The Storycatcher by Rosy Petri

The Storycatcher: Zora Neale Hurston, batik and wax print fabric stretch over canvas, 48×24 inches, 2021.

Oracles

“I have been in sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.”

-Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

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, Northwestern Mutual’s Giving Gallery, African American Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee County Courthouse. She is represented by Calabar Gallery.