Bert Gallery

Special Exhibit

Contemporary Fiber Artist Debra Folz

Curated by Rachele Romano

July 2014 | Exhibit Hours: Tuesday - Friday, 11- 5, Saturday 12 - 4

Contemporary fiber artists Debra Folz and Tracy Krumm are on view at Bert Gallery for the month of July. The artists came to the attention of Bert Gallery as a result of the exhibit High Fiber, organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2012 as part of the museum’s Women to Watch exhibition series. Folz and Krumm are long established artists known to national audiences for their fastidious and thoughtful work.

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.

Both artists’ re-define the potential of traditional textile structures, Folz incorporating hand-stitchery into machine-made chairs and tables whereas Krumm crochets fine-gauge wire into forms that resemble textiles, she identifies as “hand constructed textile.” The exhibit gives viewers insight into how fiber artists have evolved and integrated into the mainstream of contemporary art.

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.

Courtesy of Debra Folz