bio
I am interested in the weight of a place and the transcendence of a distilled moment. My sculpture, drawings and installations are often informed by the conditions of a place, such as the pitch of a roof, the depth of green of a forest, an earthen rubble wall. I make objects of materials with which I have an intimate visceral connection: industrial felt, wood, vellum, graphite. These distinct material associations relate to warmth, absorption, silence.
I study repetition, mass and void, physicality and weight, compression and release, within an incremental means of building. These sculptures often reference utilitarian forms: a system of slabs, louvers, bricks and shingles, chamfered edges, planes and sections.
The graphite rubbings are of common elements in my studio: cast iron radiators, wooden box beams and sheared slabs. My use of this technique, frottage, expresses notions of weightlessness, presence, and the marking of time. This record becomes a physical witness to a moment connecting landscape and memory.
My interest lies in the contrast between the mechanical means of capturing an image, and the physical means of recording an image by hand. The immediacy and stillness of a photograph differs from the slow cumulative process of graphite moving across the surface of an object. The graphite marks parallel the weight of the moment, registering stillness, movement, time and place.
Recent solo and group exhibitions include: In Place, Haw Contemporary, Unconventional: The Legacy of Joseph Beuys, Goethe Pop Up, Kansas City, MO, The Power of Place, Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS, 2020 China + USA Technology + Innovation in Fiber Art, Beijing+ Philadelphia, PA. Other exhibition venues include Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO.
Miller Gross has received honors that include: Charlotte Street Foundation Fellowship, MidAmerica/ National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship, Arts KC Inspiration Grant, Studios Inc. Residency / Nicholson Foundation, and Allied Arts and Craftsmanship Award, AIA / Kansas City. Recent commissions include: Health Education Building / University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, School of Business / University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, and residency at GlogauAIR & Open Studios, Berlin, Germany.
Her work has received reviews and writings in: Art in America, Sculpture, ID Magazine, Kansas City Star, Politiken, Copenhagen, with publications including Marking 20 Years: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and 10: Charlotte Street Foundation 10th Anniversary. Her work is held in numerous collections including American Century Investments, Missouri Bank, Corridor Infratrust Management, Barkley, Helix Architecture + Design, American Institute of Architects / Kansas City, and private collections in New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, Detroit and Kansas City.
Miller Gross received a Master of Fine Arts in Fiber at Cranbrook Academy of Art, and has held teaching appointments at Kansas City Art Institute and University of Kansas. She is represented by Haw Contemporary, Kansas City.