Horizontal abstract composition of overlapping rectangular bands in muted greens and blues, with irregular edges creating a sense of movement and depth against a cream background.
Horizontal abstract composition of overlapping rectangular bands in muted greens and blues, with irregular edges creating a sense of movement and depth against a cream background.

Marcie Miller Gross Bio

Marcie Miller Gross is an American sculptor whose site-responsive objects, installations, drawings, and prints explore the relationships among material, architecture, landscape, and place. Working primarily with industrial wool felt, wood, paper, and graphite, Gross builds forms through processes of folding, stacking, cutting, compression, repetition, and accumulation. Her work transforms modest materials and elemental geometric structures into objects with a pronounced physical and spatial presence. Gross's sculptures are deeply informed by the conditions of their surroundings. Architectural details, the pitch of a roof, the depth of a wall, the geometry of a building, or observations made in a landscape can become starting points for a work. Rather than reproducing these sources, she distills them into abstract forms that retain a sense of their physical origins. Mass and void, weight and suspension, compression and release, density and openness become recurring concerns. Industrial… Read more

Marcie Miller Gross is an American sculptor whose site-responsive objects, installations, drawings, and prints explore the relationships among material, architecture, landscape, and place. Working primarily with industrial wool felt, wood, paper, and graphite, Gross builds forms through processes of folding, stacking, cutting, compression, repetition, and accumulation. Her work transforms modest materials and elemental geometric structures into objects with a pronounced physical and spatial presence.

Gross's sculptures are deeply informed by the conditions of their surroundings. Architectural details, the pitch of a roof, the depth of a wall, the geometry of a building, or observations made in a landscape can become starting points for a work. Rather than reproducing these sources, she distills them into abstract forms that retain a sense of their physical origins. Mass and void, weight and suspension, compression and release, density and openness become recurring concerns.

Industrial wool felt has been particularly important throughout her practice. Dense yet flexible, manufactured yet tactile, the material can be stacked into imposing solids, folded into softer forms, or cut to create rhythms of line and shadow. Her use of repetition and serial construction connects her work to histories of Minimalism and post-Minimalism, while the visible evidence of cutting, folding, stacking, and handling maintains an intimate relationship to the artist's hand.

Drawing and printmaking extend these concerns into two dimensions. In a series of graphite works, Gross has used frottage to make direct rubbings of architectural and utilitarian elements in her studio, including cast-iron radiators, wooden beams, and her own felt sculptures. These works operate as records of physical contact, translating surfaces and objects into marks through repetitive movement.

Landscape and memory similarly enter the work through abstraction. Gross's forms can suggest geological strata, stone markers, architectural fragments, rooflines, horizons, or the irregular rhythms of terrain without becoming literal representations.

At Haw Contemporary, Gross presented the solo exhibition Working Parts in 2013. In 2018, she was paired with Armin Mühsam in the two-person exhibition SiteParallels. Her subsequent solo exhibitions include IN PLACE (2020–21) and Shifting – Sculpture and Prints (2024). She has also participated in Haw group exhibitions including on behalf of one's obsessions, Every Street, and Loose Group.

Gross has exhibited nationally and internationally, with institutional presentations including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Spencer Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, and Nevada Museum of Art.

Her work is held in public, institutional, corporate, and private collections including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, JE Dunn Construction, Lockton, and American Century Investments.

Gross received her BFA from the University of Kansas and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri.

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