Two-Toed Sloth

Roberta Everett

Roberta Everett's lithographic compositions appear to have focused on exotic animal life, likely sketched at the zoo. This "Two-Toed Sloth" is seen hanging from a tree branch by its powerful claws, as it appears to be getting ready for a nap.

According to the San Diego Zoo: "In a nutshell, sloths are slow-moving, nocturnal creatures that spend almost their entire life upside down in the trees. They eat, sleep, mate, and give birth from this position hanging high among the branches. Sloths are the only mammals whose hair grows in the opposite direction from the hair of other mammals. To accommodate their upside-down lifestyle, the hair parts in the middle of the belly and grows upward toward the back. The hair on the face points upward, too. This allows water to run off during rainstorms!. and: "Due to the low nutritional value of their leafy diet, sloths usually move at a leisurely pace and sleep a great deal. They sleep 15 to 18 hours per day and (slowly) look for food at night. Even their innards move slowly, and some food items can take an entire month to digest! This slow metabolism helps sloths survive injuries that would kill other wildlife.

Roberta Grace Everett was born on 2 June 1911 in Cranford, New Jersey. Little information on her life is readily available, however, it is known that she attended college and studied with Lewis C. Daniel. She had her own lithography studio in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Everett exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 36th Annual Water Color Exhibition in 1938, and at the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts that same year. The following year she was included in the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture Drawings and Prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as in the exhibition American Art Today at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Her lithograph Anteater is number 903 in the related catalogue and is illustrated on page 267. According to Who’s Was Who in American Art, her work was included in an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum in 1939.

Roberta Everett is represented in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Roberta Grace Everett died on 13 April 2007 in Allentown, Pennsylvania.