Paul Rosenblatt

Paul Rosenblatt is an artist and architect based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is FoundingPrincipal of the award-winning architectural firm, Springboard Design. Notable projects include the Tartans Pavilion at Carnegie MellonUniversity, The National Aviary, CLASS, Smoke Restaurant, and an off-grid house in Confluence, PA. Among dozens of exhibitions he has designed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Teenie Harris exhibition is a favorite. Today, Rosenblatt, who has been described as a creative problem solver, leads a double life as both an artist and an architect. Each side ofthis double life informs the other.

Throughout childhood, Rosenblatt considered himself to be an artist. Growing up in NYC with an architect father and writer mother, he was buried in art supplies but never thought of pursuing art professionally. In a second-generation immigrant family, art didn’t seem like a sustainable career.Hedging his bets, he ended up double majoring in art and architecture and pursuing a master’s degree in architecture from Yale. At first Rosenblatt focused on practicing architecture while holding an Associate Professor ofArchitecture position at Carnegie Mellon University. After leaving the university, he founded Springboard Design and re-discovered art, firstr e-entering the art world through sculptural environments and installations. 

Rosenblatt’s current artistic practice includes abstract paintings, prints, and collages that appeal to his architectural disposition in both subject and structure. His work has been featured in the 2003 and2014 Pittsburgh Biennials, The National Academy of Art, SPACE Gallery, and in single artist installations at Carnegie Mellon University, Erie Art Museum,Lafayette College, West Virginia University’s Mesaros Galleries, the PittsburghCenter for the Arts, and at 707 Penn Gallery. He is a registered architect anda member of Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.

I love cities and music. My abstract paintings, prints, and collages reflect my architectural disposition in subject and structure while nourishing my imagination to dream. Real and imaginary places fill my mind and mix with the music I listen to on my many vinyl records. This stew of images and sounds feeds and inspires my creativity. 

A daytime architect and nighttime painter, I begin every morning building up structures on paper in my architectural office and end every evening breaking them down on canvases in my night studio.

What are the colors, shapes, and textures of a place?In the night studio, my paintings become sites for construction and excavation. I experiment by first laying down foundations, then surveying the site for key color relationships and dominant organizations. Ultimately, I assemble new elements onto the field like a cropped image of an architectural model, angles of gabled roofs, empty lots, and small views of large buildings. An infinite vocabulary of shapes is obscured by hazy, patterned gestures complicating the system, hovering above a landscape or expanding logarithmically away from Earth.

Exchanging day for night, I hand over the reins. As I become sleepy, my subconscious mind emerges. My focus falters, but in the haze images emerge. My fatigued navigation between intention and accident leads to shapes that surprise even myself.