Rachel Mica Weiss:
Yield

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River Valley Arts Collective is pleased to present Yield, Rachel Mica Weiss’ first adaptation of her ongoing Topographies installation series to the outdoors. This vibrant yellow and orange rope lattice undulates across the highpoint of the landscape that surrounds the Al Held Foundation studio complex. The project is curated by Jess Wilcox as part of RVAC’s annual On the Grounds series.

Binding 32,000 hundred feet of rope together with 66,000 zip ties, Weiss transforms the material into a meditation on the dynamics of constraint and growth. The net hovers above the land’s natural elevation grade, suggestive of a topography of centuries past, worn away through slow geological erosion. The site’s slope guides viewers around the network, bringing them to new orientations and sightlines. The optical moiré effect of the fiberwork simultaneously elicits a sense of disorientation and conveys the mystique of dancing patterns of light and shadow. While synthetic fibers comprise Yield, its proximity to the ground and its embrace of grass growth among its porous surface reminds us that human’s first fibers were plants.

With Yield, Weiss expands her Topographies series and its play with mapping techniques to the outdoors. While previous Topographies installations fill the rectilinear atriums of buildings with their surrounding topographies, they similarly toggle between dimensions. For instance, Immanent Topographies in the US Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, transformed the Tien Shan Mountain Range into an ethereal representation of surface using the logic of the weaving process. Mathematically scaled from the existing topography, a series weft ropes descended from renderings of rock profiles in slices. Viewers encounter the installation from a mezzanine at distinct elevations, and from below, as if under the earth. Likewise, the slope of the Held Foundation’s hill steers bodies up and around the installation, into perspectives that offer various scales of the background–a forest approach, a mountain ridge panorama, and the bucolic rural scenery. Yield rewards long and slow looking as subtleties of gradation in both color and elevation captivate the eye.

The material environment and landscape of the Catskill Mountains deeply inform Weiss’ practice. Her lines evokes the topological profile of the region from the steep slopes of the Shawangunk Ridge (a famous landmark of New Paltz where Weiss lives) to the gentle alluvial fans of slowly settling rock erosion. Continuing an exploration of the human desire to shape and contain the natural environment, Yield resonates with both celebratory and cautionary sentiments of its title. In the context of the Hudson Valley, the work captures its long history of agricultural activities while the nets’ yellow and orange evoke a high visibility construction signage – operating as a signpost of the ongoing exploitation of natural resources in the region since the arrival of European Settlers. Also functioning as a warning, Yield asks of us to slow down, and perhaps even stop, the worst forms of manipulation, containment, and control.

RACHEL MICA WEISS (b. Rockville, MD, 1986) is a sculptor and installation artist based in Gardiner, NY. Her sculpture and large-scale installation work creates a discourse about human boundaries and limits, ranging from the architectural to the topographical, to our own formless psychological constructs. Employing a wide range of materials, Weiss’s work draws attention to the constraints within our physical and psychological spaces, asking us to reimagine those so-called barriers as flexible, passable, porous. Weiss earned a BA in psychology from Oberlin College and an MFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is the recipient of an Investing in Professional Artists Grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments (2020) and a San Francisco Foundation Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship (2011). Funded residencies include: Fountainhead Residency, Miami, FL (2020); 100 W Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, Corsicana, TX (2020); Lux Art Institute Residency, Encinitas, CA (2018); and Marble House Project Residency, Dorset, VT (2015), among others. Weiss has been the subject of eight solo exhibitions sited across the United States, and has created public artworks for venues worldwide, including for the US Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Airbnb, Seattle, WA; and The Pittsburgh International Airport. Recent projects include: a solo presentation of sculpture for The Armory Show; The Wild Within for the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA; and Boundless Topographies, her largest permanent installation to date, funded by the Gates Foundation for the University of Washington’s Hans Rosling Center for Population Health in Seattle. Weiss is represented by Carvalho Park New York.

Over the past five years, River Valley Arts Collective has partnered with the Al Held Foundation to present exhibitions in Held’s former drawing studio, outdoor installations on the foundation's grounds and, more recently, performances in Held’s painting studio.