Historically, cross-stitch bears a relational function. The feminine virtues, domestic responsibilities, and spousal devotion that they describe attracted potential suitors, ensuring successful ‘love’ matches.

Subtracting text from found cross-stitch — a process kin to erasure poetry — transforms lengthy, pre-determined verse into short instances of speech: sweet nothings, passionate ramblings, and lovelorn pleas. Each utterance asserts a contemporary love affair upon the traditional marital practices in which cross-stitch is ground, recontextualizing a dismissed form of feminine expression and affirming the validity of girlish handicraft.

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Writing about you told me once but i forgot:

“The resulting work is not only an elevation of an artform that isn’t often given its due; it’s the reclamation and liberation of a traditional, restrictive expressive mode. The bursts of language Eckert embroiders brim with tender feeling and innuendo, gently asserting their agency” (New Visionary Magazine, Issue 7).

”Grey Eckert utilizes the historically feminine — and overlooked — art of embroidery to conjure up and recast the past.” (New Visionary Magazine, Issue 7).