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Biography<\/h2>\n
\n Ross Rosenberg was born in Syracuse, New York in 1941. he grew up in Rochester, NY, and attended the University of Michigan, graduating with a degree in English Literature and Art History. From that time until now, he has lived and worked in New York City. He studied drawing at the University of Michigan, drawing, painting, and sculpture at Parsons, drawing and printmaking at the School of Visual Arts, and papermaking at Dieu Donne. His work is in corporate and public collections, including the New York Public Library, and here, at Valdosta State University. His work was first displayed at Valdosta State University in a VSU Art Gallery Show \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Works on Paper\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and several of his smaller works were purchased at that time. Mr. Rosenberg has exhibited around the country and his large drawings series, of which this is a selection, were exhibited previously at MIT in Cambridge, MA, and at various exhibits in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.<\/p>\n Mr. Rosenberg has described his large drawings and sculptures:<\/p>\n I am drawn to commonplace subjects such as chairs and houses because they are comfortingly familiar but at the same time they allow me to express feelings of mystery and foreboding. It is the ambiguity that involves me.<\/p>\n Most of the images are based on early childhood memories. The rounded chair, for example, comes from a memory of being in a dark living room at night. There is a dim light coming from down a long hall. I hear someone in the hall and I climb up onto the chair and hide between the arms on the seat.<\/p>\n The upright chair image is connected to the memory of watching my father making a chair for me when I was four years old. When I sat in it, my back rested against its back, my seat on its seat, my legs by its legs. Now I am both the chair and the one who makes the chair.<\/p>\n So although I do not work from a conscious program or a theoretical base, there are clear emotional lines running through all of my work.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are three main genres of Rosenberg’s work on display in Odum Library. What follows is a discussion of each genre and a representative piece from it.<\/p>\n <\/br> <\/br><\/a><\/p>\nPaintings<\/h2>\n
\nThe paintings of this rounded chair are seen from a child’s eye level and they put an adult in the same size relationship to the chair in the painting that a two-year-old has to a real one. As this series developed, I began to focus more and more on discovering different ways to create texture. So some of them are as much about how they were made as why they were made.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Blue Chair\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/strong>
\n1980s
\nAcrylic on canvas
\nSize: 87\u00e2\u20ac\u009d x 72\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nDonated By Ross Rosenberg
\nValdosta State University Archives and Special Collections<\/p>\nSmall Drawings<\/h2>\n
\nThe Dream Series consists of 15 drawings, all done between January, 1992 and March, 1993. The series came about through a happy accident. One day he was designing a large drawing, and he was going to draw it out on a small scale first. So he took some paper (Strathmore 400 Series Drawing Paper) and began laying down a ground\u00e2\u20ac\u201dlightly shading an area with graphite. As he shaded, he noticed something that looked like eyes coming through from the texture inherent in the paper. Then he drew what he saw there. The Dream Series is an exercise in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stream of conscious\u00e2\u20ac\u009d drawing and texture. The faces, the animals, the faces turning into animals, all emerged from slight differences in the texture of the paper which he then accented. Rosenberg said that whenever he tried the make the process thoughtful, and perhaps fill in a blank spot, the drawing failed. Compare these small bits of texture study with the large paintings, also texture studies, hung all around the library.<\/p>\n