Born in New York City in 1941 to the German immigrants Max and Hilda Stern, Gloria initially completed an undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College in 1963, before leaving for California, where she would spend the next two and a half decades of her life.

[1] In 1963, Kisch enrolled at the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, where she studied alongside artists such as Bas Jan Ader and Barry Le Va, earning a BFA and completing her MFA in 1969.

[4][5] In the 1970s, Kisch taught and exhibited her work at the newly founded cooperative gallery Womanspace in the non-profit arts and education center The Woman’s Building established by artist Judy Chicago, designer Sheila Levant de Bretteville, and critic Arlene Raven at Otis College in Los Angeles.

[6][1][7] In 1973, Suzanne Saxe Gallery in San Francisco presented a solo exhibition of Kisch's work in which she displayed hanging, leaning, or suspended groups and pairings of “totems”, bamboo segments she had wrapped and coated in silicone, plaster, sand, paint and other substances which suggested the "powerful presence of ritualistic objects.

Among the other artists shown were John McCracken, Judy Chicago, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Kenneth Price, Richard Diebenkorn, and Edward Kienholz.

[22][1][23][24] In 1981, Kisch returned to New York City, working briefly on Leonard Street before relocating to Broadway, where she was among the artists moving into converted Soho lofts.

"[1] This same year, The Milwaukee Art Museum exhibited The Leonard Street Series, a group of sixteen large drawings made in oil stick and white gesso inspired by New York City.

Wrapping my fantasies around a preconceived utilitarian object is the basis for this dichotomy.”[25] The art critic Rose Slivka noted that Kisch’s furniture forms ‘look as if they are gloating with the secret of their own utility.

'[26][27][28] In 1988, Kisch’s figurative sculpture ‘Comrades’ was included in the exhibition The Legacy of Surrealism in Contemporary Art at the Ben Shahn Galleries at William Paterson College.

“I live by nature and I am inspired by nature.”[30] She began a series of large-scale steel sculptures evoking pond reeds, and later, her well-known free-standing as well as wall-mounted metal flower forms emerged.

[32][33] Kisch was included in the 1993 exhibition Art and Application at Turbulence Gallery in New York along with artists such as Vito Acconci, John Chamberlain, Richard Artschwager, Michele Oka Doner, Dennis Oppenheim, and Haim Steinbach among others.