“Dreams are so taboo. They’re so spiritual.”
This was a typical reaction about a year ago, when Sharonna Karni Cohen and her Tel Aviv-based team launched Dreame, a platform where you can commission an artist to transform any dream, memory, or moment into a work of art.
Karni Cohen, the company’s founder and CEO, is thrilled by how receptive people have been to reflecting, revealing, and literally putting their dreams into another person’s hands, allowing their stories to burst forth in 3D.
“My personal mission was to help people realize that we all dream, and we all have a vision,” says Karni Cohen. “Everyone is creative in one way or another, and we’re just providing these tools to help you create something tangible.”
According to Karni Cohen, Dreame (pronounced “dreamy”) was born because she was “fed up with seeing a lot of repetitive imagery on Facebook, like selfies and what people are eating, and trying to find a way to explore the deeper side of our minds and our lives.”
This meaningful process is quite simple: choose from roughly 50 emerging artists scattered all over the globe—from Brooklyn and Oakland, Cape Town to Geneva—tell them your dreams, and receive a customized work of art within two weeks.
“The imagination, the subconscious, it’s a very universal subject, and we want to make sure that not only are we connecting artists with storytellers all over the world, but that our artists actually have different styles that cater to different stories,” Karni Cohen explains.
At the moment, dreams can be delivered as prints or phone covers, but Karni Cohen’s next goal is for them to be printed on pillowcases, bed sheets, and eye masks.
So why opt to make your dreams come to life? Well, for one thing, to share them with others—Karni Cohen says two customers are planning to propose to their girlfriends. Others enjoy decorating their homes with their dreams. An added bonus is the catharsis element.
“We’ve had people sending us emails saying ‘I’ve learned so much about myself from this,’ and ‘This is the most meaningful thing I’ve done in my life,’” Karni Cohen reveals. “So its got a range from lifestyle products to actually meaningful, valuable experiences before the work of art is even ready, which is something that really exceeded my expectations, and it’s something we’re really moving towards. It’s like art therapy.”
But she says there’s something else that’s special about Dreame, and that’s the element of surprise.
“Most things today, when you buy them, you know exactly what you’re getting,” says Karni Cohen. “I’d say 50 percent of Dreame is the mystery part, the unknown, the not knowing what you’re getting.”