Artist Rosemarie Ferraro Michmerhuizen will display her work during the month of July in the Wotiz Gallery.  Her collages have been highly praised for their originality, evocative depth, and emotional range. 

Raised as one of 7 children in an Italian-American family in New Haven, CT, Ms. Ferraro became an RN and was for many years a circulating nurse in the operating room at the Hospital of St. Raphael there. “I grew up in New Haven’s little Italy,” she says.  “My father worked all his life.  So did my brothers, and the extended family around me, and all of our neighbors.  I respect and praise them, and I remember well the schools and the churches of my childhood.”

She has created collages, drawings, dramatic works, and storybooks for more than forty years.  Until 2003 Ms. Ferraro exhibited rarely; her work was only known to family and friends.  In September of that year she exhibited at Church of Our Saviour in Brookline, MA.  Since then she has been awarded two first prize ribbons at Boston City Hall, and has exhibited at Artists-At-Large gallery in Hyde Park, the Cohasset Art Center, the Curran Family Gallery in West Roxbury, Cafe Cantata in Jamaica Plain, and the Menino Room of the Hyde Park Public Library.

Since 2005 she has been a regular participant in the Hyde Park Open Studios exhibitions.  In December of 2007, her second exhibit at Church of Our Saviour raised funds for Dr. Barbra McCune in Honduras.  With her husband Jim and daughter Kate and her family, she lives in Hyde Park, Massachusetts.

Rosemarie says about her work: “My first collage was provoked by the damage of the 1966 floods in Florence, Italy.  Images of the devastation in the art world were heart-wrenching.  One, the interior of a damaged church, called out to me.  I cut it out, and assembled it, with other images, into a new image, my first collage…”  For more information, go to ferraropiecework.zenfolio.com or contact Jean Hlady, Adult Services Librarian.