After more than two decades as a commercial textile designer, often working digitally, Amy Gross was drawn to making things that felt more immediate and tactile. “I started making beaded jewelry, something I could hold and feel,” she told Colossal.
The beading technique gradually merges with the canvas, which becomes more three-dimensional over time. They were “less about decoration and more about personal stories that I felt I needed to tell,” she said. These eventually became sculptural works that represented the natural world and have long been a source of wonder and curiosity for artists.
Gross’s imaginative compositions of plants, fungi, and sometimes even animals inspired her fascination with scale. In her practice, she says, “it’s not the size, it’s what’s most important to you.” “It’s how we see, think and remember.” Beads, thread, yarn and paper become otherworldly communities of microscopic organisms.
The artist focuses on mushrooms, roots, leaves, flowers and small animals as a meditation on our planet’s smallest inhabitants. She also incorporates patterns of elements we normally cannot understand with the naked eye, such as spores, pollen, viruses, molecules and cells. “In my opinion, they are equally important,” she said. “The health of the world we see depends largely on the health of the tiniest elements.”
Gross’s work is currently on display in two exhibitions at Asheville’s Momentum Gallery, which also represents the artist. Her work will be included in a group show at the Fuller Museum of Crafts in Brockton, Massachusetts, in late 2027, and one of her sculptures will appear in Phaidon’s upcoming book about fungi. Check out more of the artist’s work on Instagram.
