My Goal With Art Is to Make You Feel
On mindfulness, small beauty, and screwing up the framing of crocheted tangerines twice.
I don't think I'm actually trying to just make objects. I'm trying to make someone stop for a second and notice something they'd normally walk past. The color, the shimmer, the texture, the fact that a piece has an actual story behind it instead of just a price tag.
If it does that — if it makes someone feel something small and real for a second — it's done its job, and I've succeeded, whether or not anyone ever knows my story behind it. It's the feeling left behind that matters most.
I think part of why I notice things this compulsively is ADHD, honestly — how my brain is wired differently. Colors, textures, the way light catches something — I don't really get a say in whether I notice it or not, it just happens, constantly, whether it's useful in the moment or not. Most days that's exhausting, and still beautiful, and I wouldn't trade my brain for a different one. It's also the entire reason I have this much material to work with — ideas and almost impossible knots on a thread running through life and the world around me, tangled and intense, but never boring. I'd rather have the noticing and the exhaustion together than trade away either one. I try to put it into the work and share it with whoever's paying attention.
This week that noticing turned into a small disaster, which is usually how it goes. I've been trying to frame two crocheted tangerines — one of many pieces that come out of life, and sometimes out of ongoing commission work — onto a background made from leftover wallpaper, sewing the crochet piece directly onto fabric that's part of the backing. I got a step wrong and had to stop and figure out what I'd actually missed. First reaction: annoyed at myself, since I'd already done this kind of framing before with other crochet pieces and should have known better. Then I found the actual issue, and the annoyance turned into something more useful — probably worth writing the process down properly this time, so I'm not relearning the same lesson from scratch next time.
The good news is nothing about it is ruined. The crochet piece is sewn on, not glued, so if the background and the paper don't come together the way I want, I can take it apart and start again.
That's most of what mindfulness actually means to me, if I'm honest — not some calm, finished state, but paying enough attention to notice a mistake, sit with it instead of panicking, and find the version of the piece that still gets to exist because of it — with a little more system, and a little more practice, each time. I want the things I make to carry a bit of that. Not perfection. Just proof that someone was paying attention the whole way through.
Handmade in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Small numbered series, shipped across the EU. Order your crochet piece — this is not a toy — and find the thread.