CROCHETED OLEK: I like being called street artist.

I like to explore the street as the additional canvas to my work in many different ways.

SWOON: It's about feeling a kind of a surprise and like something's really alive in an otherwise dead space.

CROCHETED OLEK: What interests me is not only the physical existence of the object, but what happens around this object.

SWOON: It's all of the layers and all of the crackling and peeling paint and bringing life into those spaces.

CROCHETED OLEK: When I first start making art, I didn't show in a gallery at that time.

So for me, it was crocheting something and putting it outside.

Knitting is for pussies.

I crochet.

My medium is sculpture.

Yarn is just material.

I don't sketch or make patterns.

I make it in my head.

I mentally take you apart, make you flat.

It's like I cut you-- [making scissors noise].

And then I crochet a pattern, put it together, and put it on you.

The same thing on the objects.

It's hard to destroy something with my work.

I'm covering things.

Even if I'm making something in a gallery, if I'm covering an object, I'm not destroying the object that is hidden behind it.

I feel every artwork should have two levels.

First is this visual aspect that can attract everybody.

For example, my bull was this big gigantic crocheted pink bull.

You know?

Everybody's going to love it.

But there's a conceptual level to this piece.

That's why I did it in the first place.

I actually received a postcard with the image of Keith Haring in a black and white installation that he painted.

In a way, I was tired of people looking at my work only through color.

And I felt like I want to focus more on objects, not explosions of rainbows.

So I did that.

And I did the installation with the model standing, actually, in a Keith Haring pose.

The artist's work is a self-portrait.

And I think in my work, it's even bigger and more visible.

Because I really use my own objects and my own experiences.

This is my couch.

This is my mirror.

The bike from the gym that I go-- I went to those places and I experienced them.

That's who I am.

SWOON: I was born in Connecticut.

But I grew up in Daytona in Florida.

And then I ended up in New York, yeah.

New York had a huge impact on me.

I felt like just the landscape alone-- seeing graffiti and seeing the collage and the layering and the input of people.

My first series that I ever made was this series of prints on tracing paper.

But I just wanted to interact with those layers-- the sort of naturally occurring collage in the city.

And so I made these drawings on tracing paper.

Because I wanted the colors and other forms and stuff to show through.

That was the idea.

And then it just evolved from there.

For one thing, I just love portraiture.

And I love to draw a human presence.

I felt like I was drawing something that could almost be read as an x-ray of that person-- of their mind or of their life or of their experience.

So that you have this portrait.

But then you also have all that's contained within their emotions, within their body, within their narrative.

The series was called the "Anthropocene Extinction."

It's this moment that we're in.

We're going through such a catastrophic loss of species.

We're losing like over 200 species a day.

The impact of human beings on the planet is totally unparalleled.

There's an image of a temple.

There's hundreds of drawings of various animals.

There's a demon which is kind of like the devouring principle.

And then there's a woman I had recently met and who had lived nomadically in Australia.

Her culture has died.

And her way of life has now totally vanished.

She was just kind of an amazing woman.

I just wanted to myself try to understand it better and also try to communicate it.

And I'm certainly always thinking about connecting with people and about opening perceptions-- trying to reach an emotion and then trying to have that moment of connection with people when they see it.

CROCHETED OLEK: For me as an artist, I'm interested in seeing the cycle of life.

Because in the end, it camouflages itself to the city.

SWOON: It becomes part of the life of the city.

And then people also sort of weave it into their narrative about walking through the city.

CROCHETED OLEK: I saw so much art.

And I always felt it has to be really serious and conceptual and kind of untouchable for people.

I don't want to be this kind of artist, you know?

I like humor.

I like fun.

And that's why I make my shows in a way that everybody can find something.

SWOON: It's about encountering something that you have a freshness when you stumble upon it in that place and in that way.

CROCHETED OLEK: It's nice to know that people really want to be part of your work-- that people are into it.

They're not afraid.

SWOON: I just let my thought process lead.

And I don't try to ask too many questions about what's rational or what fits-- if this new piece fits with the last piece.

I just sort of let those impulses steer.

I'm not going to stand for hours thinking, like should I do black here?

Or should I do white here?

Or maybe gray.

Just go for it.

SWOON: Construct a space for a certain kind of connection, for a certain kind of wonder, and for a certain kind of unlikeliness, And for just things that you think that there isn't room for or time for in the life that we're living.

CROCHETED OLEK: I want to expose something.

And often people want to search for it-- what it is, what it means.

And in a way, you change somebody's life.

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