"Have Your Cake And Eat It Too" by Leah Rosenberg - FRESH PICKS V1E13

Have your cake and eat it too, says San Francisco-based artist Leah Rosenberg. Not prone to wordy explanations, she often bakes cake in lieu of writing an artist statement. Leah's work is part performance, part painting and part sculpture. Occasionally she enlists groups of people to make the elements of her art through "punching" parties.

"A cake to me is a work of art with the intention of generosity. It is beautiful, it is structural, it is an evocative work of color and balance. And then people eat it. They consume it. They find it too sweet or too sticky or too vanilla-y. And then they move on. This is the generosity of art. Create with intention and then, set it free."

Short, sweet and succinct. This month's FRESH PICK wants to you have it all...

Leah Rosenberg is a Canadian artist living and working in the US. She completed her Master of Fine Arts degree in 2008 at the California College of Art in San Francisco. For more information about Leah's artistic confectionery: www.leahrosenberg.org

CLICK HERE TO BUY "HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO" STARTING AT $45+

"Let Them Eat Cake" Exhibition Opening Friday February 6, 2009

"Let Them Eat Cake" opened last night at Gallery Atsui in Vancouver, BC to a full house. The show features four female artists working in very different media: painting and installation, photography, traditional French tapestry and food styling medium. My curatorial idea was inspired by a pivotal scene set to Bow Wow's "I want candy" in Sophia Copola's movie, "Marie Antoinette", drawing on the idea of excess in a time of increasing economically difficult times; fun and frivolity; creative expression by women, and cake as metaphor for what drives people - food, sex, abundance, not neccessarily in that order.

In lieu of an artist statement San Francisco-based artist Leah Rosenberg baked two cakes decorated in pastel hued butter cream icing. Leah's painting graces the front window and her layered sculpture and cake-wedge paintings, sometimes mirrored against the gallery wall, pointed people through the main exhibition to the back room where one could partake of the edible cakes.

Ruth Jones' fine tapestry skills were on meticulous display with a suprising and highly contemporary tapestry of a woman holding a tiered layer cake. The effect of the piece was of the merging of the woman and the pastry into one - the woman melting into the cake and the cake melting into the woman. Tapestry was the most important figurative medium of the eighteenth century and this work provides the most direct thread of connection between this very eclectic mix of artists and my original inspiration for the exhibition.

Artist and food stylist Jo Strongman created a faux-tiered cake and an unbelievably realistic ice-cream sundae topped with glittery nail polish, purposely inedible.

Jennifer Mawby's low resolution photography showed painterly pixelation on velvety inkjet prints - the pixelation visually referencing both the stripes in Rosenberg's wedge sculpture/paintings and Jones' fine stitches.

There will be Saturday afternoon tea parties from 2pm to 4pm for the month of February for anyone who missed attending the opening.

Thank you to everyone who attended last night and today's tea party!

Sherri Kajiwara
Guest Curator
Let Them Eat Cake

VIEW EXHIBITION AND OPENING PARTY PICTURES HERE

VANTAGE EXHIBITIONS - "Let Them Eat Cake" at Gallery Atsui (Feb. 6 to 28/09)

Join us for "cake" at the opening reception Friday, Feb. 6/09 from 8-10 pm.