Rachel Mica Weiss

Rachel Mica Weiss’s practice examines how systems of containment, protection, and control are materially constructed and psychologically internalized. Working across stone and fiber, Weiss investigates the relationship between the body and the frameworks that organize space, whether architectural, symbolic, or emotional. Her hand-strung thread works form planes that divide, filter, and reshape their surroundings, functioning simultaneously as barriers and portals. Referencing the warp of a loom, these layered surfaces oscillate between object, architecture, and optical phenomenon.

Though not literally woven, the overlapping threads create the illusion of a textile matrix. Constructed through mathematical sequencing, individual threads cross through the center of each frame to gradually build bands of color, density, and dimensionality. Through repetition and accumulation, Weiss transforms a single linear thread into taut geometric planes and, ultimately, undulating surfaces. Subtle shifts in color produce gradients that appear painted, yet remain entirely constructed through tension and thread, allowing viewers to perceive both the precision of the system and the vulnerability of the material held within it.

In parallel, Weiss’s stone works draw from forms associated with authority, protection, and control. Chainmail carved from alabaster cannot defend, a stone lock cannot secure, and jewelry weighted with keys becomes burden rather than adornment. Retaining the visual language of utility while failing to perform it, these objects expose protection as conditional and reveal how systems of power become embedded within material form.

Rachel Mica Weiss (b. Rockville, MD, 1986)  earned a BA in psychology from Oberlin College and an MFA in sculpture from San Francisco Art Institute. She is the recipient of an Investing in Professional Artists Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments (2020), as well as a Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship from San Francisco Foundation (2011). She has participated in residencies including Fountainhead Residency, Lux Art Institute, and Marble House Project, among others.

Weiss has created public artworks for venues worldwide, including the Art in Embassies at the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Airbnb in Seattle; and Pittsburgh International Airport. Recent commissions include The Wild Within for deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and Boundless Topographies, her largest permanent installation to date, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and installed at the University of Washington’s Hans Rosling Center for Population Health.

Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including those of the Art in Embassies program, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, TIAA, Boston Consulting Group, MediaMath, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.