Chronic Biophiliac Sarah Rodebaugh’s wallpapers show the elegance of cannabis BY JANE VICK
C
annabis—an ancient, complicated plant with myriad connotations. Illegal, dangerous, nefarious, medicinal, healing, sacred. Like any mindaltering substance, government regulation and cultural stigma have made a relationship with weed fraught. It’s hard to fathom that in a 1980 address to the nation—just 42 years ago—Ronald Reagan referred to marijuana as “the most dangerous dangerous drug in the United States” with “permanent ill-effects.”
CANNABIS DESIGNS The grace of the cannabis plant.
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PHOTO BY JANE VICK
Fortunately both for human wellness and in the name of accurate information, times and the American relationship with cannabis have changed. Across the country weed is being decriminalized and recognized as a helpful, multi-use plant that can easy anxiety, body pain, and more. The value of the plant is being highlighted
in entirely new ways, including, from Petaluma-based design company Chronic Biophiliac, its exceptional aesthetic beauty. Chronic Biophiliac, founded in 2020 by interior designer, mother, veteran, and all-around powerhouse Sarah Rodebaugh, is taking weed out of luridly-colored, trippy posters and bedspreads and putting it into graceful, dimensional wallpapers. Says Rodebaugh, of the decision and circumstances that lead to her founding Chronic Biophilic, which she often refers to as ChroBio, “Covid was a big part of how this happened. With my background in cannabis, and knowing that there was a big part of the cannabis industry that wasn’t being approached, plus the found time and the general shutdown, I started looking into what I could do, in terms of design, by myself. I started doing the art, and it turned into surface pattern design for wallpapers.” Though majority of the art and ideation did take shape in 2020, Rodebaugh began doing commercial design for cannabis production facilities in 2015, tired of the 9-5 structure of designing for corporate restaurants. »»
