From Rosner's website:
"My Life As An Artist
I was raised in Manhattan. My first direction in the art world was geared towards crafts; specifically glass on metal (enamelling). My undergraduate degree is from the Cleveland Institute of Art, in Ohio.
I moved back to NYC for a time after college and exhibited at Spring Street Enamels Gallery. I earned a living as a jeweler.
Five years later I moved to Cranston, RI, to find a less distracting home. I thought I would stay a year, but that was 30 + years ago.
I worked with enamels until I realized that I was trying very hard to make them look like drawings. Eventually, with some reluctance,
I put away my kiln and worked on paper. I’d always like using a mechanical drawing pen for everything from writing to sketches to complete drawings. When I decided drawing was my primary practice, I treated the work more seriously.
I have two distinct bodies of work that satisfy my love
of narrative combined with text; and purely abstract work. In both, I like to show my hand and to contain a density of marks. Between these two genres I've found a never-ending supply of challenges and potential.
I have stayed in Rhode Island and will always have
a love/hate relationship with this state and my city of Cranston. Still, it is home. It allows me to find time to work and to easily meet supportive curators and artists who have helped me refine, aspire, and exhibit."
At MacDowell, Jessica Rosner worked on a series of small, minimalist drawings, a series she would probably continue for the next year. She had an artist-in-residence grant at the Center City Gallery for Contemporary Art in Providence, RI in Spring 2000 and would be showing selections from her "Broomstick" series at the Claypool Young Gallery in Moorehead, KY, January 2001.
