Born and raised in Michigan, Jennifer Rosseter received a BFA with honors from Kendall College of Art and Design, with an Illustration emphasis. Rosseter is a primarily self-taught ceramic artist, and award winning graphic designer and illustrator currently residing in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

Her professional background includes working as an art director, designer, and illustrator for creative agencies throughout Michigan and operating a boutique design firm, Image Creative Group, for over 25 years. Having spent much of her youth attending Saturday classes at the Toledo Museum of Art, and many hours wandering through the extensive Egyptian collection, I am influenced by the animals and stylized simplicity of Egyptian art forms.

Artist Statement

“My ceramic work is shaped by a career as an award winning art director, graphic designer, and illustrator. Years of designing with inks on paper have honed my sensitivity to surface, layering, and the impact of nuance. I bring this design experience to the clay surface—employing bright colors and textures, celebrating the opposition of unglazed and glazed surfaces, using controlled glazing to reveal underpaintings and subtle transparencies, and sometimes adding lusters or precious metal leaf—to create tactilely inviting and visually seductive surfaces.

My current work explores the idea of Curious Beasts—imaginary animal guardians that exist as totems and sentinels, keeping careful watch over the spaces they inhabit. These beasts are abstractions of the natural world, distilled and reimagined from the essence of animals both familiar and fantastical.

Each vessel or sculpture is meticulously hand-built and layered with vibrant, graphic surfaces, where color and pattern become as much a language as the form itself. The eyes—whether singular, paired, or multiplied—serve as portals of presence, piercing in their gaze and unrelenting in their attention. They are the anchors of the work, suggesting awareness, vigilance, and an almost mystical connection to the environments they protect.

By merging playfulness with intensity, these Curious Beasts embody both wonder and watchfulness. They ask the viewer to consider the unseen energies that surround us, the guardians we imagine, and the possibility that these protectors can take shape in the creatures of our own making.

My work remains design driven, reflecting a lifelong practice of distilling complex ideas into bold, memorable forms, alongside a deep admiration for the natural world that inspires them.”