Marcie Miller Gross

Marcie Miller Gross (American, b. 1958)

Rise / Fall, 2016

Wool industrial felt

10 x 108 x 4 in

The vibrant red sculpture Rise / Fall emerges from the wall and engages our attention through its erratically undulating surface. The long, rectangular work is composed of vertically stacked strips of red wool industrial felt, with each individual strip cut to a different depth. Gross applies her interest in repetitions, and simplicity of material, seen throughout her body of work, to this commission for Capitol Federal Hall. Intentionally referencing the constant rise and fall of stock market values, which are digitally displayed in real time by a stock ticker on view in the McCarthy Finance Lab on the second floor of the building, the work seems to evoke the volatility of equity prices. Although the sculpture’s edges adhere to set boundaries, its surface moves between crests and troughs, both gradual and sudden. Gross’s choice of red suggests a connection with the red graphics that represent falling stock market values. Through the shifting nature of its material form and the intended metaphorical relationship to the concerns of a school of business, Rise / Fall reminds us that we are all affected by the unpredictability of our economic system.

Biography

Kansas City, Kansas, native Marcie Miller Gross is a Kansas City-based artist who creates site-responsive sculptures with a variety of materials to explore issues of memory, place, and the vulnerabilities of the human condition. She received a BFA from the University of Kansas in 1982 and an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Fine Art in 1990. She has exhibited widely across the U.S. and has received numerous awards, including a Charlotte Street Foundation Fellowship.

— Rachel Robinson, MA student in art history at the University of Kansas, April 2019