UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The College of Arts and Architecture’s Woskob Family Gallery, located at 146 S. Allen Street in downtown State College, will host a closing reception for visual artist Debra Fleury’s exhibition, “Winking at Old Ladies,” from 5-8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 4.
Starting at 6 p.m. Fleury will join Penn State School of Visual Arts Professor Bonnie Collura for a discussion followed by a live acoustic set at 7 p.m. by Holly Foy and Betsy Gamble of the traditional Celtic band Callanish, performing on fiddle, small pipes, guitar and bodhrán (Irish frame drum).
Fleury is a multidisciplinary sculptor and designer working across clay, fibers, textiles, metals, painting, drawing and printmaking. She earned a bachelor of fine arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a master of fine arts from the Penn State School of Visual Arts. She resides in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and is a resident artist at Mudflat Studio in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Fleury has exhibited at The Archie Bray Foundation, The Workhouse Clay Arts Center, Wayne Art Center, The Clay Center of New Orleans, Arch Contemporary Gallery, and Highfield Hall and Gardens, 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 and package design at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Fleury is currently developing a commission for the Umbrella Arts Vertical Gallery in Concord, Massachusetts, a solo show for the Boston Sculptors Gallery and an installation for the Mezzanine Atrium at Boston City Hall, titled “Cloud Gazer.”
“Winking at Old Ladies” stages a tension between vitality and decline, surface and structure, ornament and entropy. White textile forms are stitched, wired, then plunged into the ocean to rust. In the gallery they sag spotlit on decaying wire structures, flaunting their transformations, asking viewers to confront their assumptions about aging, visibility and the shifting value placed on female bodies.
Classes, student organizations and university offices are encouraged to visit the Woskob Family Gallery, a unit of the College of Arts and Architecture. Inquiries can be directed to woskob@psu.edu. For more information on this and other exhibitions, visit the gallery’s website. Keep up to date with the Woskob Family Gallery by signing up for its Listserv or following on Instagram @woskobfamilygallery.