Untitled, Lace Series (2012), Betty Ross

Betty Ross was a pillar of the arts community in Colorado Springs. She worked as an artist for over fifty years as a painter until her death in 2021. She and her husband Murray founded Theatreworks, the in-house Ent Center theater company, where she worked for four decades as a costume designer. This painting, which is part of the UCCS permanent collection, was hand-picked by Ross for display here, in the lobby which bears her name.  

Influences of her costume design experience can be seen through the incorporation of fabric scraps in her Lace Series. Collages made up a notable portion of her artistic practice. She found inspiration in the cut paper collages of Henri Matisse, scraps of costume fabric, and personal ties to Romania. Former UCCS professor of Art History, Joanna Roche, identified Ross’s parent’s fond memories of working in Romania and Ross’ own visit as significant to “her art of scrounge and improvisation.” (As cited in Democratic Vistas publication, 2017) 

Betty Ross was featured in a major retrospective exhibition at the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art in 2017, the final exhibition in the historic campus gallery before moving to the new Ent Center for the Arts. She exhibited locally at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, at the Sangre de Christo Arts and Conference Center in Pueblo, was a member of Spark Gallery in Denver, and won awards in Taos, Kansas City, and Loveland.

Audio by Abigail Kopetzky, for the Galleries of Contemporary Art at UCCS, 2023.