The collapsible wooden drying rack functions in Elledge’s art as a symbol of “women’s work,” examined through both triumph and tragedy.
She hand-cuts various drying rack structures from paper and reimagines them until the practical household tool becomes something human and dream-like.
That transformation takes shape through layers of translucent, lightweight paper. Suspended paper sheets invite viewers to move around them, to look from both sides, as shifting light—from day to night, natural to artificial, interior to exterior—activates and transforms the piece. The work is never fixed; it exists in a constant state of change depending on light and viewpoint.
Elledge builds each piece through acts of cutting, sewing, layering, and recomposing. As materials are cut apart and pushed together, a form begins to emerge. This method reflects a way of making where structure is discovered rather than imposed. Repeated stitches, marks, and forms echo the cultural structures that sustain everyday rituals, particularly acts of care, maintenance, and continuity within domestic life.
The final forms turn bodily—suggestive of bones, veins, and nerves. These threaded silhouettes trace a connection between the constructed object and the body that made it. Emerging from the slow rhythms of domestic labor, Elledge reworks objects designed to hold, allowing them to drift from function toward fantasy.
Bio
Elaine Elledge is a printmaker and installation artist who embraces the quiet power of fragility, imperfection, and impermanence. She works with sewn transparent paper, relief prints, light-sensitive prints, and household objects to construct layered installations and quilts. She holds a BFA in printmaking from Penn State University, where she earned the Penn State Bruce Shobaken Endowed Award in Printmaking. In 2013, she was an artist in residence at Green Olive Arts in Tetouan, Morocco. During her residency, she photographed Moroccan textiles and ceramic tiles as research for aseries of linocut prints. A grant from The Awesome Foundation funded a large-scale, interactive, outdoor installation at Rhoneymeade Sculpture Garden and Arboretum in 2019. In the last three years, she has exhibited her prints and paper quilts in galleries such as Second State Press in Philadelphia, PA; Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, MD; Pyramid Atlantic outside of Washington D.C.; Gathering Studios in Albuquerque, NM; and Kinhouse Gallery in Fort Wayne, IN. She created a site-specific, large-scale paper installation for her solo exhibition at The Susquehanna Art Museum in 2024. Elledge lives and works in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with her spouse and two young children.