User:MoWoodson/Sandbox

Flash Rosenberg is a photographer, cartoonist, writer, performer, and humorist based in New York City. For more than thirty years she has created work for the page, stage, and screen that explores the insights and humor found in small slices of life. Rosenberg sees herself as a kind of translator—she has always been interested in the ways in which forms like drawings, or photographs, or words can express the same feelings and ideas in very different ways.

Born in ___, Delaware, Rosenberg began her career by working as an editorial cartoonist and photographer. She legally changed her first name from Susan to Flash after winning an award for best costume at a Halloween ball, which she attended as hired photographer. (Her winning costume: a censored photograph.) Upon being called up to the stage, she hesitated when asked for her name. Someone else yelled out, "Her name is Flash." And the name stuck.

Animation and Film
Rosenberg is currently Artist-in-Residence for LIVE from the New York Public Library, where she creates “Conversation Portraits” by drawing discussions between prominent authors and artists live, in real time. There in the theater, Rosenberg instantly translates what the speakers say into what her mind sees, attempting to capture what it’s like to be in the audience listening. Her drawings are videotaped, then edited to create an animated summary of the conversation. “I’m trying to remove that boundary between who watches and who performs,” she says. Her Conversation Portrait of Jay-Z and Paul Holdengräber was featured in the November 29, 2010 issue of The New Yorker.

Rosenberg has also used this style of live-drawing to create animations for CNBC, Harper Collins Publishers [ref], the Lower Eastside Girls Club, the Poet Laureate of the State of California [ref], and the pilot for a new all-animated show for NBC.com, produced by Cindy Chupak, former writer and executive producer for ‘Sex and the City.’ [ref]

Her award-winning, thirty-minute, experimental motion picture, Pulse of Desire (date), was composed of over 7,000 stills, and screened internationally [ref]. Her photo-animated short, Mattress Melt (date), aired on public television [ref].

Performance
Rosenberg has performed nationally and internationally in solo shows that uniquely combine photography, comedy, and commentary. She represented the USA in an international photo conference in Bielefeld, Germany in 2000. [ref]

In her current solo performance, “Laughing at the Speed of Light,” Rosenberg humorously and provocatively examines our culture’s transition from a film to a digital mentality by taking the audience on a tour through hundreds of original, projected images. This new show will be featured in the January 2011 “Light in Winter Festival of Arts and Science” at Cornell University.

Rosenberg is a regular performer in the monthly storytelling salon, “Monologues and Madness,” a poet with the short-poem collective “Brevitas,” and a main-stage performer for “The Moth,” an urban storytelling venue, where she was the official photographer from 2006 – 2009.

Her “audio snapshots” called “Flash Moments,” were a daily feature on public radio in Philadelphia (WXPN-fm) and in New York (WBAI-fm). [ref]

Drawing and Illustration
Rosenberg’s cartoons, drawings, and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, the Forward, The Funny Times, Lilith Magazine, and numerous humor anthologies, including the Random House compendium Life’s a Stitch: The Best of Contemporary Women’s Humor (2002), which Rosenberg also illustrated. [refs]

Photography
Flash Rosenberg Studio is Rosenberg’s photography business, which has documented public and private events for X years. From (date) to (date), Rosenberg was the Founder and Executive Director of Flash Artists, a troupe of thirty photo/art-clowns based in Philadelphia, dedicated to supporting independent artists by offering interactive art experiences at all kinds of events.

Teaching
Rosenberg has taught extensively, most recently teaching “Underground Creativity” conducted entirely in the NYC subways, and “Future Nostalgia: Documenting the Anticipated Past” for Cooper Union in New York City.

Turtles
Rosenberg has long been inspired by the ___ ways of turtles, and they appear frequently in her work. She is a member of the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society, and for over 25 years has cared for the same three North American Diamondback Terrapins, rescued from a Chinese Deli.

Grants, Fellowships, and Honors

 * 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship - Creative Arts - Film and Video
 * 2006 – ongoing Artist-in-Residence for LIVE from the New York Public Library
 * 2008 and 2009 Manhattan Community Arts Fund (MCAF), administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (Animation)
 * 1993 and 1994 Movement Theatre International, Philadelphia, PA, Commissions to create a new work each year for the festival, “New Views/New Voices” awarded separately for two consecutive years
 * 1993 and 1994 “Funniest Person in Philadelphia,” voted by readers of the “Philadelphia City Paper”
 * 1990 Audio Fellowship, Pennsylvania State Arts Council (Radio)
 * 1988 Philadelphia Independent Film/Video Association Subsidy Grant (Finishing Funds for Film/Video)
 * 1987 Mid-Atlantic Media Arts Fellowship (a consortium of funding by the National Endowment for the Arts, American Film Institute, and the Pennsylvania State Arts Council, for Interdisciplinary Media Projects)
 * 1986 The Rockefeller Foundation, administered by The Painted Bride Art Center, Artists Interdisciplinary Residency (Performance and Exhibition) Philadelphia
 * 1980 Artists Independent Fellowship, Delaware State Arts Council (Photography)
 * 1972 Panhellenic Society, University of Delaware Tuition Scholarship
 * 1972 Rotary Club International, Outbound Ambassador for the USA in France, administered by The Experiment in International Living, Brattleboro, VT

Press

 * Wideman, Reeves. "Conversation Piece", The New Yorker, November 29, 2010.
 * Wideman, Reeves. "Drawing Jay-Z", Book Bench, The New Yorker Book Blog, November 24, 2010.
 * Stone, Will. "Pictures of You", Philadelphia City Paper, August 25, 2010.
 * Dambrot, Shana Nys. "Daily Dose Pick: Flash Rosenberg", Flavorwire.com, July 22, 2010.
 * Stepanek, Marcia. "Conversation Portraits", Cause Global: Social Media for Social Change, July 29, 2009.