Gabrielle Rossmer

sculpture

location : 6 Vernon Street, 2nd floor
phone : 617.669.9801
email : gjrossmer@gmail.com
web: ceresgallery.org/rossmer.html

click an image to start the slide show

statement

I am exploring issues of mortality and mutability through the use of the figure. These figures are intimately scaled works, much like the very approachable lares, the household gods, of the Romans. It is important to me that they can be held in the hand or placed on a shelf or mantle. Recently the pieces have been made of cast iron and plaster, and I will continue my exploration of these and other media. 
 
Writing about an exhibition of my fashion-related figures in a show at St. Gaudens National Historic Site in 2007, Jo Evarts wrote:  

Rossmer captures both the anonymity of individuals when fashion superseded the personal and the ways in which fashion and how it is worn define a person, rather than the reverse. The Ms. Dior figure, for example, is clothed in a lush red dress, holding a red shawl. Her song black gloves and posture, hand to throat and head thrown back, a small black shoe on her small left foot protruding from the gown, suggest her exhilaration in wearing the clothing she has on. Ms. Rossmer, however, contrasts these elements with the very white, ghost-like, un-glazed skin of the figure and the unsmoothed surfaces. These are not the figurines of 18th c. Staffordshire. Rather, they capture the fleeting quality of fashion in their unpolished surfaces and the loss of individuality in the slightly awkward poses of the figures. That this seems to be endemic to the actyual figures is a testament to Ms. Rossmer’s artistic skill. The figures themselves seem to be imbued with these qualities. 

In Rossmer’s sculpture, the various aspects and impacts of fashion are presented. The figures are a simultaneous and sometimes contradictory combination of tactile, including the sensuous, and evocative, from youth to age and vanity to comfort. The largest piece, Runway 1, includes female figures from different races, cultures and time periods, as if in a fashion runway show. The figures combine an impersonal (lack of facial details) and anonymous content; they also are firmly planted on the ground and have a dignity in the inclination of their heads. Ms Rossmer’s sculpture is quite intriguing. 

education

 B.A. Brandeis University, Waltham, MA and M.Ed. Mass. College of Art, Boston, MA 

solo exhibitions 

2009 Ceres Gallery, New York, NY
2008 MPG Gallery, Boston, MA
2007 St. Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, NH
2005 Florida Holocaust Museum, St. Petersburg, FL
2005 LynnArts, Lynn, MA
2005 New England Biolabs, Beverly, MA
1998 Maris Gallery, Westfield State College, Westfield, MA
1994 Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, NY
1992 Space Gallery, Boston, MA (solo installaltion/two person show)
1991 Villa Dessauer (municipal museum), Bamberg, Germany
1987 Madeleine Carter Gallery, Brookline, MA
1979 Helen Shlien Gallery, Boston, MA 

selected group exhibitions 

2006 Aidekeman Gallery, Tufts University, Medford, MA
2002 Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston, MA (“Ancestral Memory”)
2000 Sculpture Park, DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA
1999 Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, MA
1996 FPAC Gallery, 300 Summer Street, Boston, MA
1995 Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN. WITNESS &
    LEGACY: CONTEMPORARY ART ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST
    travelled to 17 cities through 2002.
1989 Hilles Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
1987 Federal Reserve Bank, Boston, MA
1984 Chesterwood National Trust, Stockbridge, MA
1984 Munson-Williams-Proctor-Institute, Utica, NY
1983 Goethe Institute, Boston, MA
1982 Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA 

honors and grants 

1991 Aubrey Cartwright Foundation, New York, NY
1990 Arts Lottery Grant, Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
1983 Mass. Council of Arts and Humanities, Artist-in Residence grant
1982 Mass. Council of Arts and Humanities, Artist-in Residence grant
1980 Sculpturespace, Residency. Utica, NY 

selected publications

2003    Monica Bohm-Duchen, “The Uses & Abuses of Photography in Holocaust-
   Related Art” in Image & Remembrance: Representation & the Holocaust.
   Hornstein & Jacobowitz, Eds. Indiana University Press, p. 226.
2003 Stephen Feinstein, “Memory and Re-Memory: American Installation
   Art & HolocaustImagery in: Reclaiming Memory: Amer. Representations
   of the Holocaust, Pirjo Ahokas  et al. Ed. Univ. of Turku, Finland. pp. 95-97.
1998 Bulletin Trimestriel de la Fondation Auschwitz. No. 60, 1998.
   Bruxelles, Belgium. “The Memory of Auschwitz in Contemporary Art”,
   Gabrielle Rossmer, pp. 189-196.
1998 Tim Cahill, Albany Times-Union. “Remembering, Not Recreatng the Lost”. 
1997 Matthew Beigell, Jewish American artist & the Holocaust. Rutgers
    U Press, New Brunswick, pp. 98-99, fig. 36.
1996 Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe. “Anxious Inferences”.
1993 Nancy Stapen, Art News. “Boston, Gabrielle Rossmer”.
1987 Cristine Temin, The Boston Globe. “Fine Show at Fed Reserve”. 

selected collections 

DeCordova Museum   Lincoln, MA
Meditech Corporation   Westwood, MA
Municipal Museum   Bamberg, Germany
Robert & Sarah Leinbach   Brookline, MA
Charles Berg/Ashley Lieberman  Lexington, MA
Fla. Holocaust Museum   St. Petersburg, FL
South End Health Center   Boston, MA