BIOGRAPHY

“Duende,” a Spanish term that speaks of one’s ability to transmit profoundly felt emotions with a minimum of fuss and maximum of restraint, is the pivotal point of John Rozelle’s work.

A native of St. Louis, Missouri, John Rozelle holds a B.F.A. with major emphasis in painting and minor concentration in sculpture from Washington University and a M.F.A. in the same media from Fontbonne College. John Rozelle is currently tenured Associate Professor in the Drawing and Painting Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Prior to joining the Art Institute faculty he taught drawing, design, painting, and sculpture as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Fontbonne College. Rozelle has served on numerous occasions as curator, juror, and artist-in-residence for several exhibitions.  His twenty years of solo and group shows have included those in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.

A prolific painter and collagist, Rozelle has been awarded top honors and his work is housed among various corporate collections.  In 1990, he was recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His other awards include an international travel grant and Artist in Residency for research in West Africa by the Chicago Artist International Program of the Department of Fine Arts, City of Chicago. In 1989, he was an Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem.  He was awarded a Creative Artists Project Grant in 1988 by the Missouri Arts Council; he won “First Prize/Painting” and “First Prize/Best of Show” for his exhibits at the “Black Creativity” exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, in 1987 and 1985. In 1998, Rozelle was commissioned to install the Middle Passage Project at the 'Dred Scott Courthouse' in St Louis, MO. Since joining the faculty at the School of the Art Institute, he has been awarded four Faculty Enrichment grants along with a RAP Grant and a CAP Grant from local and regional organizations.

Corporate collectors include: Anheuser Busch, Citibank Corp., AT&T, Borg-Warner, Price Waterhouse, Saks Fifth Avenue, the Seven-Up Company, Ralston Purina, the Westin Hotels and ARCO. Museum collections include the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Margaret Harwell Museum, Spertus Museum of Jewish Studies, The Studio Museum in Harlem, California Afro-American Museum and The Museum of African American Art. John Rozelle’s work will join Ambassador Pamella Bridgewater in Cotonou, Benin for the duration of her foreign tour.

Jan Garden Castro critic for the Riverfront Times, wrote this about a 1995 exhibit:

“ Rozelle… crafts work with its own integrity, meaning, design and textures. His worldly yet personal drawings have the ease of draftsmanship one find from da Vinci to de Kooning, but resolutely grounded in an Afrocentric social conscience...” Jeff Daniel, critic for the St Louis Post-dispatch, wrote “…As a artist Rozelle seems to have zeroed in on this uncompromising balance, one which allows him to cite influences of all kinds without having to suppress personal and cultural history. His intricate collages, products of a fertile imagination and a skilled hand appeal to us not because they are from the mind of a black artist; they appeal to us solely on the grounds that they come from a gifted artist…”