their courts have won a National Public Art Award. Their collective, NCAA (New Craft Artists in Action), has collaborators around the world. They sell the pattern book by donation and give it away free to anyone who can't pay.

Maria is also a Shaker scholar. Their family farm in Tennessee sat thirty minutes from South Union Shaker Village in Kentucky, and their grandparents were competitive square dancers doing moves that weren't far from the Shakers' own formal shape dancing.

Basketball, Shakers, Keith Haring, yarn bombing, and the tension between practical and visionary. Featuring throughline voices from AJ Young and Zak Foster.

Art Against Empire is hosted by Ian Danger Capstick, co-created and edited by Shawn Dearn, and is a production of Secret Agents. New episodes every two weeks. Visit artagainstempire.net for show notes, images and much more. Produced by Secret Agents.