In 2014, SV Creates was invited to lead a collaborative team to infuse the Women & Children’s Center at Santa Clara's Valley Medical Centers (VMC) with creative spaces and programs that inspire joy and learning, resonate with the community, and reflect Silicon Valley culture, supporting the vision of VMC to become a national model for maternal care. SVC partnered with the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program (LAP) to create a call for proposals for the new project in early 2018. Bay Area artist and LAP alum Leah Rosenberg proposal, Like a Multivitamin, was selected with installation completed in October 2020.
Read the full press release for the project through the button below.
Artist Statement
Like A Multivitamin is a chromatic meandering.
Underpinned by notions of hospitality and delight, this installation located in the third-floor garden courtyard at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center uses a combination of color, natural light, and architecture to transform an existing outdoor space as a catalyst for connection and joy. I chose these colors for their healing properties and their connection to the surrounding landscape. Together, the palette can be considered a multivitamin: when encountered daily, it might make one feel better over time.
There is no beginning or end. Colors play off of one another; constantly in flux as the sun rises and sets, causing them to glow in the light and deepen in the shadows. It is important to me that the installation can be experienced both indoors and outdoors, from various vantage points. Gaze down from above, look up from below, walk around it, sit in its glow, meditate on a single color at a time, or take them all in at once.
Several colors in the installation are accompanied by an original haiku. Much like color, they offer a sense of a specific moment in time: a special event, a change of season, something that encourages one to pause, take notice and come to attention. This courtyard, once grey and now imbued with color, elicits emotions within us, helping to lift burden and stress, whether visiting once or returning daily.
Over one hundred languages are spoken by staff at Valley Medical Center. Experiences of the installation are bound to vary, but color is a universal language that welcomes multiple interpretations. I wanted to offer relief through a vibrant dose of color in a space where people are working, healing, and grieving: a multivitamin for their senses.
Underpinned by notions of hospitality and delight, this installation located in the third-floor garden courtyard at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center uses a combination of color, natural light, and architecture to transform an existing outdoor space as a catalyst for connection and joy. I chose these colors for their healing properties and their connection to the surrounding landscape. Together, the palette can be considered a multivitamin: when encountered daily, it might make one feel better over time.
There is no beginning or end. Colors play off of one another; constantly in flux as the sun rises and sets, causing them to glow in the light and deepen in the shadows. It is important to me that the installation can be experienced both indoors and outdoors, from various vantage points. Gaze down from above, look up from below, walk around it, sit in its glow, meditate on a single color at a time, or take them all in at once.
Several colors in the installation are accompanied by an original haiku. Much like color, they offer a sense of a specific moment in time: a special event, a change of season, something that encourages one to pause, take notice and come to attention. This courtyard, once grey and now imbued with color, elicits emotions within us, helping to lift burden and stress, whether visiting once or returning daily.
Over one hundred languages are spoken by staff at Valley Medical Center. Experiences of the installation are bound to vary, but color is a universal language that welcomes multiple interpretations. I wanted to offer relief through a vibrant dose of color in a space where people are working, healing, and grieving: a multivitamin for their senses.
Image Gallery
All photos courtesy of Leah Rosenberg.
Meet the Artist
LEAH ROSENBERG
Website
Website
Leah Rosenberg’s art practice spans painting, installation, sculpture, printmaking and food, focusing on the role of color in our lives, as well as its emotional and psychological impact. Her work has been presented in both local and international exhibitions. She was a recipient of the Irvine Fellowship through the Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Center and the Kala Fellowship at Kala Art Institute. In 2019 she completed a residency at San Francisco Recology, working with paint salvaged from the Household Hazardous Waste Facility. Rosenberg has worked as an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, Project 387, Facebook, Google, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and McColl Center for Art + Innovation.
Related Programs
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SCRATCH SPACE
How can we keep our hearts open? On November 19, 2020, we sat down with visual artists Leah Rosenberg and Christine Wong Yap to discuss their shared interest in psychological wellbeing at a time of great social anxiety and discord. Read More >> |
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EXHIBITION
Happiness Is... From January to May 2013, the Montalvo Arts Center showcased artworks from three Lucas Artists Fellows and Guest Artists (Susan O'Malley, Leah Rosenberg, and Christine Wong Yap) in the exhibition Happiness Is... Through research-based work, participatory experiments and installation, the artists examined the complex emotions, conditions and actions involved in generating the elusive state of happiness. Read More >> |
In the News
- Like a Multivitamin — Using Art to Heal
By Connie Martinez, Content Magazine - Colorful installation transforms courtyard at SCVMC Women & Children’s Center
By Michael Elliott, VMC Foundation
