Elaine Alder

Elaine Alder is an interdisciplinary artist and designer who works with found and natural materials to herald a wicked queer future in which we all mend and are mended. Elaine is based in New Bedford, MA.

Elaine creates functional art that blurs the boundary between craft and fine arts, nature and artifice. Raised in the Appalachian foothills of Georgia, they spent their childhood on the family farm and in the national forest bordering their backyard, learning textile crafts and drawing and painting techniques from their grandmother. They received a B.A. in cultural anthropology in 2015 from the University of the South, writing an ethnographic thesis on Southern Appalachian textile traditions. They have maintained their relationship to the land as an environmental educator and curriculum writer, trail crew worker, wildland firefighter, gardener, and forager. In 2021-2022, They lived in Lithuania with their spouse, where they studied weaving on a four-shaft floor loom, traditional flax and nettle fiber processing, and medieval shoemaking. They have attended artist residencies at the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park (Jan-Mar 2023, Sept 2023-Sept 2024) and Art Farm Nebraska (June-Sept 2023). May 2025 they will attend a joint artist residency at Union House Arts in Newfoundland, Canada.
In September 2024 they completed “The Water We’re Swimming In,” a marine debris sculpture of North Atlantic right whales installed in downtown New Bedford, MA.
 

In addition to textile and fiber arts, they make functional ceramic ware and relief prints.