The Way of the Gun, by Native American artist Nocona Burgess, is part of an exhibit at Gallery 17 Peck, which recently moved to Federal Hill from downtown. The show also includes the work of Santa Fe potter Glen Nipshank.

A few years ago, a Providence artist named David Cole staged what may have been the world’s first piece of performance art involving flags, knitwear and heavy machinery. The occasion was the city’s 2002 Convergence Arts Festival, during which Cole spent several days knitting a giant American flag using a pair of rented backhoes outfitted with 20-foot-long knitting needles.

At the time, it seemed likely that Cole’s piece, The Knitting Machine, had pretty much exhausted the whole flags-knitwear-and-performance-art thing. Instead, it was just the beginning.

On Saturday, another local artist — Providence-based fashion designer and Rhode Island School of Design professor Liz Collins — will preside over Knitting Nation Phase 4: Pride, an all-day knit-fest that will be one of the highlights of this week’s Providence Pride Festival (see Page E10). And like Cole’s Knitting Machine, Collins’s Knitting Nation involves flags, knitting and machinery.

“Basically, it’s a celebration of knitting,” says Collins, who’s done knitwear collections for designers such as John Bartlett and James Coviello, as well as her own label. “In my own work, I’m constantly dealing with looms, weave patterns and so on. But the real work — the knitting — generally goes on behind closed doors. This is a chance to bring it out into the open.”

According to Collins, Saturday’s event will feature a group of seven or eight knitters, each equipped with a manually operated knitting machine. Using the machines, which look like a cross between a traditional hand loom and an electric sewing machine, each knitter will produce a single length of knitted fabric in one of eight colors, ranging from hot pink to green and turquoise.

Volunteers will then sew the lengths into a single massive block of fabric. The goal, Collins says, is to create a knitwear version of the so-called “pride flag” — the rainbow-hued banner designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker. Originally created in 1978, the flag has since become a popular symbol of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer community, or LGBTQ for short.

Collins says the Knitting Nation flag will also follow Baker’s original color scheme, which assigned attributes and emotions to each color. Red, for example, symbolized life, while orange represented healing. The other colors are yellow (sun), green (serenity and oneness with nature), turquoise (art), indigo (harmony), violet (spirit) and hot pink (sex).

“A lot of the pride flags you see nowadays have some of the colors missing,” Collins says. “That’s especially true of pink, which symbolizes sex. But we’re doing all the colors.”

This is the fourth time Collins has organized a Knitting Nation performance. The first was held in 2004 as part of “The Muster,” a weekend-long series of performances on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. For that event, Collins and her team created an American flag.

“When we did the Governor’s Island project, I was thinking a lot about the Iraq invasion and about what it means to be a citizen during a time of war,” Collins says. “Obviously, it struck a nerve since we got a lot of reactions, ranging from very patriotic to very antiwar and anti-government.”

Collins also staged a smaller version of Knitting Nation at RISD in 2006.

As for her current Knitting Nation project, Collins says that several factors played a role in her choice of the pride flag. One was the setting — as part of the annual Providence Pride Festival at Waterplace Park. Another factor was color. Unlike the American flag, which is limited to three colors, the pride flag boasts eight colors.

“Aesthetically, it offers us a lot more choices,” Collins says.

Knitting Nation Phase 4: Pride takes place Saturday from noon to 6 p.m. at Waterplace Park. The event is part of the Providence Pride Festival, which takes place Saturday from noon to 11 p.m. in and around Kennedy Plaza. For more information on Knitting Nation, visit www.lizcollins.com. For more information on the Providence Pride Festival, visit www.prideri.com.

Gallery has new spot

Since opening in Providence’s Financial District in 2005, The Gallery at 17 Peck has earned a loyal following, both for its lively opening-night parties and for its well-chosen displays of contemporary Southwestern and Native American art. Its latest exhibit, which features works by Native American painter Nocona Burgess and Santa Fe-based potter Glen Nipshank, offers more of the same. The only difference: the gallery is no longer located downtown.

Instead, Gallery 17 Peck, as it’s now known, has moved to a new space on Federal Hill, where it joins Gallery Z, the Royal Gallery and several other galleries.

“It’s great,” says owner Daniel Kelly. “We’ve only been up here a few weeks and I’ve already had way more walk-in traffic than I ever had downtown. And people aren’t just window-shopping. They actually come in and spend some time looking at the artworks.”

Kelly, who’s an artist himself, says the gallery will continue to focus on contemporary Southwestern art, with occasional shows devoted to artists from the New England area.

“Basically, the Southwestern stuff is our bread and butter,” he says. “That’s what we’re known for and that’s where most of our advertising budget goes. But we also do [other] things.”

Burgess, who’s known for his iconic paintings of Native American subjects, and Nipshank, who’s a prominent Native American potter and sculptor, have both been with the gallery since it opened. Kelly says both artists will be in Providence for tonight’s 5-11 opening, which takes place as part of Providence’s monthly Gallery Night celebration.

Burgess will also hold a painting demonstration on Saturday at 1 p.m.

Gallery 17 Peck is at 303 Atwells Ave. in Providence. Regular hours are Tues. noon-6 and Wed.-Sat. noon-8. Contact: (401) 331-2561 or visit www.17peck.com.

bvansicl@projo.com