Ellie Krakow

Artist Statement

Arm Armature began as an obsession with armatures. For years I stared at, photographed, and researched all sorts of armatures – from posing stands used in early portrait photography to hold subjects still for long exposures, to museum armatures that display ancient fragments, to medical braces used to set broken bones.  I am jealous of what these armatures know about touch: they cradle our most precious sculptures, caressing them tenderly on their vulnerable cracked surfaces; and they gingerly hold our broken healing limbs in place.  I am also in awe of their power: they fixed bodies in position for impossible-to-hold durations to create the first magically instantaneous portraits; and they prop up shards from distant times and lands and imbue them with renewed and altered cultural value.  

I am recreating and reimagining the armature forms I admire in clay; making photographs of my arms behaving like and learning from the armatures; and I am posing / staging a dialogue between my sculptures and photographs.  To house this dialogue I create structures that I think of as “furniture-pedestals.” Their inspiration comes from museum pedestals that elevate sculptural fragments and household vanities where women use their hands and arms to prepare their faces to look beautiful.        

Display is a key interest of mine in all elements of this work (as it is the key reason that armatures exist in the first place): I use the conventions of studio photography, conventions shared by advertising and ancient sculpture documentation; I play with color to make things stand out or blend in; I tease out the idea of the front and back (having a “good and bad side”).  I am interested in engaging seriously and playfully with the posturing, transformation and loss that armatures and display tactics represent.