{"id":9231,"date":"2017-11-29T01:37:36","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T01:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.wescover.com\/?p=404"},"modified":"2023-04-09T13:55:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-09T13:55:17","slug":"see-like-leah-color-its-an-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/29\/see-like-leah-color-its-an-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"See Like Leah: Color, It\u2019s an Experience…"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one uses color quite as intentionally as Leah Rosenberg<\/a>: Interdisciplinary Artist and Creative Director of the recent The Color Factory. We met at\u00a0The Progress<\/a>, San Francisco (sister to the legendary State Bird Provisions<\/a>) and discussed her perspective on color, creation, and all things Leah.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Leah<\/a>
Leah Rosenberg. A featured creator on Wescover.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rosenberg is honest, meticulous, and explorative in the way that she brings color into a room. Before creating anything, she accounts for elements that already define a place and the experience of being there: city views from a certain window, specific hues on a sunny afternoon, and the shade of red on the muni bus that passes by at lunch. She finds her inspiration (and often palette) outside the studio. “I do walks collecting colors [from the given space] to try to connect with it. Resulting in a color-filled site-specific installation that could read as a landscape painting or a map of that place in an abstract way.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

When it comes time for her to work, whether it\u2019s a hanging painting or sculptural element, she injects her perception of the space into her creations to make them true to where they live. Through this process of survey, extraction, and expression, her works embody the spaces where they\u2019ll live and create a new experience within it. “I\u2019m a process-based artist. I want to show how a material builds up overtime\u2026whether that medium is cake, paint, screen printing, sculpture, and color is another one of those mediums.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Leah<\/a><\/h2>\n

Sitting at The Progress<\/em>, my gaze wanders between cement walls and wooden benches looking for design details.<\/h2>\n

I notice the space is heavily constructed. However, the interior is defined by earthy tones, natural light, and many artist\u2019s creations. I spot several bright and colorful pieces of art in very inconspicuous places: a bundle of paint sticks here, a stack of textiles there. I can immediately recognize that those bits and pieces were put there by Leah. She\u00a0thoughtfully points out that much of the design of the space was made by chefs Stuart + Nicole Brioza, with interior design by Oakland-based Wylie Price<\/a>, and many unique wood features fabricated by Oakland-based Kelly Best.<\/p>\n

“I think the artists and fabricators that Stuart works with and who he includes on the walls in the restaurants is a testament to his vision and that your experience is not just the food you eat, but what you are surrounded by when you do.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"Paint<\/a>
Paint Sticks by Leah Rosenberg. As seen on Wescover.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"Leah<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Leah<\/a><\/p>\n

See who made what in The Progress >\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/pre>\n
As she shows me her works at The Progress<\/em><\/a>, the most illuminating lesson I learn from Leah is that color isn\u2019t a thing, it\u2019s an experience. Humans have a special relationship with color: seeing happens in our minds where it\u2019s muddled by memories, feelings, thoughts, and our imaginations. We all see the colors of the world differently. Artists like Leah, who work so intentionally with pigments, wield them like a magician…<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that’s a powerful thing– people’s association with colors…I love how stories can emerge from presenting a color we encounter every day and using it in a wall installation or serve it as food, how that might make us see those everyday moments more vividly.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When I stare at a gray wall, my mind drifts into the ocean\u2019s stormy horizon. When I see a gradient of primary colors, I\u2019m back in Orange County sharing a sunset. I\u2019ve learned to be afraid of rough seas and I’ve learned that shared sunsets are loving moments. I don\u2019t care for the color gray and I can\u2019t help feeling transfixed by golden-hour pink. After meeting Leah Rosenberg, I know a little more about how I color the world and how she uses art to reframe our impressions of these colors.<\/p>\n
Even if they don\u2019t know it, admirers of Leah’s works are forming new associations with color because of her. Every piece, every stripe, every step of the arrangement is an abstraction of her relationship with the space. And every time we visit a space, it takes on a new form as part of our individual experience too.<\/p>\n
The only sad part is that Leah, as many artists with public works, rarely see the impact they\u2019re making\u2014it\u2019s unconscious, slow, and growing. When she does get to interact with her fans, though, there\u2019s magic in those moments.<\/p>\n
“I think the Everyday a Color project<\/a> at Irving street Projects was an opportunity to really observe people\u2019s \/passerby\u2019s associations with color since I was painting the same walls a different color each day over the course of fifty days. I would give visitors a button of that day\u2019s color, evidence they had been there. \u00a0A little boy who lived upstairs would come by every day after school to collect that day\u2019s button, until he had them all. One day he came down with a plate of rainbow chip cookies and all the buttons he had collected pinned to his jacket. Later when I visited, he told me he painted his bedroom the color of the sea! I make the things and I don’t have an expectation of their reactions but it definitely fuels me and I think if art can keep us connected like this, then yay for art.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A few weeks later dejavu strikes as I walk past a set of orange stripes. I pause to think if I\u2019ve seen the painting before, surely it\u2019s a Rosenberg but I haven\u2019t been here before\u2026 just as suddenly I see they\u2019ve just echoed the blur of a passing muni bus. Genius. In this moment I realize that when we see the world from a new perspective, we lead more colorful lives.<\/p>\n
\"Leah<\/a><\/p>\n
Spot something of Leah’s you love? Say something! Send us your impressions so we can let her know.\u00a0<\/em>Email Ani: community@wescover.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No one uses color quite as intentionally as Leah Rosenberg: Interdisciplinary Artist and Creative Director of the recent The Color Factory. We met at\u00a0The Progress, San Francisco (sister to the legendary State Bird Provisions) and discussed her perspective on color, creation, and all things Leah. Rosenberg is honest, meticulous, and explorative in the way that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,1375,1372,1373],"tags":[242,243,100,244,245,246,247,248,249,162,250],"class_list":["post-9231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-categories","category-all-community","category-community","category-creators-sellers","tag-color","tag-creative-director","tag-creator-long-story","tag-everyday-a-color-project","tag-kelly-best","tag-leah-rosenburg","tag-paint-sticks","tag-stuart-nicole-brioza","tag-the-color-factory","tag-the-progress-2","tag-wylie-price"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11619,"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231\/revisions\/11619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wescover.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}