Headshot taken by Kendra Drake, 2024
ARTIST BIO
Jazzee Rozier is an emerging artist raised and based in Cleveland, OH. Rozier spends a lot of their time researching and reiterating philosophical ideas on coping with emotions, relationships, and strong undertones of survival through the ‘American Dream’. They take a lot of inspiration from their surroundings and the people they interact with; taking walks, listening to music, and keeping an active sketchbook act as key components to this inside creative process. Considering a familial theme and broad ideas of separation/individualism, tragic optimism, and documentation, Rozier implements printmaking, drawing, sewing, written poetry, and photography as chosen techniques to display this angst. As an artist who spends a lot of time practicing existing within communities and actively showing up for them, Rozier showcases a lot of their artworks within various art galleries, exhibitions, and even curating shows for the involvement of others. One way or another, the drive behind their studio practice is strongly rooted in any means of including the world that keeps moving outside of their own personal experience.
Rozier has received awards such as the Helen Greene Perry Travel Scholarship (2025), Zygote PROOF Fellowship artist residency (2025), Creativity Works Award Program (2024) —where Jazzee exhibited their first solo show at Cleveland’s LGBT Center titled Sing About Lesbians, I’m Dying of Thirst, and the Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Family Scholarship (2021-25). Their work has been featured in various group exhibitions such as the 79th Annual Student Independent Exhibition with the Cleveland Institute of Art, The Nature of Healing (ongoing) group exhibition with the Deep Roots Experience, Ready, Set, Relay! a class collaboration with the Progressive Art Collection, and Back in the Dayz, CIA’s annual black history month show for the Black Scholars and Artists club.
CV
EDUCATION
2025 BFA, Drawing, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2023-2025 Studio Assistant, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2024 Drawing Guide, Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH
2023 Table Vendor, Coventry Village Juneteenth Celebration, Cleveland, OH
Table Vendor, Larchmere PorchFest, Cleveland, OH
Chalk Mural Artist, Cleveland Museum of Art Chalk Fest, Cleveland, OH
Marketing/Content Editor, Cleveland Museum of Art Chalk Fest, Cleveland, OH
AWARDS/GRANTS/FELLOWSHIPS
2025 Artist in Residence, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
Zygote PROOF Fellowship, Zygote Press, Cleveland, OH
Helen Greene Perry Travel Scholarship, President's Traveling Scholarships, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland OH
2021-2025 CIA Gund Family Scholarship, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
CIA Grant, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
Ohio College Opportunity Grant, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
Joseph and Algesa O’Sickey Scholarship, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2023-2024 Creativity Works Program, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
EXHIBITIONS
2025 The 2nd Annual ACTLOCLE Online Juried Art Exhibition, ACTLOCLE, Cleveland, OH
Outlined in Black, Akron Soul Train, Akron, OH
Bare My Soul, Norwest Gallery, Detroit, MI
Tragic Optimism: This structure holds me up, but God please just let me fall one time, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
The Nature of Healing, Cleveland Botanical Garden, Cleveland, OH
Student Independent Exhibition (SIE) ‘79, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
Back in the Dayz, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
Love, Sex, & the Body, Hildebrandt Artist Collective, Cleveland, OH
2024 Is It Because I’m Me/BLACK!!?, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
I Won’t Touch Grass, Negative Space Gallery, Cleveland, OH
Ready, Set, Relay, Progressive Insurance Campus One, Cleveland, OH
A Real Job, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
Sing About Lesbians, I’m Dying of Thirst, LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland, Cleveland, OH
2023 Don’t Get Me Started, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
In Our Skin, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
Street HeART Gala, Human HeART Studios, Cleveland, OH
2021 Art Show at the Gallery, The Selfie Gallery, Cleveland, OH
COMMISSIONS
2024 Animation Mural, WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT YOUR QUEERNESS?, LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland, Cleveland, OH
2023 Drawing Commission, Portrait of bell hooks, colored pencil drawing (9" x 12") on white
Canson paper, Cleveland, OH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2025 HF&G Website, The Nature of Healing, Experience the transformative power of art and nature; https://holdenfg.org/attractions/cleveland-botanical-garden/the-nature-of-healing/
CAN Journal Winter 2024-2025, Local, National and Student Art Celebrated at CIA; https://canjournal.org/local-national-and-student- art-celebrated-at-cia/
2024 Cleveland Institute of Art, Ctrl + S Lit Magazine
Cleveland Institute of Art press release, Sing About Lesbians I’m Dying of Thirst; https://www.cia.edu/exhibitions/sing-about-lesbians-im-dying-of-thirst/
2023 Cleveland Institute of Art, Link Summer 2023: Building Community, June 9, 2023; https://www.cia.edu/files/newsletters/22-23summerlinkmagazinenocrop.pdf