About ROSE
Rose E. DeSloover is a conceptual color/word artist who has been actively engaged in the metro Detroit art community for many years. She has a B.A. from Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and M.F.A. from the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont California. She was on the faculty of Marygrove College for 44 years retiring from the position of Dean of the Visual and Performing Arts Division in 2013.
She has participated in exhibits in numerous locations, in and around the State of Michigan, as well as around the U.S. and in Bonn, Germany. She was the Director of The Gallery at Marygrove College for 23 years, during which time she brought hundreds of artists to the attention of the Detroit community.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is the product of the dual refining traditions of minimalism and conceptualism with some Fluxus influence --- found objects, juxtaposition and changing context. I have always considered my art process to be a part of the cultural dialogue, observing and commenting on things that already exist. Reading culture from the common, ordinary objects of the day, I work within the limitations and the language of existing form.
In the 1970’s, I began to collect paint color charts from local hardware stores. Color in my work does not necessarily identify or reinforce an object; it represents an emotion, a characteristic, a thought, a place, a relationship. The cultural pairing of color and word in color-charts is a happy synchronicity for me. Working within the constraints imposed by the language of color-charts, new associations are made and meanings created.
Manufactured objects are the residue of culture. Each object carries the history of its creation---the intuition and imagination that created the idea, the engineering and the work of bringing the idea to fruition. The juxtaposition of an object, a color and a color title sets up a visual conversation which is sometimes contradictory or paradoxical and whose legibility is not always immediately discernable.