Draped Arches In Gold

Rachel Mica Weiss | Houston

Arts Houston One Allen Center stairwell sculpture

Location: Allen Center, 500 Dallas Street, Houston, TX 77002

Dyed nylon rope, powder-coated aluminumApproximately 121″ x 282″ x 183″

Draped Arches in Gold is an immersive installation composed of two lilting arcs in shining nylon rope. By inverting the classical architectural arch and introducing it into an industrialized, rectilinear interior, Weiss fuses two architectural styles and allows a cloud-like form to hover within the building’s walls. While Draped Archesis volumetric one moment, it is all surface the next: its curving lengths of parallel ropes create an incredible moiré effect, seeming to move and shift as one moves past them, evolving significantly at each of a multiplicity of views. Only by circumnavigating and exploring the work from multiple angles can one piece together a complete mental image. Passersby become aware of their own temporal experience as the goldenrods of rope tick past,progressing and regressing with one’s passage through the space, up the stair, along the green space outside.

Rachel Mica Weiss (b. Maryland, 1986) is a sculptor and installation artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Weiss earned a B.A. in psychology from Oberlin College, an M.F.A. in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute, and is a 2011 recipient of the San Francisco Foundation Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship.