Anne Nowak’s Search for the Infinite

In the quiet of the Danish forest, Anne Nowak walks among the trees with a sketchbook in hand, thoughts moving freely. This is her sanctuary, one of two studios that anchor her practice—the other being a shared space in the city where she produces, experiments, and transforms ideas into tangible forms. Between these two worlds, urban and wild, Nowak has found the rhythm that defines her art: a meditative dialogue between the visible and invisible, the eternal and the ephemeral.

Her journey into this liminal space began with two profound experiences that cracked open her understanding of existence itself. “It started with the death of my father and the birth of my daughter,” she reflects. “Two profound experiences—one marking an end, the other a beginning. In both moments, I felt as though the universe opened a portal, inviting me to seek something deeper.” These bookends of life and death didn’t just inspire her work; they fundamentally altered her relationship with time, memory, and the mysteries that bind all living things.

The Alchemy of the Everyday

In Nowak’s practice, the creative process begins not with grand concepts but with humble materials. “I often begin by looking at different materials, letting them inspire me,” she explains. From there, the work unfolds through what she calls “a playful journey”—walking in nature, meditating, experimenting. The boundaries between these activities dissolve, creating a holistic approach where artistic creation becomes indistinguishable from living.

Her only routine is coffee in the morning. Everything else flows according to intuition and need. This fluid approach extends across multiple simultaneous projects, allowing her to move between works as insights emerge. “I love moving back and forth between them; the pauses often bring new dimensions and insights.” It’s a practice that mirrors the very themes she explores—the cyclical nature of growth, the value of patience, the beauty found in transitions.

Giving Form to the Invisible

Perhaps nowhere is Nowak’s philosophy more apparent than in her relationship with light. “Light is everything in my work,” she explains. “Visually, it shapes how the viewer sees and feels the piece. It reveals and hides, softens or sharpens.” She works with light like a sculptor works with clay, understanding that sometimes its absence carries as much weight as its presence.

This manipulation of light becomes the vehicle for her deeper mission: “giving form to the invisible.” Rather than relying on symbolic representation, Nowak works directly with emotion and sensation. “Most of all, I try to evoke emotions—something that breaks through for the viewer, even if it’s invisible,” she explains. “Every human shares emotions like fear, anger, and happiness. If you recognize something within yourself when experiencing my work, then it’s complete.”

Portals to the Unknown

Nowak’s Crystal Mirrors embody this philosophy most directly. These one-of-a-kind works fuse real crystals with mirrors, creating infinite reflections that exist somewhere between artwork and spiritual tool. The series emerged from a year-long spiritual education during which she meditated on each chakra for a month, culminating in “a deep urge to create these mirrors, fusing art, reflection, and spiritual transformation.”

The process of creating them is as intuitive as it is intentional. “Selecting and placing each crystal is a deeply intuitive process,” she describes. “While I consider the energetic properties of the stones and their alignment with specific chakras, I’m also guided by how they look and feel in the moment.” The result is what she calls “a living, resonant space”—works that invite viewers into dialogue with both the art and themselves.

Working with mirrors has fundamentally changed her perception of reflection, both literal and metaphorical. “I use mirrors as canvases, and they transform everything placed on them. Paint, stones, and crystals suddenly become more dimensional, almost alive.” The viewer becomes part of the work, their presence completing the circuit between artist and audience. “It becomes a dialogue between the artwork and the self,” she notes. “That tension between what is seen and what is felt is what fascinates me most.”

The Vulnerability of the Universal

Beneath the cosmic imagery and universal themes lies something deeply personal. “What you might not immediately see is how vulnerable the process is for me,” Nowak reveals. “With each piece I create, I go through waves of doubt and sensitivity. There’s always a part of me in the work, something I’ve felt, questioned, or struggled with.” This vulnerability doesn’t diminish the work’s power to speak to universal experiences; rather, it grounds the transcendent in the recognizably human.

Her relationship with nature has evolved alongside her artistic practice, becoming less about observation and more about participation. “I don’t just observe it. I listen to it, walk with it, learn from it,” she explains. “The more I work, the more I understand: I’m not separate from nature. I’m in dialogue with it.” This dialogue extends to her understanding of impermanence—those cycles of growth, decay, and renewal that shape both natural and human worlds.

Finding Home in the In-Between

As Persona opens its doors during 3daysofdesign, Nowak’s work finds its perfect placement in the transitional spaces between the exhibition’s defined rooms. “It’s truly an honor,” she reflects on this positioning. “I love that my work will exist in the transitional space—it feels meaningful that it connects the different rooms rather than being confined to one identity.”

The placement couldn’t be more fitting. Nowak’s practice has always existed in the in-between: between visible and invisible, personal and universal, discipline and intuition. Her Chakra Mirrors, designed to offer visitors “a quick alignment” amidst the bustle of the design fair, embody Persona‘s invitation to pause and reflect. In a world increasingly shaped by surface-level identity, her work asks viewers to look deeper, to recognize the multiplicity within themselves.

When asked to describe her pieces as personas, Nowak offers a characterization that captures both the earthiness and otherworldliness of her practice: “They’d be somewhere between Björk and Carl Jung! Sensitive, intuitive, a little mystical. Like Björk, they’re emotionally charged, otherworldly, and deeply connected to nature and energy. Like Jung, they invite introspection, shadow work, and the exploration of the unseen self.”

The Freedom to Feel

If there’s a single word that captures both the atmosphere of Nowak’s studio and the message she hopes to leave with viewers, it’s “freedom.” Not the freedom from constraint, but the freedom to feel deeply, to exist in multiplicity, to find meaning in the spaces between certainties. Her work doesn’t offer answers so much as it creates space for questions—about memory, about mortality, about the invisible threads that connect all living things.

Standing before one of her portal-like compositions, bathed in the play of light and crystal, mirror and memory, we’re invited into her search for the infinite—a search that ultimately leads us back to ourselves, to the quiet multitudes we each contain, to the freedom found in embracing our own beautiful contradictions.

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Anne Nowak will be featured in the Persona exhibition during 3daysofdesign, exploring how collectible design can serve as a mirror for the self through a vivid, multisensory journey of psychological archetypes.