ARTIST: Leah Rosenberg // FILMING: Jeff den Broeder // SOUND: Amber Cady // SUPPORT: from Guerra Paint + Pigment in NY, Minnesota Street Projects Foundation

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I started rolling the ball of paint on October 23, 2024   

I began by mixing up my special recipe of paint, then I would take it for a walk through the space, from front to back and then back to front. Then I let it dry. Then I’d come back and scrape and peel and roll. And repeat.

When my friend and collaborator Jeff den Broeder would come to the space to film, he would knock and I would open the door to let him in and realize it was daytime or night time, sunny or cloudy or rainy. When I was in here, I had no idea what it was out there. 

Amber Cady would come too and record sounds from the space as the ball was being made. It turns out the peeling up of paint is actually kind of a slithery sound. I mumbled in the space, screamed in the space, laughed in the space, ate in the space, danced in the space.  Cried more than once in the space. But mostly I mixed and poured and peeled and rolled and focused on growing this rubbery ball.

I felt, as the election approached, it was all I could do, somehow. It is what I had to do. It was what my body needed to do, and I was grateful for my body’s wisdom. 

The day after the election, I came in to roll the ball. I rolled it black. And then I rolled the next day and the next, through November. Slowly the color has been coming back. It is what I had to do.

Everyone who was aware about the ball asked the same question: “How big will it be?” “How big will it get” I worried that it was never going to be big enough. 

Those questions we just keep asking as we move through our lives. Will this be enough? Does what we’re doing matter? Why are we here? How do we make it bigger? How do we become better? There is no rest in this cavernous space. 

I thought about the myth of Sisyphus, who rolled his boulder up the hill and once to the top, was condemned to watch it roll back down only to start all over again. 

We are literally all existing on a ball, as far as we understand. Every/thing we do is a cycle: sleep, our days and lives go ‘round, a cycle. We just keep rolling. 

And then there comes a day when it’s time to stop. And when you stop, it’s over. Done. I am nearing the end of the making of this ball in this space. And when I do,  gravity will take its toll, flattening the bottom, stopping it from ever rolling again. The making of it will be over, but I will have the answer to the question of How Big Will It Be?

Like a lot of things in life, it turned out a lot smaller than I wanted. But it doesn’t matter in the end. I rolled the ball because I had to. I rolled the ball so it could be.

This series of newly commissioned color-focused films are experimental, process-based commentaries on ritual and recordation that build on Leah Rosenberg’s decade-long observational work of color collecting. Using inventively repetitious processes to accrue and layer color, Leah’s interdisciplinary practice of painting, sculpture, installation, food, video and performance is at once grounded, meditative, and playful.

SILENT FILMS

March 2020 - March 2021

AT A LOSS FOR WORDS is a series of films made at home with my phone, in pajamas, while sheltering in place. I spent some time last year thinking about the everyday at a time when every day felt the same. I needed to muster cheer and motivation in myself so I focused on finding it through making these films. But we were all grappling with the same uncertainty and deep emotion, so I hoped that others would find some necessary amusement in the films too. It was a solemn time, a confusing time, a lonely time, a creative time. Color had been my primary medium, a universal language that brings with it a joy, a delight. While I wasn't sure if a full spectrum of color had a place at this time, I knew we still needed (de)lightness. I started to look at my house in a way I never had, seeing all the scenarios and sets I could make with the same things I’d been using everyday. That attention to setting a scene inside took the same attention as my usual practice of looking for color out in the world. The films had to get made in the moment because the house had to go back to its functional form by the end of the day.

Making something visual to connect with an invisible audience, I wanted to offer some moments of laughter through a tearful time. “Humor heightens our sense of survival and preserves our sanity,” said Charlie Chaplin. Is it possible to make something that offers joy by using what is at hand and without relying on color? Is there something funny about vulnerability? Is it still art/Art if it lives online and is made in the home? Is music a replacement for color, setting a tone and telling a story? How many different scenarios could I create within the confines of my home? I asked myself these and other questions while dancing and gardening and boxing and practicing and pretending, at home for a year that felt like many. I made it for you. I made it for me. I made it because relief, it turns out, is enough of a reason. 

A 12-minute video for The Measure of Enjoyment exhibition at the Berkeley Art Center, 2018.

Riffing on favorite themes of play and pleasure, Leah Rosenberg’s newest work explores a place for painting that is colored by both failure and potential.
Building on years of paint-driven exploration, Rosenberg uses paint as practice, as meditation, as object, and as environment. The 12-minute video, Courting, begins with the artist in her studio pouring, drying, slicing, and wrapping layers of paint into brightlycolored orbs reminiscent of fruit or balls. As the subject of the film, she both creates and reimagines her work in the world. The film follows the artist around San Francisco searching, through improvisation and play, for the purpose of these paint balls.

Transported to various places that might seem an appropriate or familiar setting, the balls are put into action–rolled and lobbed, tossed and gathered–their use and uselessness revealed. These paint balls also appear in the gallery, posed around the space and on a custom-made see-saw bench, as if in conversation. More than props, these objects made entirely of paint find their place in the gallery, as spectators of their own past adventures into the outdoors.

Thank you to Jeff den Broeder + Amber Cady for playful and steady filming, editing, + direction.