Working with metal, rubber, plastic
and other industrial and everyday items, Petrey creates dress sculptures that
tell stories and connect viewers with childhood memories.
“I’m a child of the Sixties,” he
says “and I had a wonderful childhood. I spent time in my mom’s beauty shop in
the afternoons, and then she’d give me money and I’d be off with my friends. I
watched a lot of TV, too, like ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ and ‘The Donna Reed Show.’
The nostalgia of that affected me early on.”
Many of his dresses reflect that
1950s-‘60s style. Others reference historical eras or pop culture. All of them
are made with materials most people wouldn’t think of as “artistic.”
“I look at items differently,”
Petrey says. “For example, I work a lot with bottle caps. People say, ‘What can
you do with bottle caps?’ but I know exactly what to do with them. I see old
vintage signs and look at colors and textures and match them up to make
beautiful flowing gowns. When people see my work, they want to touch it because
it looks like fabric or feathers but they’re surprised to find copper or steel.”
”Captivating Armor” includes four
sculptures of women’s dresses that are slightly more than 6 feet tall, three
54-inch tall sculptures representing dresses for teenage girls and four 27-inch
tabletop sculptures representing toddler girls. In addition, for this
exhibition Petrey created three dress sculptures to hang from steel hangers
flat against a wall.
“This series is very nostalgic and
makes people smile,” he added. “What more can you do as an artist than make
people look back fondly and have a memory of their childhood? Something about
each piece attracts the viewers and helps them tell their own stories. If I’ve
made somebody look at the world differently, think differently and have five
minutes of remembering their youth, then I have done my job.”
