Leah Rosenberg
I recently completed a project Everyday, a color in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco. I painted the street-facing space—three walls, a chair, a desk and a square on the floor—a new color each day, masking off a stripe of the previous day’s color. I photographed a source, using it to produce a matching paint color. Traditionally, the painter works in the studio and then presents the painting. Everyday, a color became painting as performance, as the painting on view changed every day. The project asked, “Is it fifty paintings or one painting or fifty paintings that become one painting?” and then the painting disappears. Like a cake served and then eaten.
Over the course of the residency, I plan on sampling colors found around Kala Art Institute. Walking, riding my bike, leaving the grocery store, I might ask people I encounter, “What is your favorite color here, and why?” Collecting this information like a survey, I will transcribe the results into a color legend of the neighborhood, of the season, the people, over time. I would like to record the build-up of paint using video to create a moving stripe painting for the neighborhood and about the neighborhood.
Spanning painting, sculpture, installation and pastry, Leah Rosenberg’s work explores how color, form, flavor and arrangements affect human emotion. Using a process of accrual and layers, Rosenberg’s works personify how our experiences and memories accumulate, creating a piece with a vivid variety of color and texture. Rosenberg moved to San Francisco from Canada to pursue her MFA at the California College of Art, where she wrote her thesis on the artistic possibilities of cake. Rosenberg worked as the lead pastry chef for the rooftop coffee bar at SFMOMA where she applied her love of art, artists and cake-making to dream up desserts celebrating the museum’s work. Recent exhibitions include Happiness Is… (Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga), Pairings (Galleri Urbane, Dallas) and Bay Area Now 7 (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts).