Gloria F. Ross worked with
approximately thirty prominent artists from 1965 to 1996 and
orchestrated at least one hundred tapestry designs, woven as single
panels or in editions of five to seven. These efforts created more than
four hundred individual tapestries. Her professional efforts resulted in a unique
American version of the European studio tradition of tapestry making by
specialists. In addition to the woven tapestries, a fascinating array of
unpublished letters, contracts, sketches, invoices, photographs and
other materials will eventually become available for research and exhibition.
Artists who designed Gloria F. Ross
Tapestries and appear in the files include Milton Avery, Romare Bearden,
Stuart Davis, Helen Frankenthaler (Ross’s sister), Robert Goodnough,
Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Paul Jenkins, Robert Motherwell, Louise
Nevelson, Kenneth Noland, Larry Poons, Frank Stella, Ernest Trova, Jack
Youngerman, among others. Tapestry weavers include Archie Brennan and
members of the Dovecot Studios (Edinburgh, Scotland), the Pinton
Manufacture (Aubusson, France), and six Native American weavers from the
American Southwest—Mary Lee Begay, Irene Clark, Sadie Curtis, Rose
Owens, Ramona Sakiestewa, and Martha Terry (Arizona and New Mexico).
Navajo weaver Susie Dale and Gloria Ross
Gloria F. Ross Tapestries, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1980
The GFR Center for Tapestry Studies
presently houses about thirty-five linear feet of documentary materials
on loan from the Gloria F. Ross estate and bequeathed to the
Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art in Washington, DC. These
documents provide unparalleled resources for understanding the
collaborative tapestry-making process and form the focus of our current
curation project. With University of Arizona student assistance, we are
cataloguing and scanning materials for future research projects.
