True, there are many out there, especially women, who are very into knitting or crocheting but it seems to me that this time passion got a little bit bigger for Olek, real name Agata Oleksiak, a young woman born in Poland, currently living in NYC. It all started as a method of relaxation that soon became a form of art or, as she herself admits, a way of conveying the inseparability of life and art.
“Life and art are inseparable. The movies I watch while crocheting influence my work, and my work dictates the films I select. I crochet everything that enters my space. Sometimes it’s a text message, a medical report, found objects. There is the unraveling, the ephemeral part of my work that never lets me forget about the limited life of the art object and art concept. What do I intend to reveal? You have to pull the end of the yarn and unravel the story behind the crochet.”
Olek’s art may be shocking at first but is a real wake-up call for those willing to admire here work. Bursting with color, most of the times intentionally used “in conflict”, the works of art in which she has put an immense amount of effort and passion convey an image of the world that can only be seen through the eyes of an artist. Her crocheting varies from costumes for film or theater to large pieces meant to give a new image to an abandoned house, a Polish WWII bunker or the windows of the public boat in Istanbul, just to give a few examples.
She has created crocheted and knitted artworks around the world. What an original art! Looks just amazing! She says the intensive nature of her work often finds herself alone for days. “I feel like somebody, or rather something glued the hook with crazy clue to my fingers. A loop after a loop. Hour after hour my madness becomes crochet. Life and art are inseparable.” Take a look:
- Crochet London taxi cab
- Fairy Tales Are Not Real, created during her residency in Sacatar, Brazil
- Crocheted bike in Warsaw
- Wall Street bull in New York covered in yarn
- Crochet taxi and wigwam, Britain
- Crocheted canoe with Olek, Wales
- Crocheted tractor, North Carolina
- Gato Negro, Gato Blanco, Barcelona, Spain
- Where the wild things are (artist’s grandmother’s house), Poland
Olek is celebrating her decade of crochet art in an exhibition, which started July 20th 2012 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC.
Check out her web:
http://agataolek.com/home.html
Do następnego razu… (Till next time…)
