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  Barry Rose - Artist Biography
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        As one looks back upon their youth, the beginnings of personality traits and proclivities are quite apparent from quite early on. I recall attending a “Hat Day” festivity at my elementary school with a 3 foot model of an aircraft carrier, complete with toy planes and gun bays, so heavy that I could barely keep it on my head. Being left to my own devices a great deal when a child, led to another telling “incident”. When my father and mother returned home after a long summer day, they discovered that the back yard had been converted into a miniature golf course, complete with ramps, buildings and water hazards. At least my father said, “Well, let’s play a couple of rounds before you clean it up.” I was naturally creative, just to entertain myself, like most kids of my generation who spent the summers largely free of supervision. (As parents of that time were largely free of the fears contemporary parents face.)
     I guess there is a hereditary factor to my love of making things. This may conjure allusions to the enigmatic “rosebud” ending to Citizen Kane, but the only time I can remember my Granpa smiling was in a photograph of him in front of a beautifully detailed wooden radio case he had created. In the background is a stack of Bauhaus style bent wood chairs he was producing for sale. His workshop was full of smells and textures and things in various stages of being made. The finished objects didn’t stay long, but the  wonderful tools, many of them hand made, did and were ever present invitations to make something. To this day, I make many of my own tools specific to the job at hand. My father was an architect by trade, and I grew up pocheing (filling in his drawings with squiggly lines,dots and such to indicate wood, concrete or other materials) for my allowance. And so, here I remain today, long after they are both gone, creating things with my mind, drawing them on paper and building them with my hands. Here I am making doodads and geegaws in the manner of architectural details and artwork as my profession.
     I was fortunate to attend G.W. High School where I studied the ceramic arts under Mark Zamantakis. Besides his great artistic influence on me (he remains a mentor), his general influence may have been greater. I can recall him as my favorite teacher because there were obviously things that he deemed more important, in the larger scheme of things, than his class or even his profession, a wonderful thing to learn at that age. I went on to study art at the U. of Washington, Seattle, and finished my studies at the U. of Colorado, Boulder. I left C.U. when I received my first commission to create a large bas relief mural for the lobby of the Executive Tower Inn, in Denver, in 1973. And I have never looked back, except perhaps occasionally to write a brief biography.
     I will let my pictures tell the rest of the story, save for the facts that I am married to a wonderful woman, Debra Nielson, and have two wonderful grown children, Nathan and Ariel Rose. And, that I feel very lucky to have parlayed a modicum of talent into a successful art career by means of hard work. The same as any other self employed person, or entrepreneur, such as my father and grandfather.