Marcie Miller Gross

http://www.marciemillergross.com/index.html 

Artist Statement

Within my site responsive drawings, installations and objects, I am fascinated with the interplay between the spatial, conceptual, and architectonic conditions of a place. Through an incremental means of building with utilitarian materials, industrial felt, paper towels, clothing, new and used hospital and bath towels, I make structures that address mass and void, line, weight, density, compression and expansion. Within these qualities, I find parallels in the physical and psychological states of the body, and the human condition. These pliable materials have an intense relationship to the body, and the capacity to carry traces, memory and a potent history of former use. My interest in mundane physical actions of folding, cutting, separating, stacking finds its focus in organization and reduction. The directness of a simple activity of the hand, in addition to issues in the industry of labor and serial repetition, make reference to artistic precedent such as mono-ha and minimalism.

The integration of form, structure and materiality with an architectonic response to space, is critical to this work. Analyzing the experiential and psychological aspects of space has led me to explore drawing methods of articulating form through lines of axis, spatial movement, and in the Japanese concept of ma, a combined sense of place and time. Through examining plan, elevation and section of a space, I blur boundaries of wall, plane and object within the geometry of their architectural context.