by Nastia Voynovskaya

“Free spirit” doesn't quite sum up the eccentric characteristics of Agata Oleksiak (better known as ‘Olek’). Wandering from place to place, lusting for new experiences and obsessively looping and looping yarn until everything in her path is covered in camouflage-print crochet, the Polish-born, New York-based artist has an unquenchable urge to conquer. Not a traditional street artist by any means, she has swathed bicycles, people, historical monuments, and even an entire locomotive in crochet, seeking to transform the world using a medium that has often been dismissed as “craft” by the art establishment. Brazenly individualistic, Olek does not roam with a like-minded group of friends or consider herself part of an artistic movement. She resists being classified as a “yarn bomber”—a term for guerilla knitters and crocheters who have used their skills with needles and hooks to cover objects like trees and bicycle racks for purely aesthetic appeal.

“I think my pieces are very conceptual, but because they are so visual people forget about the concept. That's why I totally disagree with 'yarn bombing' because people go out on the street and choose random things,” Olek said.

The fluorescent patterns in Olek's work demand attention like a tagger's moniker—an eye-catching statement of self-affirmation. Olek initially picked up crocheting as a child in communist Poland. Going to school six days a

week was mandatory and her teacher decided to teach the children crochet to pass the time on Saturdays. Olek took the project home, determined to master the craft. (“Everything I know in life, I learn on my own. I'm so impatient with everything and everybody so I don't have time or patience for instruction,” she said of her school days.)

Crochet later proved to get Olek out of multitudes of sticky situations. When she moved to New York City in 2000, fresh out of university with a degree in cultural studies, she improvised her way into the art world by crocheting costumes for dance companies. In order to remain in New York, Olek enrolled in community college to obtain a student visa and discovered a new application for crochet in her sculpture classes.

“I didn't know if I crochet the sculpture, if it was gonna be art. I was so scared to show the piece because I studied art [in university] and to me at that time, that wasn't an art. I was like, 'Why would you call something crochet an art?' But I had a strong feeling that this was what I was going to be doing. And later I totally exploded. I would go to school and cover the swimming pool in crochet. Or install things on the walls and not tell anyone,” she told me, her voice rising with excitement. She recalled the thrill of watching people's reactions when they discovered the crocheted objects. Because these were objects connected to her daily life, she felt the urge to transform them and take ownership of her environment.

A young student in Brooklyn with little money, Olek would collect pieces of furniture from the street and blanket them with crochet in vivid hues of pink, purple, and lime green. Before she knew it, she ran out of space

79

“..if it's hard for you in your life, whatever happens, you can snap out of the situation and with your creativity you can totally transform your life.”in her apartment and began hanging her crochet projects on the walls until the whole apartment was covered floor-to-ceiling. The crocheted objects in her home were later displayed in her first solo show, along with other personal mementos like tapestries inscribed with dirty text messages from lovers and a blanket that described the results of her ex-boyfriend's STD test.

Anything that enters Olek's consciousness, whether a private experience or a social observation, can be expected to turn up in her crochet work. To cope with life's challenges, Olek throws herself into her art, engrossing herself in multitudes of projects. Her cathartic form of working has yielded a prolific past year of high-profile street art projects and a solo show at Jonathan LeVine Gallery.

n the fall of 2011, Olek was at a bar in London for a glass of wine with a filmmaker who shot one of her projects. She says that she was attempting to brush off the threatening sexual advances of a man that, to her, appeared heavily intoxicated. The conflict escalated and the altercation turned violent.

She was taken to court on five charges, forced to stay in England and abide by a curfew (essentially, house arrest) for months until the trial was over.

Olek felt the scales were tipped against her before she even appeared in court (“They think, if you wear red lipstick it must be your fault because the guy comes to you. It's like, the prosecutor would say to me—it was so sexist—'So why didn't you ask a man to help you?'” she recalled of

the interrogation.) Her solo show at New York's Jonathan LeVine Gallery, which ran from February to March 2013, was approaching and the artist became increasingly emotionally drained as the litigation continued without an end in sight.

“I spoke to Jonathan a lot about the show. And I had the feeling either it's gonna go really dark, darker than I am, and that wasn't the point. Or it was going to be the opposite. [I thought], I'm not going to change anything in my life if I go deeper into depression,” Olek recalled of this dark time. “So I snapped out of it, you know. That's something I hope people take from my art, that I think it's inspirational that if it's hard for you in your life, whatever happens, you can snap out of the situation and with your creativity you can totally transform your life.”

Olek put her anger and indignation into her work, confronting her depression one loop at a time. Titled The End Is Far, the show symbolized Olek's acceptance of the painful past and looked hopefully, even triumphantly, into the future. Sardonic slogans like “A lady never throws a drink in someone's face during an argument, she chugs that shit and uses the glass as a weapon” and “Being beautiful on the inside is what's important—ha ha, not really” made their way onto the tapestries like the sarcastic jokes we all use to cope with pain. Gold, glittery crochet picture frames with baroque flourishes hung on the walls (crocheted floor-to-ceiling in her signature style) as a celebratory gesture.

81

I

“It was a moment in my life that made me stronger, you know. And I think my work was always very feminist and pro-women's rights and human rights, but now, this issue is even more important to me,” said Olek in her rapid-fire cadence. “The truth is always hidden behind something and, as artists, we have to talk about it. That's why now I do a lot of text-based pieces on the street. I wanna say something to people.”

In her heavy Polish accent, she explained that crochet is the most natural language for her to communicate her ideas and observations. At the opening of The End Is Far, which, she recalls, was so packed she could hardly enter the gallery, women thanked her for speaking about sexual harassment and issues many of us find too painful or uncomfortable to openly discuss.

“Everything already exists in the universe, I just have to make it visible for other people, so I have to crochet it to make it visible. I probably should have a psychologist but instead I am sitting and crocheting my life into the pieces,” Olek explained.

“For me there is no separation between art and life, everything is really together,” said the artist as we sat to speak on the breezy balcony of her San Francisco hotel room. Upon laying eyes on Olek, this statement does not come as a surprise. From the crochet lining on her glasses frames to the glittery crochet epaulettes and skull patches on her silk blazer and the pounds of camouflage-print sheets of crochet exploding out of the bags and suitcases strewn about her room, it becomes apparent that crochet is not just a preferred medium, it is Olek's lifestyle.

“Everything already exists in the universe, I just have to make it visible for other people. I probably should have a psychologist but instead I am

sitting and crocheting my life into the pieces.”

High off the success of The End Is Far, Olek was swept away in a whirlwind of international projects and commissions. She crocheted an elaborate installation at the Lancaster House—hot pink camouflage elephant statues in an ornate, gilded room complete with crocheted Victorian furniture

and a crocheted carpet—for the famous Animal Ball. After drinking champagne all night in the presence of Prince Charles, Olek didn't even stop home to change out of her ball gown and masquerade mask and boarded a plane to Lodz, Poland, where she embarked on her biggest project yet: a crocheted locomotive.

Olek had been yearning to crochet a train ever since taking a cross-country trip alone by rail for her thirty-fifth birthday from New York to San Francisco. Aside from their historical link to street art—starting from the legendary train graffiti in late-'70s New York—trains evoke fond memories of her own beginnings as an artist. When Olek first moved to New York from Poland, she would occupy herself with crocheting while riding the metro. After arriving in the Bay Area by train, she opened her email to find an invitation to crochet the train in Lodz.

Upon arriving in Lodz, Olek went straight to work. Though it was July, the Polish climate was unkind. Olek and her four assistants worked around the clock for days, sewing and crocheting in the icy wind and pouring rain. They would go inside only to take hot showers and warm their shoes and clothes with a blow dryer. Olek recalls almost drifting off to sleep in the shower, but she and her crew trudged on. “The train almost killed me,” she reflected with a shudder as she told me about the grueling physical

83

labor required to complete the project. When the train was completed, she felt a mixture of love for her creation and hatred for the pain it caused her—akin to getting one's feelings toyed with by a fickle lover.

85

fter the locomotive, Olek took a few weeks to travel, this time for leisure, and recharge in Poland with her family. She then journeyed to San Francisco once again to install a crocheted mural

for the public art event Absolut Open Canvas and crochet the famous Doggie Diner mascots—gigantic, plastic dachshunds in chef hats. Now relics, the doggies once symbolized the extinct Bay Area Doggie Diner restaurant chain and are now lovingly preserved for by Burning Man co-founder and Billboard Liberation Front originator John Law.

“I think I am very lucky and I ask the universe for something, it gives me what I want. I wanted to crochet the train, and the train happened. When you say a lot what you want to happen in your life, it happens to you. Like today, I said I want to have a bottle of Prosecco and the flight attendant gives me a bottle of Prosecco, like, how crazy is that? You just have to think big and dream big. It's all about dreaming,” she said as she filled up my glass.

As I watched Olek climb over and around the giant dog heads, carefully sewing the crocheted fabric around their pointy snouts and lumpy chef hats, people—homeless, well-to-do, young, elderly—would stop to share their memories from the Doggie Diner. After the doggies were completed, I met Olek at the Absolut Open Canvas launch party. Dressed in a hand-sewn, floral, floor-length gown, a Renaissance-style corset, crochet epaulettes and a crochet masquerade mask, she floated through the party like an enchanted princess among a sea of girls in tight-fitting club dresses and guys in slacks and collared shirts. A gentleman shook her hand and told her to call him if she ever wished to crochet a boat. It was then that I understood that the opportunities Olek has enjoyed are not random blessings from the universe, but rather the result of her relentless drive to touch everything and everyone with her art—and swathe it all in yarn if possible.

A