After a long career in diverse roles starting as a government attorney and ending as NASA’s Inspector General, Roberta Gross has forged extensive contacts as a mixed media /abstract artists with Martha’s Vineyard.  These relationships have spanned over the last 20 years. She started, as many artists do on the Island, with summer shows at the Martha’s Vineyard Artisan Festival.  Beginning in 2007, she participated in the First Annual Invitational Abstract Show at the Louisa Gould Gallery in Vineyard Haven. 

 

Then, for the following 12 years, she both curated and participated in the Louisa Gould Gallery’s Annual Invitational Abstract Shows, ending with a virtual on-line exhibit in 2020 during the pandemic.  During this same period, Ms. Gross was an active teacher each summer at Featherstone Center for the Arts, offering classes in abstract and mixed media painting.  These offerings included encaustics, oil bars, working large, printing without a press, creating space and movement in paintings.  During the winter months, Ms. Gross lives in Philadelphia PA.  There she serves as the Exhibition Chair for The Plastic Club.  This organization, now a coed art society, was founded in the late 19th century so that women artists could enjoy professional opportunities, development through workshops and the society of other working artists since Victorian customs excluded women from professional artist organizations and opportunities.  As Exhibition Chair for The Plastic Club, Ms. Gross has conducted monthly, on-line salons with artists throughout the country participating in the Club‘s  themed exhibits.

 

Her current West Tisbury Library show, "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed and Something Blue" serves as a retrospective of her earlier work in acrylic, pastels, collagraphs, monoprints and screen prints  (For this exhibit, she borrowed a painting from one of her patrons , hence, something borrowed).  She is also exhibiting a number of new pastel works which exhibit her signature exuberance, energy, love of dark black lines and vibrant colors.

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robertagross@comcast.net