A Celebration of Color and Community at the Montana Ave Art Walk
On Saturday, September 27, 2025, the annual Montana Avenue Art Walk in Santa Monica throbbed with a vibrancy, fueled by a creative showcase of artistry, music, and community. Eight blocks showcased wonderful local work, ranging from gorgeous earth-toned ceramics, ocean-swirled mezuzahs, photographs of shorebreak waves alchemized into glass, botanics pressed into linen dresses, and cyanotypes of wildflowers transformed into galaxies, reminding us that everything in nature (including us) is composed of stardust.
Among the many talented artists featured this year, local fiber artist and micro-crochet magician Alexis Kavros, known online as Remy A Crafty Hedgehog, wowed with her highly detailed art. With roots deeply embedded in Santa Monica and a passion that threads community and craft together, Alexis represents a new wave of fiber artists bringing whimsical, tactile storytelling to life—one stitch at a time.
Wielding hooks sometimes as small as 0.6mm to create incredibly detailed, miniature pieces, Alexis’s work spans playful earrings, tiny sculptures, and intricate installations like the award-winning “Squirrel!!! A (Not So) Still Life” from the 2025 LA County Fair, which took home both Best in Division and 1st Place honors. Another standout piece, featured at the 2024 SoCal Fiber Fair in Pomona, depicted a pumpkin with a full scene inside—earning her Best in Category for the second year in a row. “I use these tiny stitches to tell big stories,” she explains. “Each piece is a mix of whimsy, vulnerability, and intention.”
Alexis first became involved in the Santa Monica arts community three years ago during an Art Walk event, where she met the creative trio of potters from Ceramic Coven. Their support and encouragement—purchasing her early pieces and later offering her a booth-sharing opportunity—helped launch her journey into the local art scene. “They gave me half the booth for free even though I’d never sold at a fair before,” Alexis says. “That generosity reflects what the Santa Monica art community is all about—collaboration, kindness, and making space for new voices.” This year, Alexis paid it forward and offered free booth space to her friend Allison LaCombe of Caracali Designs.
The first piece she sold, inspired by a story of a rescued beaver trying to build dams inside a home, featured a crochet beaver holding a toilet plunger.
Born and raised in Santa Monica, Alexis grew up attending a small private school and later immersed herself in the wider SAMO community. She currently lives with her husband, Andrew Kavros, whom she credits as her biggest supporter. “I wouldn’t be here without him,” she says. “He’s been with me through every creative risk and every late-night stitching session.”
Her involvement in the community extends beyond the art fairs. She’s volunteered at Wildfiber, taught at crochet workshops at the Pomona Library run by Lori Perea of Khaos Crafts, demonstrated techniques at the LA County Fair, and will be co-hosting the upcoming Cozy Crochet Workshop at the Montana Branch Library on October 11, 2025, alongside friend and fellow fiber artist Sammi Jai of Yarn Over Hook.
Alexis also co-hosts a light-hearted, educational YouTube Live show called “Stitches!” with Sammi, where they share techniques, talk about their current projects, and embrace the creative process—failures included. “We’re constantly showcasing our missteps as well as our successes,” she says. The process is just as important as the product. Her fiber art practice is about connection—to history, to others, and to herself. That’s why she participates in events like the Colour the Box Art Festival, which brings art to underfunded areas of the city. Her father-in-law taught her that “every failure shines as an opportunity to learn, bringing us closer to expressing what we may not have words for.”
More than decoration, Alexis sees crochet and fiber art as deeply rooted in both cultural history and emotional expression. With Aleut heritage on her mother’s side, she connects her work to generations of Native craft traditions, reinforced by her desire to attend an Aleut Culture Camp in Alaska. “Textile work has always been part of the human experience, especially from a woman’s perspective,” she notes. “It’s not just cozy—it’s subversive, it’s political, it’s joyful.”
She draws inspiration from artists like the UK’s Kate Jenkins, known for her whimsical crochet food installations, and from exhibits like Jeffrey Gibson’s beadwork at The Broad and “We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art” at LACMA, which are helping elevate fiber arts into the museum spotlight. “There’s a real shift happening,” Alexis says. “Textile art is finally being recognized as fine art, and it’s exciting to be part of that moment.”
She’s also deeply interested in natural dyes, experimenting with dehydrated flowers and cochineal beetles to create environmentally friendly, historically rooted colors. “Even dyeing becomes part of the story,” she says. Honoring tradition while making something new echoed through each booth of the Art Walk, underscoring our birthright as humans to draw from our past creations and express our current selves.
“Crochet helps people slow down. It’s a tactile experience that brings joy and gentleness into our fast-moving lives,” she says. “There’s something vulnerable about putting your art out there, but there’s also something really beautiful about saying, ‘This is what I made with my hands—and it matters.’”
Alexis is an integral part of Bahala, serving as the organization’s innovative social media maven. You can meet Alexis in person most Fridays at Bahala’s Coffee & Connections; this Friday, she will be leading us in a Fall activity. Don’t miss her free Cozy Crochet Workshop at the Montana Branch Library on October 11, 2025, from 11-1. You can follow her on Instagram or check out her website to learn more.
Jessica Cole