Jo Gross

Artist Biography:

I grew up in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin and on Big Cedar Lake. I graduated from Wauwatosa East High School and received a BFA and El. Ed. Cert. from UW-Milwaukee. I have been an artist and a poet for as long as I can remember. I turned 60 in 2006. The same age as my Grandmother when she began to paint “seriously”. Her work was shown at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Grandmother’s talent and determination may have something to do with my rediscovery of oil painting in 2006. In my present work with oils, each painting stands alone as I search for my own voice and vocabulary of color, texture, line, and composition. I continue my work with ceramics in the UWWC 3D studio. I use the bowl as a feminine metaphor to practice sculptural concerns such as contour, surface, volume and planar tension. My methods typically include slab construction, slump molds and stoneware fires to cone 6 glazes and lusters, but I am not afraid of epoxy and paint when they are called for. I do not create my bowls as “service pieces” but as forms in space with equal interior/exterior value. These creative experiments and pathways are forever changing and a constant joy to my life which I shared with my husband, Thomas Gross, Professor Emeritus in art, UWWC, until his death in 2012.

Artist Statement:

My art is always an experiment as life is always an adventure. I believe in honesty of materials and spontaneity. I love natural curves and color and deckle edges. I find the play of balance and tension between beauty and ugliness and figure and ground to be interesting. Art as poetry, painting, ceramics, sculpture, design, music or film is necessary in my life. My life has been blessed with abundance.