Coming up roses

NORWALK — Shakespeare said in Romeo and Juliet, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Her name is Julee Gross, and she loves roses, painting, planting, tending and teaching others how make their own. Julee started painting roses following the death of her mother, who "loved roses" and painting them has had a cathartic effect on her grief. "I started painting after I lost my mother about 8 years ago," she said. "I needed something to keep myself busy and my brother inspired me to start painting. "The reason I do roses is because roses were my mother's favorite flower," she continued. "She loved roses and butterflies, and I do paint a lot of butterflies too." Julee works with Artists' Open Studio, Inc., a nonprofit providing local adult artists with developmental disabilities a space to express themselves through art, specifically in painting and hand-built ceramics. The studio serves more than 40 artists with disabilities in the community and also maintains a steady waitlist of artists who are eager to participate. Along with supporting artists with disabilities through making, exhibiting, and selling their art in the community, the studio invites local artists to participate during open studio sessions. 'Prove them wrong' Julee has a unique, more than 50-year-old rose bush in her yard that came from the "old" family house, that her grandfather and father transplanted to her current home when she was a child. The bush didn't bear flowers for the first few years, and then one day the first buds opened and have produced flowers ever since. "No roses, no nothing," she said. "We thought we killed the rose bush and then one year we got roses and we still do." As she spoke about her background and art, she got emotional about the bond she shared with her late mother, as did everyone in attendance. "I get very emotional when I do roses because it reminds me of my mother," she said. Although her usual medium is acrylic paint on canvas, she was working on a collaborative mural on Friday that will eventually cover an inside wall at the studio depicting, fittingly, a field of flowers. When asked what advice she had for anyone who wanted to try to paint but was nervous or apprehensive about their ability, Julee had a defiant answer: "If people tell you that you can't do something, try harder and prove them wrong," she said. Seeing things differently Julee suffered a medical emergency this year that would have sidelined many artists, but the aforementioned defiance once again shone through. "I had a detached retina this year, it's getting better but it will never be completely alright," she said. "I had one surgery in February that didn't take, and another in April and that did, but the doctor told me I'm never going to get my eyesight completely back," she added. Her reply to the doctor's prognosis showed spunk and grit. "I said, 'Let me tell you something, I will see things differently than everybody else, but I'm not going to stop doing what I love,'" she said. "I love being with my friends and my painting and going to my sports events." Julee taught an art class on Mother's Day, fittingly teaching the students to paint red roses, an event she acknowledged was very emotional for her, but an experience she wants to repeat. "That was the first time I ever taught other people," she said. "I really enjoyed doing this." Julee then explained her painting technique and allowed a reporter to paint a rose on the mural — a single rose on a wall of flowers that will eventually be lost to the scale of hundreds of flowers, but the experience of meeting Julee will not be lost in the background. In her upbeat way, she described the reporter's final product, which appeared to be the singularly poorest flower on the wall: "That's very beautiful."