FLM: Your work explores the ‘evolution of communication.’ Can you elaborate what that means and how your work accomplishes this?
OLEK: “Your pu--y is my soulmate.” One of many text messages that I crocheted into panels that covered my entire apartment. One of the many times a romance has inspired my work. It was around 2006 when we were really starting to see the effects of the evolution of communication. Short messages, blips on your phone that you never see again, that you hardly even process. Write. Send. Read. Delete. Language was degraded and misunderstandings became rampant.
This new form of expressing emotions is as private as it is ephemeral and I wanted to make these statements more permanent. I transformed this cheap, easy form of expression into art for all to experience. A lover sent me a massage pronouncing his love for my little slice of heaven, not knowing that it would make it into a room that thousands of people would eventually see. That one panel also made it onto the invite for the show, which I sent to the Catholic school where I taught. They terminated my career as an art teacher two weeks after the show opened, and I have happily dedicated every moment of my life to art ever since. And I do mean every moment. You see, I hate wastefulness, be it time or commodities. This goes back to when I was growing up in communist Poland. We had very little, so I would save everything that entered my house and turn it into something else. Every morning the milkman would bring bottles. I’d save the tin colored tops, and then make Christmas decorations out of a year’s worth of saving. I learned as a kid that if you don’t have something you can always find a way to make it.
It was another Christmas, decades later, in 2003, when my love for hooking/crocheting finally enraptured my love life. Romance has taken me through every color of the rainbow: different ages and races, both women and men. I have crocheted them all. After a traditional Polish Christmas supper consisting of pierogies that I slaved over for two days, I went to see a girl I was dating at the time. She was busy working, or perhaps just playing one of those silly mind games. I looked around in her loft and found a stepladder I wanted to transform into a new art piece. Later I learned it belonged to her ex-husband. It ended up being the first sculpture of mine ever acquired by a collector, in Oliver Kamm/ 5BE Gallery in 2004. I didn’t realize at that moment what I had started on that cold New York night.
From then on my art and my life became more stitched together day by day. One of the best parts about living in this city is that you can find anything on the street. Not just potential lovers, but furniture as well. I was poor and I had to fill my tiny basement apartment using only items I found on the street. I used a camouflage pattern to transform each dilapidated piece, worn by the memories of previous owners.
When my crocheted living space was first disassembled and exhibited at Christopher Henry Gallery, I was forced to move there for six months to live, love, and create. In 2012 the Smithsonian asked to borrow my home, moving the entire apartment, panel by panel, to their American Art Museum. All my fears came to fruition when the museum registrar presented a whole binder with notes regarding condition of the art pieces—mentioning all the stains. Thank god I wear gloves, she said. If you look close at my art, especially close, you will realize just how intimately my life fuses with my art.
Everything that enters or leaves me sooner or later will become a crocheted work or inspire one. Everyone who enters my life will also become art. Because I hate wasting time, crocheting my lovers means I am doing two things at once. If the relationship doesn’t work out, at least I have art. And when both are great, then I am truly happy. The good ones make adjustments to fit better into my crocheted suits. Some even lose their bellies.