Kay Rosen has spent her career exploring the visual potential of language. She was born and grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas (1943). The bi-lingual culture of south Texas and other languages spoken by some family members inspired her attraction to languages which she studied academically until 1968, when she shifted her attention to language-based art. Through paintings, drawings, murals, prints, collages, and videos, Rosen has sought to generate new meaning from everyday words and phrases by substituting scale, color, materials, composition, graphic design, and typography for the printed page.

Rosen’s work has been the subject of numerous articles, reviews, and group and solo exhibitions and projects worldwide, including a survey show of her work in 1998 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Otis College of Art Design, and in 2023-2024 at the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art in Bremen, Germany. Rosen taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for twenty-four years. She lives and works in New York City and Gary, Indiana.

LL’Editons is currently working on a forthcoming artist’s book with Kay Rosen, due for release in 2024.