Celebrating the Knicks Win, One Stitch at a Time
The textile artist known as Cheeks embraced a wave of city pride at his now-viral Fort Greene embroidery pop-up.
As New Yorkers flooded the streets in celebration of the Knicks’s NBA Championship win on Saturday night, Brooklyn-based textile artist Cheeks (Ramell-Correen Frederick) embraced a wave of city pride at his now-viral Fort Greene embroidery pop-up.
Riding the momentum of last week’s heated NBA playoffs, Cheeks, a 41-year-old Queens-born artist, brought his century-old chainstitch embroidery machine to Habana Outpost during the New York City team’s fifth and final game of the championship. From 7:30 pm until well past 1 am, Cheeks sold all 15 of his pre-made Knicks fan designs and embroidered strangers’ clothing off their backs with slogans such as “Send the Spurs to the ‘Knick U.’”
“ The streets were electric,” Cheeks told Hyperallergic in an interview. “Watching everyone just be so happy, it was amazing.”
A denim tailor by trade, the self-taught artist started his embroidery design brand Tattoo’d Cloth seven years ago. For the past four summers, he’s taken his 104-year-old Singer 114w103 embroidery machine, which he calls Jessica, to various locations around the city.
“I become, in a sense, like a tattoo artist who tattoos your skin,” Cheeks described of his portable craft. “I tattoo your cloth.”
Cheeks views his embroidery as a form of art, one that gives new life to found objects. The artist adopted his preferred moniker from an endearing childhood nickname.
The Prospect Heights-based artist usually carries around a book of flash designs, much like a body tattoo artist. Some works take him as little as one minute to stitch into fabric, but others might require hours.
“The fact that my style of embroidery uses a big needle tends to make it look like old traditional American-style tattoos,” Cheeks said.
He typically charges $20 to embellish miscellaneous clothing items and $60 for hat designs.
While Cheeks sold out of all of the designs he brought to Fort Greene on Saturday, the artist said that his motivations for bringing his portable embroidery machine into public spaces are not centered on profit.
“I want to share my art with the people,” Cheeks said. “I'm always going to get attention because I am a Black man utilizing a sewing machine in the middle of wherever.”
As a teenager, Cheeks fell in love with clothing design as a student at a specialized arts high school in Manhattan. However, before he could graduate, Cheeks said he was expelled alongside a disproportionate number of fellow Black students.
Though he no longer pursued clothing design academically, Cheeks said he continued to teach himself embroidery techniques.
“Even when I got taken out of it academically, it was something I stuck with, and I always made custom pieces for people,” Cheeks recalled. “Then when I got into sewing stuff, I started to create and recreate items for people.”
Asked where he would pop up after last weekend’s Knicks celebration, he said: “Who knows?”
He said he will continue accepting commissions through his Instagram and website.
“ I love this world,” Cheeks said. “I plan to stick with it for as long as my body can handle it. It's something that connects me with so many different people.”
