Tracy Krumm and Carol Lambert - Explorations: The Flexible Linear Element

Exhibit Dates: September 22 to October 22, 2011

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 22, 7:00 pm

HANCOCK, MI - "Explorations: The Flexible Linear Element," an exhibit of work by artists Tracy Krumm and Carol Lambert, will be featured at the Finlandia University Gallery, located in the Finnish American Heritage Center, Hancock, September 22 to October 22, 2011.

An opening reception for the exhibit will take place at the gallery Thursday, September 22, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. Tracy Krumm will speak at 7:15 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

What remains and is essential? What escapes or dissipates and is no longer relevant?

Tracy Krumm's sculptures-both reminiscent of tools from the past and metaphors for the modern world-pose these questions in physical form.

Krumm's work embraces traditional "domestic" and gender-specific techniques, like crochet and blacksmithing, but her materials are transformed into conceptual explorations of feminism, popular culture, personal history and identity.

Carol Lambert, 76, a resident of nearby Hubbell, Mich., has been working with yarn for over 50 years. Family members supply her raw materials, such as discarded sweaters and blankets, which Carol then disassembles and unravels to create knitted shapes. Lambert calls these shapes, which are inspired by bound clotheslines, "hotdogs."

For this exhibit, Krumm incorporated a number of Lambert's unwrapped shapes into interlaced and knotted textile structures using over a mile of handmade ropes, which she makes by twining, finger knitting, and finger crochet.

The pieces are held in space, affected by gravity and/or tension, and they play with our ideas about how textiles-and the flexible linear materials they are made from-perform in the realm of the language we use to describe them, words like drape, stretch, bind, weave and interlock.

Several of Krumm's metal sculptures will also be exhibited.

Krumm has a master of fine arts in sculpture from the Vermont College of the Arts and a bachelor of fine arts in textiles from the California College of Arts and Crafts.

She is an assistant professor in the fiber department at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she also teaches classes for the community arts and service-learning program and continues her studio practice.

Krumm's first major exhibition was in 1988 as part of the Young Americans show at the American Craft Museum in New York City (now the Museum of Art and Design). Since then, her work has been included in more than 120 exhibitions across the country and in Europe, including the 1996 International Betonac Prize exhibition in Sint-Truiden, Belgium, which also toured for two years, and the 2004 International Triennial of Tapestry exhibition in Lodz, Poland.

Krumm's work is included in hundreds of individual and private collections, including the collections of Ford Motor Company, Bloomingdale's, the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, the Denver Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

"Explorations: The Flexible Linear Element" is on display at the Finlandia University Gallery through October 22, 2011.

The Finlandia University Gallery is in the Finnish American Heritage Center, 435 Quincy Street, Hancock. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Thursday, 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Saturday 12:00 to 4:00 p.m., or by appointment.

Please call 906-487-7500 for more information.

Photo cutlines:

Photo 1: Tracy Krumm in her studio

Photo 2: Tracy Krumm, Fanned (Buckled), Detail, 30 ½" x 9" x 4", Forged and Crocheted Metal, Found Objects, Pigments, Resin

Photo 3: "Hotdog" by Carol Lambert