A stop at the Bert Gallery on Gallery Night Providence is never a disappointment, just look at these photos of recent work by fiber artists Tracy Krumm and Debra Folz.
Debra Folz Design is a Boston based studio, which realizes furniture and home accessory objects for exhibition and production through material exploration and conceptual curiosity. With an undergraduate degree in Interior Design from Suffolk University and a Masters degree in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, Debra blurs the boundaries between disciplines and their assigned material identities, lending consistent focus to the incorporation of textiles and embroidery techniques with furniture forms. Motivated by the translation of traditional craft and manufacturing methods into contemporary visual languages, collaboration and the ambition to learn new techniques is key to her process.
Folz blurs the boundaries between disciplines and their assigned material identities, lending consistent focus to the incorporation of textiles and embroidery techniques with furniture forms. Krumm incorporates intensely hand-made labor processes, simple physics (gravity, tension and suspension) and elemental materials (fiber, water, metal, earth and air), her sculptures merge technical proficiency with play, the domestic with the industrial, and the physical with the ethereal.
Tracy Krumm’s involvement as an art maker is informed by 25 years of exploration and expertise. Through the labor-intensive process and unlikely pairing of the traditionally feminine art of crochet and the masculine metalwork of blacksmithing, Krumm creates sculpture of balance and equilibrium, weight and substance. Through her interest in duality, Krumm engages with art, craft, science, and history all at once in an evolving dialogue with feminism, popular culture, personal history and identity. Incorporating intensely hand-made labor processes, simple physics (gravity, tension and suspension) and elemental materials (fiber, water, metal, earth and air) Krumm’s sculpture merges technical proficiency with play, the domestic with the industrial, and the physical with the ethereal. Revealed in the process is the true strength and beauty of opposing and complimentary forces, fragile and forceful, powerful and poetic.
Gallery Night Providence 