Elaine Reichek

Elaine Reichek (born 1943) is a New York-based visual artist. Much of her work concerns the history of the embroidered sampler. Through her pieces of hand and machine embroidery, she addresses issues such as the craft/art divide, the nature of women's work, and the interplay of text and image. The connection between the pixel and the stitch, as differently gendered types of mark-making, is a continuing theme in her work.

Life and work

Elaine Reichek was born in New York, New York in 1943. She received a BA from Brooklyn College in 1963 and BFA from Yale University in 1964, where she studied painting with Ad Reinhardt. She has created a wide body of work, including thread-based drawings, knitted pieces, and installations. In the 1990s she began to focus on needlework samplers, an object which combines image and text. Several of her series, including MADAMI'MADAM (2000–2002) and Ariadne's Thread (2008–2012), juxtapose famous quotes and lines of literature with hand- or digitally-embroidered images. The text relates narrative, drawing, and thread as parallel instances of linear structure.

Exhibitions

• Elaine Reichek. A Précis 1972-1995, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, NY. 2013
• A Postcolonial Kinderhood Revisited, Jewish Museum, New York, NY. 2013
• Ariadne’s Thread, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, CA. 2011
• "Pattern Recognition", Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY 2007
• MADAMI’MADAM, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA 2003
• At Home & in the World, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel 2000
• Projects 67: Elaine Reichek, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1999
• "When This You See", Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY 1999
• A Postcolonial Kinderhood, Jewish Museum, New York, NY. Traveled to Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA and Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH. 1994

• Rosenberg, Karen (December 12, 2013). "Elaine Reichek: 'A Précis 1972-1995'". The New York Times. 
• Johnson, Ken (September 5, 2013). "The Jewishness Is in the Details". The New York Times. 
• "Elaine Reichek: A Postcolonial Kinderhood Revisited". The Jewish Museum. Retrieved 15 March 2015. 
• Rosenberg, Karen (February 23, 2012). "Elaine Reichek: 'Ariadne's Thread'". The New York Times.