Olek’s takeover of Alamo by Tony Rosenthal. Photo by Dan DeLuca.
One of Olek’s most famous installations has to be the time she covered the entirety of Alamo by Tony Rosenthal, better known at NYC’s Astor Place Cube Sculpture or something along those lines, in crocheted yarn. The installation took place early one October morning in 2011, but Olek’s work was removed by an unknown person just a few hours later. Naturally, Olek and the handful of people who saw the piece before it was removed snapped plenty of photos that were promptly uploaded to the web along with a video documenting the installation process. There’s no way Olek expected her work to last. For one thing, yarn is not a great material for long-lasting installations, but more importantly, the she had placed her work on a major public artwork. Olek is lucky that her piece lasted as long as it did. I think this installation was more about saying “I did it” and showing the end result to an online community than actually putting smiles on the faces of the residents and tourists of New York City who might pass by Astor Place during the few hours of that Olek’s intervention was in place.
A slightly more extreme example would be Sarah Rudder’s R2D2 yarn bomb. Rudder installed her piece twice. On the 8th and 9th of June 2012, she put the piece up for what seems like maybe a grand total of couple of hours between the two days. Like Olek, Rudder made sure to take plenty of photos, and passersby got shots as well. Rudder left the piece up for a while she grabbed some coffee, and then removed it and took it home with her in the hopes that she could keep it and improve the piece for future installations. Olek knew her piece was going to be removed quickly, but she more or less left things up to fate. On the other hand, Rudder made sure that she was in control of her piece and kept it safe from any harm. Now, I suppose the yarn R2D2 sits in Rudder’s closet while she plans its future.