When artist and historian Elliot Rockart is asked what is the most important goal of their upcoming Creative Embroidery class: Embroidery as Subversion, they answer quite simply: “A feeling of safety for the student, so that they may calmly open themselves to the productive space of learning.”
I sat with Elliot a few weeks back, curious about both their making and teaching processes. Considering the title: Embroidery as Subversion, I imagined Elliot’s answer would include history about embroidery’s political roles, and its unique ability to give visual voice to the marginalized and oppressed. And in fact, there will be loads of colorful, historical facts and anecdotes in this class. But interestingly, rather than lead with this in their answer, Elliot spoke from their heart.
Elliot has been sewing and embroidering since they were three years old, knitting since they were eight. They are a diehard textile enthusiast and have a brain like a steel trap. Over the last 18 months all of us at TATTER have had the wild opportunity to witness both their academic and craft prowess as they added to their sewing and patternmaking skills and somehow claimed inkle weaving, backstrap weaving, floor loom weaving, temari ball winding, screenprinting, spinning, and tatting. It seems no textile craft dares to elude their fingertips’ grasp. Along with the history which accompanies each of these processes, for which Elliot is just as curious, enthusiastic, and learned, they have become quite a living archive in and of themself.
Elliot’s lucky future students have the benefit of this artist’s diverse knowledge base and can expect to begin or continue their embroidery learning in a class setting that welcomes all the feels, connecting thread to heart. Practiced in exploring their own emotions through the art of embroidery, Elliot is sensitive to materials. Storytelling with stitching, processing their own relationships, and documenting critical aspects of their own life are elements which are found in artworks like “Objects in Transition,” 2024, a narrative, stitched fabric book which chronicled part of their journey through gender transition. Says Rockart, “It helped me to abbreviate a lifelong process that I have only recently really started to understand, to fill in with thread the places where words fail to reach.”
It is this space of knowledge and tenderness that Elliot brings to class, wishing for their students their own comfort and advancement in this historical craft, that has long been a companion and therefore a witness to the intimate journeys of human lives.
