Lacy Barry

Lacy Barry is a multi-faceted artist & designer that is principally self-taught. She has applied her artistic language to public art installations, interiors, ad campaigns, music videos, editorials, even a tablet game. Lacy started as a costume designer and on-set seamstress in Los Angeles in 2007. After moving to Montreal, Canada, she opened a studio working on set and prop creation. By chance, she was asked to make a set out of paper and since then this material has been her chosen medium. Born in Canada, Lacy has travelled extensively around the world, and she’s now based in Germany. She exhibits internationally and has collaborated with many well-known brands, artists and organisations.

Lacy Barry specialises in techniques of paper manipulation and forming that she has developed through continual experimentation and observation of paper materials. An in-depth understanding of colour, as well as an ability to form and craft aesthetically by hand, are central to her creative process. Lacy imagines her projects from start to finish, drawing some aspects using computer software that she then uses to produce her paper forms via a cutting machine. She chooses to work extensively with recycled cardboard to reduce waste and add value to the common material.

Lacy Barry’s craft is very much linked to her upbringing in western Canada’s Rocky Mountains where, as a child, she experienced a plethora of natural and cultural wonders: the dance of the vibrant green and indigo Northern Lights in the winter night sky, ice skating on frozen forest lakes, a powwow celebration with First Nations Cree dancers who wore clothes adorned with colourful beadwork and large delicate feathers, the Emerald Lakes that pool beneath the majestic mountain ranges where she often hiked and fished with her family. These were all things Lacy was exposed to on a regular basis. “It has been these inspirations that made their way into the deep nostalgia and wonderment of who I am as an artist today.”

Magnae Chartae Exhibition