Stacked layers of deep red industrial felt arranged horizontally, creating a textured composition of varying tones and densities. A pale banner with embossed text runs across the center, emphasizing the work's material weight and compressed surface.

Working Parts

Marcie Miller Gross

11/8/2013 – 1/4/2014

Press Release (PDF)

Working Parts represents Marcie Miller Gross’ ongoing fascination with the relationship of materiality and elemental, abstract form.  Through an accumulative means of building, Gross examines the visceral relationship of mass and void, density, line, weight, and compression while considering the absorptive silence of these industrial felt solids. The potent physicality of color, its saturation and intensity are equally considered conceptual and inherent visual counterparts.  

Informed by shifting systems of order and interval, this work is rooted in animal and mineral, with multiple associations ranging from stone markers, architectonic fragments to split rock and lines within the landscape.  The expressiveness and mark of the hand, in addition to the industry of labor and serial repetition find parallels in artistic precedents in minimalism and mono ha.  

Marcie Miller Gross received her BFA (1982) from the University of Kansas with Post Graduate studies at the Kansas City Art Institute.  Gross received her MFA (1990) from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Recent exhibitions and projects include The Spring Show (Forarsudstillingen) 2012, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, National Museum of Women in the Arts/Epsten Gallery, Women to Watch Kansas City, 2012, The Studios Inc., Cranbrook Art Museum, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art and a solo exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in 2005.

Exhibition Images ()

  • A deep red rectangular form extends horizontally across a light gray wall, its surface appearing densely compressed with subtle textural variations suggesting industrial felt or similar material. The work casts a defined shadow, emphasizing its three-dimensional mass and austere, minimalist presence.
  • Red industrial felt sculpture mounted horizontally on a white wall, featuring a tapered wedge form with deeply textured vertical striations across its surface, creating a linear pattern that emphasizes mass and shadow.
  • A long, horizontally-oriented red sculptural form with deeply textured vertical ridging extends across a white wall, casting a dramatic shadow. The saturated red material appears dense and industrial, with visible linear striations creating a rhythmic pattern across its surface.
Stacked layers of deep red industrial felt arranged horizontally, creating a textured composition of varying tones and densities. A pale banner with embossed text runs across the center, emphasizing the work's material weight and compressed surface.

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