4 Fall 2011 Applegater
Remembering Lilli Ann Rosenberg
BY LesLie Lee
My husband and I first met Lilli Ann
and Marvin Rosenberg in the early nineties
when we all had purchased properties in
the Applegate Valley and had both shown
up at a land use hearing to protest a zoning
regulation on ceramic kilns. Having
successfully argued a change in home
business codes we went out to lunch to
celebrate, unaware that we would share
countless meals and events together over
the next 20 years. We had been caught by
their all-inclusive sociability, later dubbed
the “Rosenweb,” where we eventually
met most of the people we know in the
Applegate today.
Lilli Ann was an extraordinary
attractor and connector of people. She
embraced life and all its challenges with
fearless enthusiasm and little regard for
protocol or rules, charming her way into
and out of unimaginable situations, which
then became part of a captivating oral
history recited years later over tables laden
with food and encircled with friends. There
were many times when my husband and I
wished we’d been able to record Lilli Ann’s
lively stories. Now that she is gone, I regret
even more that we did not make a better
effort to do so.
A pivotal story Lilli Ann liked to tell
was of leaving her home in Los Angeles and
boarding a bus bound for New York City,
where she was certain she could make her
way as an artist. She was just a teenager
with only a few dollars and a typewriter
case for luggage. Though she attended
art classes at the city’s Cooper Union, her
brother, Clair Killen of Ashland, does
not think she graduated. “I think of Lilli
Ann as a self-taught artist and as a very
dynamic person, very compassionate, a
good teacher, and in command of her
own life.’’ In New York
Lilli Ann became a strong
believer in public art and
the public’s participation in
it, which led to her being art
director at the Henry Street
Settlement House in New
York City’s Lower East Side
for 17 years. She involved
children in the community
in making mosaic murals
and play sculptures, making
certain to draw potential
troublemakers into her
program knowing they
would protect their work
against vandals.
While in New
York, Lilli Ann married
and had her first child,
Gigi. The marriage ended
in divorce and she and
Marvin Rosenberg, a social
worker, were married in
1961. They moved to
Newton, Massachusetts,
and expanded their family
with the births of Claire
and Ben. Lilli Ann’s career also expanded
and Marvin joined her to engineer the
construction and installation of her
mosaics and cement sculptures. Of the
public arts projects that Lilli Ann created
throughout the country, the 12-ton,
110-foot-long cement mosaic in Boston’s
Park Street subway station, which she
made in 1978, is considered among her
most memorable. It depicts the history
of the city’s subway system and includes
many found objects such as gears and
tools alongside her ceramic pieces and
mosaic tile.
A poem for Lilli Ann
BY Kristi CowLes
Lilli Ann died last night and this
morning my vibrant hot pink morning
glories blossomed for the first time. They
reseeded themselves from last year.
Lilli Ann died last night and this
morning I walked up our dirt road past
the Becker’s and on the way down a
mostly yellow with black trim butterfly
followed me for quite a distance. Then
she reappeared again at the entrance to
our driveway.
Lilli Ann died last night and on my
walk there was a young deer eating apples
from a tree; we stared at each other for what
seemed like minutes.
Lilli Ann died last
night and today I grieve
as if she was my mother,
my daughter, my sister.
Lilli Ann died last
night and she was the one
who welcomed me into
this community almost
four years ago when I
moved to the Applegate
from Wisconsin. She and
Marvin warmed me so
and helped me begin to
fit in. The most difficult
thing for me was that I
wasn’t known anymore.
Lilli Ann Rosenberg, 1924 - 2011
The Rosenberg’s transition to the
Applegate Valley included several years
of splitting their time between doing east
coast commissions and setting up a studio
in their home on Little Applegate. Once
settled into the community, though, it was
not long before Rosenberg art was being
installed throughout the region, including
Portland hospital courtyards, Eugene’s
main library and in the Rogue Valley’s La
Clinica facilities, among many other sites.
In the Applegate, Lilli Ann engaged the
community in creating a mural for the
entrance of the Ruch library and the Ruch
Lilli Ann immediately knew me.
Lilli Ann died last night and she’s still
here making the rounds to say good-bye
to us. This does not surprise me one bit.
Lilli Ann died last night and she
will be greatly missed even by people she
never met. Why? Because her wise-woman,
artisan arms stretched far and wide. She
was way beyond borders.
Lilli Ann died last night and Arthur
and I feel honored to have spent time with
her a week or so ago. She was one of the
best storytellers I’ve ever met and this visit
was no exception.
Lilli Ann died last night and left me
with a hole in my heart. Yet I know it will
fill back up with a bouquet of roses, for she
was a dangerous woman and roses have
thorns. I am dangerous, too, and hope to
one day be as dangerous as Lilli Ann. I’m
working on it.
Lilli Ann died last night and I believe
she’s hanging out with Emma Goldman,
the mighty woman whose name she could
not remember last week. I want, when I
die, to hang with the two of them.
Lilli Ann died last night and I think
about her children and how incredibly
school students in a walkway connecting
the two buildings. Jeremy Criswell of
Upper Applegate, who studied with Lilli
Ann for the last four years, said, “She
shared her heart with everyone and she was
willing to teach everyone without telling
them how it should be done.” Applying
the techniques she taught him, Criswell
has continued Lilli Ann’s public art legacy
with a sculpture in Grants Pass and was
recently awarded a mosaic project there.
Lilli Ann’s last home was a small
house in Ashland, which she artistically
renovated after Marvin died in 2010,
and where she received a steady stream
of visitors. She died of cancer at home on
July 19, just a few days short of her 87th
birthday, planning her next project and
surrounded by family. A celebration of her
life, which was held at the Ball residence
on Little Applegate, drew a large gathering
where her children, Ben Rosenberg, a
professional artist and college teacher in
Portland, Gigi Rosenberg, a published
author also of Portland, and Claire Van der
Zwan, an artist and art teacher at Crater
High School in Central Point, had some
poignant and hilarious stories of their own
to share about their mother. This time I
had a video camera ready, so if you missed
the celebration you can enjoy a couple of
these stories at http://is.gd/abNBAz.
Thanks to John Darling of the
Medford Tribune and Gloria Negri of
the Boston Globe from whose articles I
appropriated some of the information for
this article.
Leslie Lee • 541-899-7045
leslie@leslieleeart.com
For more on remembering Lilli Ann, please
visit our website at www.applegater.org.
blessed they are and were to have her as a
mother. Not everyone is that lucky!
Lilli Ann died last night and I will
grieve for a long time…
Kristi Cowles
541-846-7391
kkc@apbb.net
