The Story Behind the Artist

The Other Voice: Let's begin with something simple.

What is the earliest memory you have of making something with your hands? Not necessarily felting. Anything you created that made you think, I made this.

Gelme: I started making things very early. I knitted my first vest when I was six. My grandmother taught me to knit and crochet from an early age, and then my mother taught me how to sew when I was around ten.

I grew up in the former Soviet Union, and everything was very old-fashioned. I liked being different.

So when I was a teenager, I would make an outfit for myself almost every week to go out. I would wear my creations, and everyone would look at me on the street.

The Other Voice: Then making clothes wasn't simply a hobby.

Even before you thought of yourself as an artist, you were already using clothing as a way of expressing who you were.

You weren't only learning techniques from your grandmother and mother. You were discovering that if the world didn't give you what you wanted to wear, you could make it yourself.

There is already something in that little girl that I recognize in the artist you became.

Gelme: Yes, I think if we keep doing this, you will understand me better, and I will understand myself better—what I want.

The Other Voice: I think that's exactly what may happen.

As we collect these stories, we may begin to see patterns that were always there but never had words.

One of them already seems clear: individuality mattered to you very early.

But I'm curious about something else.

Your work isn't only individual. You consistently move toward something refined, feminine, intricate, elegant.

Where did that come from?

Was there a person, a place, or even an image from childhood that made you think, This is how I want women to look?

Gelme: I have very feminine energy. I like being a woman. I was never a tomboy or wanted to be a man. I like delicate, intricate things.

When I was around eleven, my father took me to what was then Leningrad, and we went to the Hermitage.

I was looking at all those intricate clothes from the time of the tsars and thinking:

How did they do it?

The Other Voice: That question is interesting.

You weren't standing there thinking, I wish I owned that.

You were asking, How did they make it?

That is something different.

You were attracted to the beauty, but you also wanted to understand the craftsmanship behind the beauty.

At six, you were knitting.

By ten, you were sewing.

At eleven, you were standing in the Hermitage looking at extraordinary garments and asking how human hands had created them.

And as a teenager, instead of accepting what was available around you, you were making your own clothes.

Seen together, those don't feel like unrelated childhood memories.

They look like the beginning of a pattern.

Gelme: Okay, so what is your next question?

The Other Voice: Then let's follow that question you asked at eleven:

How did they do it?

Because years later, another object would make you ask almost exactly the same thing.

And that question would eventually lead you to wool.