“10% what happens to you, 90% how you react to it” -Olek
Loops, loops and more loops of yarn make up artist Olek’s vibrant, intense in your face installations that bring the art of crochet to a whole new level. The clashing colors crocheted together create socially conscious public “actions” that shape, inform and transform the dialogue between performer, observer and participant.
installation/performance in collaboration with Carrie Ahern, the Lab Gallery, NYC
“Human Condition”
Inspired by New York City’s various neighborhoods, Olek endeavors to produce feedback for the economic and social reality of its communities while also bringing color and life, energy and surprise to these spaces. Olek’s works have been exhibited in venues from New York to Istanbul.
Hailing from Poland, Olek began crocheting in 3rd grade, and took to it with an intensity that has her now decorating entire floors, cars, and on several occasions, people. After graduating college, she moved to New York and took a job crocheting outfits dance companies. Since then her sculpture, installations and performance art have been seen worldwide and continue to amaze and stun with their vivid colors, their unique placements and creativity.
“I think crochet, the way I create it, is a metaphor for the complexity and interconnectedness of our body and its systems and psychology. The connections are stronger as one fabric as opposed to separate strands, but, if you cut one, the whole thing will fall apart.
Relationships are complex and greatly vary situation to situation. They are developmental journeys of growth, and transformation. Time passes, great distances are surpassed and the fabric which individuals are composed of compiles and unravels simultaneously.”
“A loop after a loop. Hour after hour my madness becomes crochet. Life and art are inseparable. I crochet everything that enters my space. Sometimes it’s a text message, a medical report, found objects or a person…..”
“Due to the labor-intensive nature of my work, I often find myself alone for hours and days… creating a desire to connect with other artists, thus collaborations are always a welcomed opportunity.”
It is often lonely work, thousands of hours spent alone in her financial district studio, in downtown Manhattan, watching movies and occasionally indulging in a spiced vodka! When asked why she does it, she said she has an explanation: “I’m crocheting because I love watching movies”. Many times, the movie has to do with the piece she is working on, or at least the theme is tied in, for example as she was covering a projector, she was watching Blade Runner.
“Thank You for Your Visit, Have a Nice Day (wearable sculpture)”
Olek commenting on “Thank You For Your Visit, Have a Nice Day”: “Inspired by a uniformed attendant holding the sign Hold the Handrail in a Taipei metro station, I’ve created this moving installation/performance piece. In wearable sculptures of multicolored crocheted camouflage, my performers appear in various sites on 14th Street, displaying photographs of signs I’ve collected from different countries that are in emphatic, ironic or amused dialogue with their location.”
“Fairy Tales Are Not Real”
Check out her other creations here.
