WOO stories ignite imagination, challenge norms & break through boundaries

I grew up in Czechoslovakia during the Russian invasion and occupation from 1968 to 1989. Living under Soviet control taught me a crucial skill: concealing my views. One way to avoid oppressing censorship was to escape it. When I finally did, without saying goodbye to my mother, the only thing I could take were the intangibles: mostly a paranoia of being watched and reprimanded for anything, by anyone, anywhere and at any time—coupled with a compulsive need to conform my speech to fit with propaganda around me.

Years after leaving my homeland, I wanted to explore in my projects the aftermath of my exile. Since I’ve always been drawn to patterns, textures and textiles, I began this project by digitally replicating my mother’s hand-knitted patterns. 

Once I built digital replicas, I transformed them into independent figures and incorporated them into the characters of my short animations. The characters have nothing to constrain them except the page edge or their own individual preferences. They often act as many of us might if we were similarly uninhibited.  

Each animation unfolds on two empty facing pages, with a clear set of boundaries. The digitally knitted characters can only move from top to bottom, left to right, and across the gutter to the opposite side of the spread. The bare pages might feel uncomfortable at first, but only until the story starts to unravel. 

As a graphic designer and educator, it’s been critical for me to translate the hand-knitting tradition into a new form, as well as to use my vocation as a personal expression that has a universal understanding. Equally vital for me has been to express the psychological experiences of hand-knitting in a form that’s tangible and visual.  

Knitting is not an isolating activity. With its manual repetitiveness, it can stimulate calmness and contentment. Both are vital in cultivating thinking and self-reflection. The reciprocity of physical restfulness and focused attentiveness allows for psychological memories and emotions to emerge and for tensions to release in the form they choose for themselves.