Ian Korleski Created His Own Light
Talking about his inspiration to create candles, Korleski said, “It was a drive that I can’t explain. It was just like, do this, and I don’t know why.”
Story by Madeline Egerton
Photos by Giles Clasen
Content Warning: This article contains discussions of suicide.
The business Cranky Candle started the night Ian “Cranky” Korleski received a call from the Santa Fe (New Mexico) Sheriff’s Department.
He didn’t know it yet, but his life was about to change.
Ian Koreleski launched Cranky Candles in 2021, creating his first themed candles to celebrate Pride.
“I got this voicemail on my phone from the sheriff ’s department,” Korleski said. “It was this female, and she said something about my mom, that something was wrong with her.”
When Korleski called the sheriff ’s department back, they told him there wasn’t a female deputy working that night, and it was likely a prank.
Korleski tried to reach his mom but couldn’t. He worried, even though it wasn’t unusual for her to take some time to call him back.
A few days later, the sheriff ’s department called Korleski again. It was not a prank. His mother had taken her life. Korleski knew he needed to find a way through the pain.
“I had a bunch of trauma I had to deal with,” he said.
What came next wasn’t a business plan. It wasn’t even a conscious choice. He was just a man who needed something to fight against, and Korleski found it in wax, frequency, and fire.
“The coping turned into a business,” Korleski said. “I used it as my therapy.”
There was no grand intention at first.
“It was a drive that I can’t explain. It was just like, do this, and I don’t know why,” Korleski said.
In 2021, Korleski traveled to New Mexico to take care of his mother’s earthly possessions. He felt it was his final duty as her son. Through processing his grief, Korleski said he found inspiration to take his candle-making to another level.
“I ran to it, and I made candle-making as hard as I possibly fucking could on myself,” Korleski said. “I started doing intricate stuff and trying to carve stuff. And my hands are unsteady, but I found I can do certain things with wax.”
Initially, Korleski gave his candles away as gifts to friends and loved ones. His first themed round of candles was for 2021 Pride. They were simple, layered, rainbow, can-shaped candles, but they were hits with those who received them.
“[I used] cheap hobby store wax, cheap hobby store dye, and I gave them out to people, and they really liked them,” Korleski said.
The encouragement made him believe he could do more with his candles.
Korleski works with high-quality soy wax and is experimenting with beeswax for more intricate pieces, mixing and layering colors.
While candle-making was still just a hobby, Korleski was working full-time in the cannabis industry, first as a grower at a locally owned dispensary, then at Dablogic, a cannabis manufacturing company.
“It gave me insurance at least,” he said. “I was giving candles out to people. They’re like, you should do something with this. These are actually good enough to sell.”
He wasn’t ready to believe that yet. Then came the accident.
“This lady T-boned me, and I got hit head-on,” Korleski said. “I got really bad head trauma. I thought I was dead for three days. Like, I couldn’t move. I was fucked.”
He went back to work too soon. Three months later, Dablogic called him into a room with a group of coworkers for a mass layoff. The shock made him faint. He hit his head on the table on the way down, then again on the floor.
Doctors delivered a diagnosis that changed everything: one more head trauma, and he might not walk again. Most of his work required a hard hat. That chapter was over.
“I wake up in the morning, and I go, ‘What day is it? Where am I? What am I doing?’” Korleski said.
Sitting in his kitchen, filling out unemployment paperwork, Korleski made a decision. He grabbed a piece of cardboard, spelled out Cranky Candle in electrical tape, dragged his candles into the alley next to his apartment on South Broadway, and set up a folding table.
He wasn’t alone for long.
“This fucking homeless kid, Dirt Joe, helped me. He helped me a lot,” Korleski said. “He appeared out of nowhere. He got me to carnival bark people over. We were playing music. We were having fun, and I started selling candles.”
A selection of Ian Korleski’s Cranky Candles shows the variety and intricacy of his work.
During Korleski’s first weekend selling candles on the sidewalk, he made more than $200.
From there, the craft deepened. Korleski had already been experimenting with running Hertz frequencies through the wax as it hardened, a technique he’d borrowed from his cannabis days, where he’d used sound waves to improve the quality of concentrates. It worked on wax too, pulling bubbles out and driving the liquid into every corner of a mold.
But Korleski began to see it as something more.
Specific frequencies, he believes, carry specific intentions that mark the candles — love, protection, forward movement. Whether or not that’s provable doesn’t matter. He’s not selling metaphysics. He’s sharing the intention.
“This isn’t a normal candle,” he said.
Korleski wants his candles to offer comfort and meet a need beyond just light. “Any sort of life change, that’s when I want you to take a breath and light it,” Korleski said.
The candles are intended to be lit, used, and offer meaning.
“The thing I hear all the time is, ‘Oh, they’re so pretty. I don’t wanna light them.’ This is the point. That decision to light it is a trigger,” Korleski said.
Korleski now works with high-quality soy wax and is experimenting with beeswax for more intricate pieces, mixing and layering colors, and building each candle with the purchaser in mind. The goal, underneath all of it, has never changed.
“The whole reason I was making candles in the first place was to provide light,” Korleski said.
For more information, visit etsy.com/market/cranky_candles.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Do not hesitate to call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.