Grey Eckert
AQ is our series of hardcover catalogs celebrating extraordinary women artists. Available on Amazon. Visit the AQ Catalog Webpage to learn more.
AQ Volume V artist Nellie Grey Eckert (she/her) was born in Durham, North Carolina, where she spent her childhood convincing others to call her by her middle name. After graduating from Coastal Carolina University with dual BAs and academic minors in studio art, graphic design, art history, and photography, Grey attended the University of South Carolina, where she earned an MFA in studio art. She currently teaches at Coastal Carolina University. Her "fiber-based work utilizes the historically feminine — and overlooked — art of embroidery to conjure up and recast the past” (New Visionary Magazine, Issue 7).
Historically, cross-stitch bore a relational function. The feminine virtues, domestic responsibilities, and spousal devotion it described attracted potential suitors, ensuring successful ‘love’ matches. Subtracting text from found cross-stitching—a process akin to erasure poetry—transforms lengthy, pre-determined verse into short instances of speech; "bursts of language" that "brim with tender feeling and innuendo" (New Visionary Magazine, Issue 7). Sweet nothings, passionate ramblings, and lovelorn pleas impose a contemporary love affair upon the traditional marital practices in which cross-stitch is grounded, recontextualizing a dismissed form of feminine expression and asserting the validity of girlish handicraft. The "resulting work is not only an elevation of an art form that isn’t often given its due; it’s the reclamation and liberation of a traditional, restrictive expressive mode” (New Visionary Magazine, Issue 7).
https://www.greyeckert.com/
What inspired you to become an artist, and how did you decide to commit to this path?
Neither of my parents' childhoods was stable enough to foster any sort of creativity, so they made it an enormous priority during my upbringing. My sisters and I spent our adolescence pillaging the local library, learning different instruments, and following along with "how to draw" manuals (most of which my father shoved into our hands). In the end, visual art won out; I studied studio art and design in college. Although I was "good at" art—which I was encouraged to pursue at the graduate level—I didn't envision myself as a bona fide visual artist until halfway through my MFA.
During my second year in graduate school, I discovered a method of making that captivated my imagination and will likely dictate the rest of my artistic practice: removing text from pre-existing cross-stitch. Ever since then, I've become completely besotted with my practice (almost worryingly so) and convinced of my station as a visual artist.
Could you share the story or concept behind your recent work?
Historically, cross-stitch bore a relational function. The feminine virtues, domestic responsibilities, and spousal devotion it described attracted potential suitors, ensuring successful ‘love’ matches. Subtracting text from found cross-stitching—a process akin to erasure poetry—transforms lengthy, pre-determined verse into short instances of speech. Sweet nothings, passionate ramblings, and lovelorn pleas impose a contemporary love affair upon the traditional marital practices in which cross-stitch is grounded, recontextualizing a dismissed form of feminine expression.
What was the most challenging part of your path so far? How are you navigating this obstacle?
Currently, the most challenging aspect of my practice is simply finding adequate time for it. To sustain my practice, I’m adjuncting at a local university. Each semester, I teach a ton of classes—typically, three-hour studio courses. Between actively teaching, grading, answering student queries, and curriculum preparation, each class requires an incredible amount of time and effort, which would otherwise be dedicated to my work.
I combat this by actively prioritizing my own practice outside of the classroom—an effort that’s helped by my station as a second-year teacher. Now, I’ve got pre-prepared materials that I can rely on during class, and I’ve gained a lot of experience.
What role does experimentation and exploration play in your artistic practice?
My current practice is entirely due to exploration. Halfway through my MFA, the methods of making that I had continually relied upon went stale. Defeated, I deviated from them and instead began trying out the crazy "ideas" I had in the past year or two, during the aftermath of COVID.
Relegated to my home, which is filled to the brim with cross-stitch emblazoned by Eckerts of old, inspiration struck. Could the embroidery that filled my living space be manipulated? Yes, it could! My initial testing proved successful. I was overjoyed! I'd always loved text-based, subtractively produced work; I was thrilled to have discovered a version of my own.
From then on, I spent the latter half of my graduate career hunched over my kitchen table, painstakingly picking embroidery apart. Though meticulous (the removal of minuscule fibers requires extreme precision), I’ve never enjoyed myself or my work more.
Do you have any start or stop rituals before creating?
In truth, no. My morning routine is enormously important—before delving into making, I ready myself for the day, work out, and tidy the house—but I wouldn't say I have a "start" or "stop" ritual.
Making usually occurs after I've consumed my first bit of daily caffeine. A flurry of creative fervor and frantic activity ensues. It ends late in the afternoon or evening when my buzz is replaced by hunger. If I have a second cup of tea or coffee during the afternoon, the entire process begins again.
What's more important, I feel, are the rituals that I undertake while actively making. Every day, I sit in the same exact spot (the end of my kitchen table), utilize the same tools (my trusty tweezers, seam ripper, desk light, and painter's tape), prop up my laptop and/or phone, and blast my selected media for the day (my favorite music—usually Taylor Swift, Hozier, or Chappell Roan—TV shows, movies, and video essays), with refreshments (water, tea, etc.) close at hand.
What message do you hope your art conveys to the world?
My work relies upon appropriation—specifically, the alteration of cross-stitch made by other women. Because of the domestic, feminine associations that it holds, cross-stitch is considered a "low" art form.
According to Rozsika Parker in The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, embroidery, which is "associated with ‘the second sex,’" is not considered an art—it is a mere "expression of femininity." Needlework and womanhood have "collapsed into one another." They are "characterized as mindless, decorative, and delicate; like the icing on the cake, good to look at, adding taste and status, but devoid of significant content."
I, however, seek to challenge this notion, elevating embroidery and, more importantly, embroiderers: the long-forgotten women whose labor is demeaned as "girlish handicraft." Often, all that attests to their presence is a small signature, after which I typically name each piece—an effort to acknowledge those who still go unrecognized. They deserve more than the dumpsters, attics, and thrift stores that their fabric legacies occupy. Their work must be recognized for what it is: ART!
Share a mantra or favorite quote that keeps you going.
There’s a quote from Olive Schreiner's From Man to Man that nearly encapsulates and justifies the entirety of my practice:
"The poet, when his heart is weighted, writes a sonnet, and the painter paints a picture, and the thinker throws himself into the world of action; but the woman who is only a woman, what has she but her needle?"
I'm not sure there's a material—embroidery—that better embodies and speaks to feminine forms of expression and the disdain that they face (which my work is all about).
