I am a left-handed Aquarian art-maker in the tradition of some of history’s most zealous artists. My studio is never without works-in-progress in progress. Currently one would see a nine-foot tall aluminum column in the works.

Mystery also surrounds this large brick studio behind my house in Jersey City [originally a 1919 small factory manufacturing the optical components of surveyor equipment] where a stockpile of traditional tools and sketchpads may be found amidst any number of things from dragon fly wings to miniature plastic cows. Smaller works are also gestating. Found objects are waiting to find their place somewhere in the myriad of small aluminum and glass works in progress. My treasures are often gathered from human discards on the street and nature’s refuse found along back country roads.

New York City raised me. Dyslexia prevented me from reading at an early age. To compensate, my mother introduced me to a non-reading voice: working with clay from age nine to eighteen: I half lived in the art school of the Brooklyn Museum.

My college junior year was spent abroad studying sculpture at the Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux Arts where I lived the Paris life of an art student. Back in the States, I set my sights on continuing my fine art studies in the graduate school at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. To pay for this part of my education, I worked as a Youth Parole Officer in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood.

In 1971 I became a tenured professor at New Jersey City University, got married and became a father. This provided an economic and emotional stability enabling me to seriously pursue my creative work. Becoming a father and then primarily a single parent has been and continues to be a powerfully dynamic and constantly changing phenomenon. When my son was ten years old he accompanied me on a round-the-world tour exhibition of my work. Submerging ourselves into exotic cultures introduced the unexpected into our lives that has enabled both of us to embrace opportunities that have crossed our paths.

We built a cabin/studio in the woods of Cape Breton Island where, since 1974, we have spent every summer without electricity and modern plumbing which brought us closer in other ways.

Becoming a grandfather has added another dimension to my journey,

Throughout my career I have embraced many innovative and inventive solutions in teaching as well as in my artwork. Please, take a look at the INNOVATIVE TECHNIQUES section of the website to see the evidence of this variety of visual creative approaches.

- Herb Rosenberg