Where the Work Starts: Pearl and Paper
A Stef Ross Pearl is built backward. Before a single pearl reaches the front of the canvas, she has already strung hundreds of Czech glass pearls, chosen for their weight, finish, shine, and color, into a wired lattice on the back of a custom, wood-backed canvas. "The back of the design is like art in itself," she has said of the process. "You can see the intricate string work and intense workings of the complex wiring design." The pieces need no frame and no glass between viewer and surface. "I love art that welcomes, brings you in and makes you want to touch it," she has said, and she means it literally: run your fingers through the pearls.
The Pearl Collection takes two primary forms, Pearl Hearts (roughly 18 by 20 inches) and Pearl Letters (roughly 13 by 17 inches), each signed on the back and sold with a certificate of authenticity.
Her Floral Works run in the opposite direction, outward instead of in. Walking through the blooming gardens near her Chicago home, Ross developed City Flowers, an evolution of her earlier City Lights series, built from a custom canvas, paint, thousands of pins, hand-crafted paper flowers, rhinestones, and sequins. In her words, it "combines contemporary and traditional, with elegance and glam," taking the most familiar subject in art history and rebuilding it at a density that reads as sculpture as much as painting. A quieter, monochromatic counterpart within the same body of work strips the palette down to white blooms with rhinestone centers, built for rooms that call for restraint rather than color.
Both bodies of work ask the same thing of a viewer: look twice. What reads as glamour or whimsy from across a room turns out, up close, to be built from thousands of individually placed elements.
Who Is Stef Ross?
Born in 1977 in Grand Blanc, Michigan, Ross grew up an All-American swimmer before studying at Miami University and going to work at Deloitte. None of that reads like the résumé of an artist headed for gallery walls in Miami and Houston, and that is the point worth sitting with. She did not train through an MFA pipeline into the gallery system. She built a following first, largely on Instagram (@stefrossart), then brought galleries to her.
She is based in Chicago now, where she is also raising four children, ages 15 through 18. Her own description of her intent is direct: "I like to make the type of art that's easy to love...art that welcomes, is beautiful, wows and makes you feel good." That is not a mission statement written for a press kit. It is a fair description of what the work actually does.
The Series
Ross works across several named bodies of work, most sharing an underlying method: a custom canvas built up with thousands of individually placed pins, then finished in paper, pearls, rhinestones, or gems.
City Lights. Her earliest and most personal series, drawn from the view outside her bedroom window: the glimmering, ever-changing lights of downtown Chicago. "I always feel the energy the lights bring and the opportunity that the lights symbolize," she has said. Built from a custom canvas, thousands of pins, paper, rhinestones, and sequins.
Floral Works (City Flowers). An evolution of City Lights, inspired by the blooming gardens in her neighborhood. Built from a custom canvas, paint, thousands of pins, hand-crafted paper flowers, rhinestones, and sequins, with a monochromatic, all-white counterpart built for spaces that call for a quieter palette.
Pearl Collection (Pearl Hearts, Pearl Letters). Hand-strung sculptures built from hundreds of Czech glass pearls mounted to a wood-backed canvas, meant to be touched rather than viewed behind glass.
Hand Beaded Series. Archival paper hand-embellished with tens of thousands of individually placed rhinestones, crystals, and pearls, shadow-box framed. Carousel Fine Art holds Black Tie Pool Party (2021) from this series, embellished with more than 10,000 gems.
Lite Brite. Two years in development, a sculptural reinterpretation of the childhood toy built from chain links, available in customizable colors and sizes.
Fashion and pop culture run through all of it. This is sculptural, wall-based work made for rooms people actually live in, not didactic conceptual pieces made for a museum wall text. That distinction matters for interior designers weighing scale, color, and texture against a room's existing palette.
Where Stef Ross Shows and Sells
Ross is represented by galleries across United States. She also runs a direct-to-collector shop, selling limited edition prints, collector boxes, and custom work.
Carousel Fine Art has access to all series and custom commisions.
That three-gallery-plus-DTC structure is unusual for an artist without a formal solo museum show yet on her CV. It signals a market built bottom-up through visibility and demand rather than top-down through institutional validation, and it means collectors have real choice in how they enter: a limited edition print at one price point, or a hand-gemmed original through a gallery at another.
Her fair and exhibition history includes CONTEXT Art Miami (2021, 2022), Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary (2022), Art Palm Beach with Carousel Fine Art (2023) and later with Art Angels (2025), and group shows at Laura Rathe Fine Art, including the gallery's 2026 "Lucky 13" anniversary exhibition and "Bling." Chicago collectors may also know her from "Not Your Mom's Dining Room," a show at NoMI Gallery inside the Park Hyatt Chicago.
Carousel Fine Art does not hold every series in gallery inventory at all times. Black Tie Pool Party from the Hand Beaded Series is currently available through the gallery, and Carousel can source additional work across Ross's full catalog, including City Lights, Floral Works, and the Pearl Collection, for interested collectors.
Why Interior Designers and New Collectors Look to Ross
Two reasons come up consistently. First, scale and color read well against contemporary interiors without requiring a neutral room to work; the pieces are built to hold their own. Second, the entry points are genuinely varied. A first-time collector can start with a limited edition print, while a designer sourcing a statement piece for a project can work through Carousel Fine Art toward a large-scale hand-gemmed original.
Neither path requires prior collecting experience to navigate. That accessibility, paired with the craft underneath it, is what keeps her market moving.
FAQ
Who is Stef Ross? Stef Ross is an American multidisciplinary artist, born in 1977 in Grand Blanc, Michigan, based in Chicago. She creates modern, sculptural contemporary work inspired by fashion and pop culture.
What is Stef Ross's Pearl Collection? The Pearl Collection is a body of hand-strung sculptural work built from hundreds of Czech glass pearls mounted to a wood-backed canvas. It includes two primary forms: Pearl Hearts (roughly 18 by 20 inches) and Pearl Letters (roughly 13 by 17 inches).
What is Stef Ross's Floral Works series? Floral Works, including City Flowers, uses thousands of pins to anchor hand-cut paper flowers, rhinestones, and sequins to custom canvases. It is an evolution of her earlier City Lights series and also includes a monochromatic, all-white variation.
What is Stef Ross's City Lights series? City Lights is Ross's earliest series, inspired by the view of downtown Chicago from her bedroom window, built from a custom canvas, thousands of pins, paper, rhinestones, and sequins.
Does Carousel Fine Art carry Stef Ross's Hand Beaded Series? Yes. Carousel Fine Art holds "Black Tie Pool Party" (2021), an archival paper work hand-embellished with more than 10,000 gems and shadow-box framed.
Where can I see or buy Stef Ross's art? Ross is represented by Carousel Fine Art (Miami and Atlanta), Laura Rathe Fine Art (Houston and Dallas), and Art Angels (Los Angeles), and she sells limited edition prints and collector boxes directly through stefross.com. Carousel can also source work across her full catalog for collectors.
Has Stef Ross had a solo museum exhibition? Not yet. Her exhibition history to date is built through gallery representation, group shows, and art fairs, including CONTEXT Art Miami, Art Palm Beach, and Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary.
The Craft Behind the Sparkle
Every Stef Ross piece asks to be looked at twice. The pearls read as glamour until the wirework holding them in place comes into view. The paper flowers read as whimsy until someone counts the pins. And underneath the sculptural pearl work and the paper gardens is a detail most collectors only learn once they ask: some of Ross's paint is still tempera she makes herself, from eggs laid by chickens she keeps at home. The materials have gotten more refined. They never stopped being handmade.
Contact the gallery to view available work or arrange a private viewing.
