Inside: Discover the art and vision of Ellen Schinderman, a self-taught artist who celebrates women, femininity, and sexuality through stitching.
This interview was originally published in the September 2024 Digital Edition of Crochet Foundry Magazine.
Welcome to the Crochet Foundry Community Ellen! I’m so happy to be able to expose you to everyone. (I know what I said!)
Tell us a little about who you are and what you do, please.
I am a self taught artist and curator who uses stitching as a way of seeing things anew. I grew up surrounded by decorative and home arts, so it makes sense to me to combine my work’s intent with the beauty and tradition of the function and the form that precedes it. As both an artist and feminist, the reclaiming of needle and thread fascinates me. My work comes from a need to celebrate women, their bodies, femininity, and sexuality, in all its many shades and aspects.
I, also, often make stuff that just amuses the hell out of me.
What path brought you to creating art with thread and stitches?
It’s such a silly, typical Ellen story. I was/ am a writer and, prior to being a visual artist, admired people who made physical art so much. Anyway I bought a piece in a show called I am 8bit that was all art based on 8bit video games. The piece, by Jude Buffum, was Donkey Kong based and very fun and pixelated, and dirty. I brought it home and hung it on my wall and thought, I wonder what porn would look like needlepointed, and I never looked back.
Do you find you have to “rate” your art (similar to how movies are rated) and use that to decide what pieces are shown when you have an exhibit or sale?
I don’t “rate” them per se, but others find some of my work NSFW, or I’ve been told that I can’t show nudes. I find it disappointing, because I don’t think other art forms deal with it as much; painting nudes is so traditional. Bodies are just bodies, I wish people would stop caring so much about other people’s, and what they do with them.
What advice can you give to aspiring fiber artists, especially those who are worried that their themes may be too “out there” or polarizing?
Don’t worry about it. Make what moves you, what you want to say, you will find your community, your audience. If you try to please everyone you’ll never please anyone, least of all yourself.
Do you have a favorite stitch or technique to create with?
Honestly, no. I love stitching. I love making French knots, and stem stitch is my go to for embroidery, when I’m doing imagery. For text embroidery I like back stitching. I love cross stitching my large pieces, and needlepoint was where I began. I love bargello! I love big fill stitches that make cubes or waves. And hooking rugs… I’ve always like hooking rugs.
What else should we know about you or your art?
I’m working on a larger piece at the moment, so may not be showing as often this year, but I really want to finish, Eat Your Words. That’s a project I began, where I collected women’s stories, what’s been said to them about their bodies and food, and am stitching them on a very large, vintage hand tatted table cloth with linen blocks that I’m using as the canvas. I’m about a third through and would like to finish this year.
Otherwise, that I’m open to commissions that interest me, pop culture or feminist or erotic or just personal and interesting. I have merch on my website, and if I’ve made something that isn’t available in my store, just ask me and it can be…
Who inspires you and why? You can give us more than one answer, if you would like.
So many inspirations. In art: Jenny Holzer, Maria Pineres, Cindy Sherman, Henry Darger…
Warhol is a huge influence and inspiration, more than I even knew until I went to his big show in NYC, and again in SF some years ago. He’s just so inherently in my thought process, or maybe we had similar thoughts? I grew up in a NYC that was so inhabited by him, but I never thought about being a visual artist then. But the longer I make, and the more of his I see, I keep seeing overlapping (to me funny) thoughts of how to approach things, or how to present. Just weird little things I didn’t realize I had picked up as I lived in world that he was so much a part of.
Many more artists.
I’m also inspired by Amanda Palmer (Though having a bit of a conflicted moment with all that, and we’ll see where it goes. Humans are fallible.), Diana Wynne Jones, Raymond Chandler, Damon Runyon, Jasper Fforde, kind people, people who spend their lives working with endangered animals or children or the environment, people who care too much…
And honestly, I inspire myself. I had a weird childhood and I take inspiration from my own wounds, healing, humor, resilience, and strange point of view.
Where can our readers find you and all your amazing art and products online, and maybe even offline?
Online I can be found at schindermania.com or on Instagram at Schindermania. Offline, I show in LA, and I have some pieces up in Rochester NY, currently… You never know where I’ll turn up!
I almost forgot. Would you like a banana?
Obviously.