Joshua Rome was born in 1953 in Hartford, CT. and is the adopted son of Broadway composer-lyricist Harold Rome.
At the age of twenty-one, Rome moved to Japan with the hopes of studying Japanese cabinetry. Early on, he met the woodblock artist Clifton Karhu, who befriended Rome and took him on as an apprentice during which time he gained an appreciation for color and paper.
When his apprenticeship ended after three years, Rome continued his studies for another three years at the home of Kuroda Kenkichi, the son of Kuroda Tatsuaki, a Japanese national treasure of lacquer and cabinetry. Following the completion of his second apprenticeship, Rome focused for the next twenty years on creating woodblock landscapes depicting the rural mountains and changing society of Japan outside Kyoto.
Rome has had over seventy-five successful solo shows at premier galleries throughout Japan as well being a regular contributor to the College Women’s Association of Japan show, the premier exhibition of all print mediums in the Japanese print world. Rome has also had numerous solo shows in New York, Cleveland and San Francisco. His works are found in numerous collections including the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA, the British Museum, London, England, the New York Public Library, New York, USA and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
Joshua and his family returned from Japan in 1998 and now reside in Vermont, USA.
