Rosy Petri is a self-taught fiber artist fusing printmaking, photography, and multimedia storytelling. Petri create contemporary iconography seasoned with Black history, music, and culture. Part autobiography, part documentary, the work is about self-discovery, history, and radical Black Joy. It is important for her to acknowledge that her ancestors are the descendants of the survivors of the Middle Passage. Petri's work is intended to honor the ancestors (known and forgotten) by carrying on cultural traditions as they have manifested in her life. The work is an offering of rhythm, color, and celebration for them.
Rosy Petri is a mother, self-taught artist, and storyteller from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her multidisciplinary works fuse fabric portraiture, multimedia storytelling, and illustration as an act of witness. In 2021, Petri served as the inaugural Artist in Residence at the bell hooks center at Berea College. In 2020, she was selected as a Mary L Nohl Emerging Artist Fellow and a Mildred L. Harpole Artist of the Year from the City of Milwaukee Arts Board. In 2019, as the 11th Pfister Artist in Residence, Petri created a space to celebrate creative traditions of the African diaspora. Petri was a Milwaukee Artist Resource Network mentee under artist Della Wells. Petri’s work can be viewed in several prestigious collections, including the bell hooks Center at Berea College, the Pfister Hotel, Hunger Task Force, Northwestern Mutual’s Giving Gallery, African American Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee County Courthouse.
