Guitar Player Meshes Music and Art into one Exhilarating Experience

Julie Rosenberg is a guitar player/artist and recently had her two passions on display at the Chroma Fine Art Gallery in Katonah. She also performed at the exhibit with Reservoir Road on October 4, and had at least one local guitar player inspired by the mix of art and music. “It makes me want to play,” said Matt Taylor, but uplifting artwork or not, the actual feeling that initially got the Katonah resident grooving was liberation.

“I felt freedom” said Rosenberg when she got her first steel string guitar at nine years old.

Unable to put the instrument down, she played all the time, and Rock ’n Roll helped paved the way for the next step. “I got my first electric guitar and also started learning from people in high school. So if I wanted to play Stairway to Heaven or something by the Rolling Stones, I could improvise with them,” she said. “That’s where it really started to expand and explore on my own.”

Like playdates with music she remembered, there was also time spent performing at school and in bands. “It was a hell of a lot of fun,” Rosenberg assured.

In parallel, Rosenberg made music on paper too. “I’ve alway been an innate natural artist,” she said. “I can just do that stuff, and it’s in my being.”

A discipline that runs in the family. “My mom’s art was all over the house. She’s an incredible artist,” said Rosenberg, and the aptitude also includes her sister.

Nonetheless, Rosenberg entered Ithaca as a BFA jazz guitar major but graduated with a bachelor's degree in physical education. From there, she quickly put both sides of her right brain to work. “I decided I wanted to paint a guitar,” she said. “That’s where the idea emerged.”

At the time she created two that she still has, but when the initiative turned into a business venture, the production became more in depth. She gets all the individual pieces of the guitar and paints and designs the parts to her inspiration. “Then I give it to the Luthier to assemble,” said Rosenberg.

On display, Andy Hammerstein got caught in between the two mediums at Chroma. “The artwork on the guitars actually look like something you can hear, “ said the visual artist.

Still, she keeps the art and the music separate in creation. “I don’t listen to music when I paint. It’s a dialogue I have with the guitar body, and it’s complete focus - 100 percent,” said Rosenberg, who also works as a physical therapist and an exercise physiologist.

There’s no pre planning or sketch work either. “I prep it, I prime it and I paint it,” she clarified. “The design unfolds right there as I’m going along.”

All done and when a sale goes through, musicians and their fans go down a two way street. “The guitar merges the visual and the performing art, which I think opens up a whole other feeling and vibe for the musical instrument and the audience,” Rosenberg explained.

Rosenberg knows from when she breaks out one of her own to play. “If I’m playing my creation, I love it,” she asserted. “It’s exhilarating.”

The output doesn’t suffer either because the components are all premium, according to Rosenberg. “The sound compares to any other guitar,” the musician assured.

Far from a factory, she produces a few a year but really doesn’t go out of her way to get reaffirmation. Instead, a sale is all she needs to know about the impact the instruments have. “They’re all musicians, and that’s all I need to know,” she concluded.