By Elmer Ploetz

Jerry Ross and Diane Bush may have been best known in Buffalo as student radicals during the days of rebellion in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but their most lasting legacies may be as artists. The brother and sister, born Jerry Gross and Diane Gross, each have artwork exhibited in  the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s “The Unseen: Works from the Collection.” 

For Ross, it’s his painted portrait of Martin Sostre, the black dissident who was jailed and later granted clemency, after he opened a radical black bookstore on Buffalo’s east side (the conviction was for drug charges, for which the main witness later recanted his testimony). For Bush, it’s her  “Make a Merkin Great Again,” a satirical mixed-media project that includes hand-spun cat fur, veteran flag frames and paint, according to the gallery. A merkin is a pubic wig; the ones for this project were spun out from cat – pussy – fur. 

She shares credit with her husband, Steven Baskin, who came up with the concept. 

“Now I just [had] to make 26, one for each sexual harassment accuser that Trump has abused over the years,” she said in a press release when the Burchfield Penney acquired it. 

 Both siblings have had active art lives over the past 50 years. Bush started out as a photographer and has a Master of Fine Arts in photography from the University at Buffalo. Her work has always maintained an activist edge, but in the current millennium she has moved toward textiles.

Bush does one project for each presidential election cycle. Her current work is called “Sew to Speak.” She said, “What I’m doing now for this election is an embroidery project where I’m embroidering vintage handkerchiefs with silly slogans. Every month I do another handkerchief,” she said.  

Bush is scheduled to have a one-person show of her photography at CEPA in Buffalo in 2026 that will include photos of Buffalo’s Theatre District and Main Street from around the time the transit/subway system was being built over 40 years ago. She had a solo exhibition at the Burchfield Penney In 2006, “Talking Pictures,” as part of the series, “24/12.”

Ross, meanwhile, has had his greatest successes in Italy. He said his style has been described as “American Verismo,” an adaptation of Italian Verismo, a 19th century painting style rising from the Macchiaioli group of painters LINK who foregrounded Impressionism (yes, this writer had to look that up). 

“It’s a painting style that combines impressionism with some political consciousness,” Ross said. “The Macchiaioli were artists around 1865 that fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi.  Before the unification of Italy, these were very political artists who hung out at Cafe Michelangelo in Florence.”

You can check out his style at his website. 

He’s had about a dozen exhibitions in Italy, and dozens more in the Pacific Northwest, where he has lived for most of the last 50 years. There is one thing that might bring Ross back to Buffalo. He has never had a career retrospective of his paintings to this point, and at age 80, he would love to see that.