After a year of legal purgatory following a bogus (if not career-enhancing) assault charge in London, crochet-bombing street queen Olek has finally returned to her old stomping grounds — and she’s wasted no time reacquainting New Yorkers with her work. Apparently using the city’s recent blustery cold spell as her muse, Olek is back at it, this time knitting cozy sweaters for old-school Flexible Flyer sleds, with the message “Chilled to the Bone” crocheted onto the fronts. A simple expression of disdain towards the weather that’s been making us all excessively whiny lately? Or could “Chilled to the Bone” be a deeper reference to the emotional state that Olek’s disheartening skirmish with England’s justice system left her in? Ah, the quandaries of enigmatic street art.
So far, two of these have been spotted (one on a Second Avenue fire escape, and the other at the former location of Billy’s Antiques in NoHo), but we have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of Olek popping up around the neighborhood. Don’t miss her upcoming exhibition, “The End is Far”, opening at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in Chelsea on February 23rd.
