On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door. Ellie Krakow has been in DUMBO since 2024. Her studio is at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, 20 Jay Street, #720.
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What will we see in your studio?
My current work, Comfort Corners, is abstracted figurative sculpture that merges bodily forms with elements inspired by medical instruments and hospital architecture. Taking cues from the fleshy plastics and softened edges of hospital design, I have developed a visual language and material approach that allows me to give form to the experience of living with invisible illness. Like myself – shaped by decades of treatment and medical surveillance – my work inhabits a liminal space between flesh and technology, between the measurable and the sensed.
For open studios, I will be showing several of my latest Declining Nudes. Butted up against the historical trope of the reclining nude, these works reimagine the familiar Renaissance figures who lie passively on daybeds awaiting desire and sexualized action. In contrast, my nudes are truncated and positioned as if undergoing a colonoscopy or MRI, embodying submission to the medical gaze and diagnostic procedures. I bring these gestures of repose into dialogue with one another to contemplate how we access and perceive the inside and the outside of the body – through touch, vision, mediation, imaging, in parts, with desire, with tools.
I am also thrilled to have the opportunity to share my new piece, Gas, a functioning fountain that takes upended inspiration from Roman garden fountains. These classical spaces established an idealized version of beauty, beauty entwined with physical ability and sexual prowess—a standard that persists today, relegating many bodies to the margins. My fountain, however, bubbles and sputters like a fart rising through water. The basin is lined with dimensional tiles evocative of intestines and plumbing. The piece began as a question: What would a celebration of living with chronic illness look like? I hope that this piece revels in the triumph of enduring bodily dysfunction and regimented treatment— and that it does so with the irreverent sense of humor needed to make it through a day in the hospital.
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About the artist: Ellie Krakow is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, drawing, and photography. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Underdonk, Marinaro, Below Grand, Goodyear Gallery at Dickinson College, NURTUREart, and Cuchifritos; and in group shows at venues including Foyer-LA, Simone Subal Gallery, 1/9unosunove, Field Projects, Thierry Goldberg, Kingston Sculpture Biennial, and the Pula Film Festival. She has participated in residencies at Skowhegan, Yaddo, Abrons Arts Center, Shandaken: Stormking, and The Swimming Hole Foundation. Parallel to her studio practice, Krakow’s text-based works have been published in Precog, VECTOR, Lookie-Lookie, and Drain Journal; and her curatorial projects have been shown at The Whitney Museum of American Art, NURTUREart, and Mazmanian Gallery at Framingham State University. Krakow earned her MFA from Hunter College and her BA through study at Yale University and the Rhode Island School of Design. She is currently a resident artist at the Sharp-Walentas Studio Program. @elliekrakow