At 93, Arti Grover steps into the spotlight with her first major art exhibition

At age 93 — soon to be 94 — Arti Grover is finally doing something she has rarely allowed herself to do: share her art with the world.

The Long Island Arts Council at Freeport is presenting a sweeping exhibition of Grover’s sculpture, carving and figurative work at the Art Alcove in the Freeport Recreation Center for the month of December.

The show spans half a century of creativity, from early clay figures to masterful pieces shaped from alabaster, wood and bronze. A public reception will be held on Dec. 11, from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

For Grover, born Rosemarie Terzi in Little Neck in 1932, the exhibition is both a homecoming and a revelation. Although she has been a sculptor for decades, most of her pieces have lived only in her home and in the hands of her family.

“I’m excited,” she wrote in an email. “I’ve mostly kept my artwork within the family and at home, so this exhibition is something new for me. I want to thank the Long Island Arts Council at Freeport — especially Robyn Workman, who made this show happen, and Larry Dresner, the Executive Director, who mounted the show beautifully.”

Workman, the treasurer at the Long Island Arts Council at Freeport, who curated the exhibition, said she felt it was long overdue.

“I am so glad that we are getting a chance to share Arti Grover’s artwork with the community,” she wrote in a text message. “She has been a part of Freeport’s Nautical Mile history for so many years. But few people know what a talented artist she is. I am so glad that she is finally being celebrated in her own right. Thank you to the Long Island Arts Council at Freeport for recognizing Rosemarie Grover.”

Dresner echoed that praise. “She is an amazingly versatile artist who creates in painting, sculpting and wood carving,” he said of Grover.

A fire that started with a bar of soap

Grover’s artistic beginnings were humble — and, as she recalls, a little disastrous.

Her earliest memory is of a first-grade soap-carving assignment that went terribly wrong. “I simply wanted to compete, to keep up, and to make things as beautiful as my classmates,” she recalled. “When I was in grade school, I used to take small bits of clay and shape them into tiny figures, then hide them in my dresser. I never showed those little sculptures to anyone.”

That spark of determination would follow her to Syracuse University, where she studied fine arts at the height of Modernism. 

“Artists I admired made me realize that, beyond color, depth was essential — light, shadow and dimension were what truly brought a work to life,” she said. Her professors pushed her to work bigger, think bolder, and study the emotional charge of pattern- and mark-making.

In 1953, she married Albert Dean Grover and became a force behind Al Grover’s Marine — a full-service marina in Freeport, NY, offering boat sales, in-water dockage, and indoor high-and-dry storage — helping run the business, conceptualizing its branding, and even naming the Nautical Mile.

“Although I never studied advertising, the techniques I learned in fine arts translated naturally into my work promoting the Freeport waterfront,” she said.

She also recalled that those same skills aligned with her natural inclination for order. “I had a knack for systems, too,” she said. “In school, aptitude tests suggested I go into business management. I didn’t want that at the time, but in the end, it’s exactly what I wound up doing for Freeport.” 

Her connection to the village runs deep.

“After seven decades of living here, sharing my artwork with this community feels very special,” Grover said. “I adored the fishermen and the waterfront characters — I felt connected to them.”

A lifetime of creating, and a force that still pulls her in

Over the years, Grover has sculpted family members, friends, professional models and imagined figures. “My children and my husband were my first subjects,” she said. “I wanted to make copies of them so I could keep them close to me.”

Some works demanded everything she had.

She remembered carving a carousel horse: “I felt completely overtaken by the need to finish it,” she recounted. “Even when I cut myself, I hid the injury so I could keep going. Nothing else mattered. I worked in a kind of trance — something almost mystical. I often feel possessed when I’m making art. I can’t explain it, but I lose myself completely in the work.”

Her creative life, once quiet, now stands proudly on public display. 

On Dec. 11, Freeport will get to meet not just a person who helped shape the Nautical Mile’s early identity, but the artist she always was.