The installation Winking at Old Ladies stages a tension between vitality and decline, surface and structure, ornament and entropy.
Part magical playground, part psychological excision, Debra Fleury’s sculptural work pulls imagined structures from the place inside her where emotion, memory, and the unconscious converge. Abstraction and material play invite the viewer to inhabit imagined emotional landscapes. Fleury prefers working with materials such as clay, textiles, and metal that allow her to work intuitively and responsively. She creates a mutual shaping and revealing that emphasizes an interplay of control and surrender, where invention and the material guide each other. Through this process, a hidden internal world is made visible, giving shape to what is deeply felt but not easily named.
The installation Winking at Old Ladies stages a tension between vitality and decline, surface and structure, ornament and entropy. Translucent white textiles are sewn together with channels and tucks that transform the fabric into vivacious, undulating patterns that bring to mind costumes and adornments associated with Western feminized rites of passage. The sewn channels are filled with wire, creating organic volumes reminiscent of hoop skirts. The pristine white and brightly stitched forms are plunged into the ocean to roll in the waves and dry on the sand to rust.
The influence of a childhood spent absorbing the rhythms of time and tide drives Fleury’s curiosity about material transformation. The process of making the work courts damage and weathering to explore Fleury’s personal experience of growing in a female body past its socially valued season. In the gallery, the weathered forms sag on decaying wire structures, lifted into the air and spotlit, flaunting their transformations. The work asks viewers to confront their assumptions about aging, visibility, and the shifting value placed on female bodies.
Bio
Debra Fleury is a multidisciplinary sculptor and designer working across clay, fibers, textiles, metals, painting, drawing, and printmaking. Fleury earned a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Penn State School of Visual Arts. Fleury has exhibited at The Archie Bray Foundation (MT), The Workhouse Clay Arts Center (VA), Wayne Art Center (PA), The Clay Center of New Orleans (LA), Arch Contemporary Gallery (MA), and Highfield Hall and Gardens (MA), among others. In addition to her sculpture practice, Fleury has worked professionally in the field of human-centered experience design. She taught sculpture at Penn State University and package design at theMassachusetts College of Art and Design. Fleury is currently developing a commission for the Umbrella Arts Vertical Gallery in Concord, MA, and a solo show for the Boston Sculptors Gallery. She resides in Cape Cod, MA, and is a resident artist at Mudflat Studio in Somerville, MA.