Just Josie
The Color of Rose
Hoboken artist’s works reflect many inspirations
By Josie Syzman
A walk through the Hoboken studio of Roslyn Rose takes you right inside the artist’s imagination. Faded photographs, old clocks, statues, discarded hardware, everyday objects and mysterious boxes fill the room and delight the eye.
“I love the craft of art and I’m always willing to try something new,” said Rose, who has worked as a printmaker, painter, decorative designer, and photographer.
“I’m a professional artist because I have a working spouse she said, quoting the advice from one of her favorite painters, Ben Shahn.
A native of Irvington, Rose attended Rutgers University, Pratt Institute in New York City, and is a graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
This creative woman is particularly drawn to reflecting “women’s work” as an artist. “I am an ardent feminist and I lecture on the history of women artists.” “I really started as an etcher, working on a press in my basement in Maplewood, said Ms Rose, who has now lived in Hoboken for almost 20 years.
She learned the basics of framing, the art of decoupage behind glass, and a relatively new technique, manipulating photographs on the the computer. Rose gave up her commercial career as an artist who collaborated with decorators when she was told to feature “the color of the season” in her designs.
Some of her most intriguing work includes miniature worlds nestled inside wine and gift boxes (“I start out by looking at the box, and then I get an idea”), and photo montages, such as one of a series of men wearing exotic turbans. I was fascinated with her assemblages, which consist of hundreds of small objects that fill up every space in old type boxes. She mixes many textures, such as wood, metal, paper and cloth.
“I haunt hardware stores and junk shops in the New York City, but it is getting harder and harder to find interesting pieces” she said as I admired one of these unusual creations.
“I have always loved photography,” she explained as she showed me a group of photographs in a dramatic combination: some were women of different generations in her family, others strangers whose faces she liked.
Ms. Rose’s creations have been exhibited in corporate headquarters (AT&T, Citibank, Nabisco Brands Corp.) and prominent museums, including the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton and the Newark Museum of Art. UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, featured her etchings of Owls on a series of greeting cards in the 1980’s.
A longtime member of the National Association of Women Artists, she is a cofounder of a consortium of local artists called “hob’art.”
She is currently working on a series of photographs that reflect Hoboken’s 150th anniversary. |
