Two artists seek to uncover hidden bits and pieces of the crumbling Philadelphia post-industrial cityscape, while simultaneously using these loose narratives to tell personal tales strung together with fabric, steel and found objects. At PhilaMOCA, “Resurrecting Rust” presents the work of Carolyn Perri and Amanda Lee Watkins in a montage of thread and forgotten fixtures that is as melancholy as it is smug, and at times quite tender.

A spread of frames, found objects and fabric works by Amanda Lee Watkins and Carolyn Perri.

For their part, the pair works to defy the typical notion of fabric arts as a means for crafting or functional ends. Indeed, essentially nothing hanging along the walls of the space has much of any practical value, but what these objects lack in purpose they make up for in potential. As the fragments of times past butt up against the compositions of the present, we find ourselves in an intellectual limbo between what was and what will be; an appropriated present both charming and cynical.

Amanda Lee Watkins, “I Need to Stop.”

A brief walk around the show reveals all manner of tiny treasures which serve to spur the imagination: rusted bed springs, a hinge-like object shaped like the letter E, metal plates, chunks of ceramic and bone, and shiny detritus from the insides of machines and motors surely indecipherable to most. Sometimes these recycled parts wind up in larger pieces as well, as evidenced by the dangling mesh hammock holding an old billiards ball or the cog-like spokes of a disk embroidered by Watkins with the words “I Need to Stop.” This personalization of an otherwise impersonal form offers a new life to the disused and an entry point into objects that may otherwise be easy to dismiss as junk.

Carolyn Perri, “I’m Bored” (center) and found objects.

Carolyn Perri constructs and hangs a number of tapestries, which do well to break up and frame the spread of smaller bits in the exhibit. The patterns of these pieces vary between colored horizontal stripes, the apparent chaos of television static, and the words “I’m Bored” in a lovely shade of goldenrod against a red backing. From the expected, to the abstracted, to the ubiquitous challenges of ennui we face from day to day, Perri knits them all into her fabrics.

Amanda Lee Watkins, “Cradled Cares and Concerns.”

Not far away, Amanda Lee Watkins takes an opposing approach with her strands and obfuscates instead of revealing. Tiny trinkets are wrapped in whitish cocoons of yarn and labeled with dubious captions like “The hate for happiness,” “Guilt for disconnect,” and “Fictional medicine” among many others. These fearful packages of fluffy thoughtfulness are titled “Cradled Cares and Concerns” and serve to offer emotional buffers and physical mysteries to viewers and the artist alike. By disguising the external in favor of the internal, we are forced to peer inward by way of the words and enigmas that confront us from within their tightly knit comfort blankets.

Carolyn Perri, “Drag.”

In a show that is both soft and hard, rusty and mangled, as well as precise and precious, Amanda Lee Watkins and Carolyn Perri present an amalgamation of items both created and assembled by their intellects and emotions. The idiosyncrasies inherent in each little spring and the care with which every thread is wound around its neighbors speaks to a shared artistic process that is as inventive and open-ended as it is intricate. “Resurrecting Rust” will be on display at PhilaMOCA through January 20.

PhilaMOCA is located at 531 N. 12th St., Philadelphia; [email protected]; philamoca.org.