In San Francisco, turn-of-the-century townhouses line the city’s hilly streets; bridges web together the Bay, pronouncing the possibilities of modern engineering; and skyscrapers cast their long, geometric shadows on the bustling financial district. This built environment reflects the city’s storied history as one of California’s earliest urban, industrial, and commercial centers. But look beyond these markers of modernity and urban life and you find the true splendor of the city: its verdant landscapes, surrounded by expansive bodies of water, are filled with beautiful vibrant blooms and wildlife. Beneath steel bridges the Pacific splashes against shores dappled with pines and lush brush. Such bright green foliage frames the stone facades of the city’s iconic architecture. Along the streets, flowering bushes cascade over fences and window boxes, blades of grass grow in sidewalk cracks, and mosses make soft homes of hard stones.

Thriving in All Seasons brings inside the majesty of San Francisco’s outside. Grounded in Rosenberg’s meditations on meaning and delight, this towering mural spanning two stories, and comprised of hand-painted, printed, and mirrored Plexiglas panels, portrays a collection of moments from San Francisco’s natural world and presents them in concert with the indoor built environment. The installation interrupts the space of the stairway, highlighting the history, stories, colors, and patterns of the city’s thriving native flowers, plants, birds, sea life in the pattern, shapes, and palette of 18 colors—all of which Rosenberg selected from what she observed in and around San Francisco. These colors and shapes interact not only with each other, but also with the building’s modern architecture, the natural light coming in through its windows, and the cityscape outside its walls. With each movement of the sun throughout the day, the architecture’s shadows create zigzagged, striped, and angular patterns. These in turn are the basis for many patterns found in the paintings. Looking out the window from the stairwell, you can view the twin peaks and downtown San Francisco. The patterns you see out the window appear as cheerfully abstract forms throughout the panels. In these ways, the piece brings some of the vitality that makes San Francisco thrive to your day-to-day experience of an indoor space.

Rosenberg hopes that the vitality garnered through the interplay of these elements serves as a model and catalyst for viewers to connect with the city, with nature, and ultimately with each other. Now more than ever, there is an urgent need for generosity and attention in this world of ours. Pausing to notice, looking to, and learning about the native plant life in the region is one way to simultaneously step outside ourselves and reflect on our own experience of the world around us. In such moments of internal and external presence we may find a starting point for honoring the tradition of community reflected in this shared space. Whether we gather here with others or we use the space to take time to turn inward, we connect the community when we attend to the city’s natural colors, patterns, and shapes. In the spirit of generosity, the mural is literally imbued with love: Rosenberg has hidden 18 hearts in the wall. You will never find them all, but they are there as a lasting gift of care.

But the true gift, Rosenberg believes, is the discovery that the experiences of observing and connecting cultivated by this piece, in this space, continue when you find these colors in your day to day lives outside the building’s walls.

-Text by Grace Converse with input from the artist, 2020