Appraised: Rosemary Summers Is a Trailblazer in Black Art and Fashion

Fine artist and designer Rosemary Summers grew up knowing she had a special gift. Her parents raised her to believe she could do anything. “This ignited a flame in me and created a strong curiosity for the unusual and extraordinary designs in just about everything,” Summer says. That seed of confidence bloomed into her fulfilling and successful career.

Detroit-born and raised, Summers has humble beginnings. She started her creative endeavors at a young age and first expressed her artistic talent through an unconventional medium. “Brown paper bags were my canvas to draw abstract lines, figures, and fashions,” she says. Summers cites the unique knick-knacks, like colorful stones and old books her father would find at his work sites as a public sanitation worker and bring home to her, as some of her earliest sources of inspiration.

Summers went on to study at Michigan State University’s College of Human Ecology, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Retailing of Clothing and Textiles in 1976. Between graduating from Michigan State and later receiving her Masters of Art degree from Eastern Michigan in 1990, she painted murals, hosted fashion shows, taught art and crafts to youth, and even started a jewelry line. Summers’s work has won numerous state awards over the years and has designed pieces for legendary stars, including Gladys Knight and Eartha Kitt, cementing her position as a trailblazer in Black fashion and art.

Currently, Summers is best known for her vibrant and bold acrylic paintings representing Black beauty and culture in a unique, often abstract way. Summers’s most notable pieces depict Black faces and bodies presented in a way to celebrate Black features, like different hairstyles and skin tones, and Black fashion.

As of 2023, Summers’s paintings are distributed through Detroit Metropolitan area-based company Umoja Fine Arts, and her pieces are available for viewing and sale on the Umoja website and in-person at their showroom in Southfield, Michigan.