Sarah Rodebaugh’s wallpaper creations

Chronic Biophiliac

Sarah Rodebaugh’s wallpapers show the elegance of cannabis

BY JANE VICK

Cannabis—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.”

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.

The idea for wallpaper first originated when one of her cannabis facility clients asked her to design their home. Rodebaugh set to work designing a living space for a successful cannabis industry couple looking to create a home that accurately and elegantly represented their lifestyle.

“While we were doing their house, we were looking for something that represented them. A young couple, incredibly successful in the cannabis area, with a life primarily about cannabis in a very non-secretive sense, and we couldn’t find anything that accurately and beautifully represented that lifestyle in a wallpaper. That’s where the idea for wallpaper as a medium was first explored.” Chronic Biophiliac’s goal is to afford different options for a diverse demographic of clients, so that they are able to curate their homes in a way that makes them feel seen and represented, without having to fall back on something obnoxious or trendy-looking. In other words, to have a classic, visually beautiful representation of cannabis.

“I’m also really working on recalling cannabis as a plant, before anything else.” Says Rodebaugh. “It’s botanical design, biophilic design. It’s not like, hey, here’s a drug and we’re only paying attention to its psychedelic properties. We’re bringing it back to the fact that cannabis has all kinds of valuable properties, and is first and foremost a beautiful plant. And further, that the psychoactive properties it does have do more than just ‘get you high’. They’re useful and medicinal.”

Rodebaugh’s love of botany is also what inspired the name Chronic Biophiliac, “biophiliac” actually being a word she created.

“Biophilia, or biophilic design, is the human’s innate need to be at one with nature, to be in harmonious natural surroundings. So when I was coming up with the name I created the term ‘biophiliac’ as a description for having the condition of biophilia, or being biophilic in nature. And then chronic is of course a play on both having a condition—as in being chronically inclined towards biophilic living—and Snoop Dogg’s word for weed.”

Snoop Dogg, Rodebaugh says, is the only reason she’s watching the Superbowl this year. She even considered getting tickets. Pour one out for the king.

Chronic Biophiliac’s designs are classic, like something out of Goethe’s botany sketches, highlighting the elemental nature of the plant, pairing it with roses, birds, bears. There is a grace and softness to the patterns that perfectly achieves Rodebaugh’s goal of bringing nature in general and cannabis in particular into a living space.

Rodebaugh says the only pushback she’s found to her line is from people who already carry the idea that cannabis is negative. For the most part, she says, there’s an amazing response, especially when she holds open studios— Rodebaugh works in the Magic Shop Studios on the Petaluma waterfront, check them out at @magicshopstudios_ petaluma.

“It’s really fun to watch, because most people get it immediately, and they appreciate that I’ve developed something that isn’t cannabis forward it’s beauty forward. But the most fun reaction is when people come through who aren’t familiar with the cannabis plant and they’re totally enamored. ‘I had no idea it looked like this, I would totally put this on my wall!’. It’s the same kind of impulse as having a daisy-themed wallpaper.

You don’t necessarily grow daisies, or eat them, but when you see something beautiful, you want to put it on your wall. The cannabis plant is the same. So it’s sweet to see people who don’t partake love it as well, for its natural beauty.”

Rodebaugh says it’s also a bridge to a larger conversation about cannabis, and she’s happy to help people over that initial gap.

“Without having the product put directly in their face, people who are canna-curious can ask more questions and explore more. I’m never going to push cannabis on anyone, but if someone comes and opens that door and is willing to have the conversation, or tiptoe into it, by all means! That’s a fun conversation to have.”

She hopes that her designs can be a way in for those struggling to appreciate all that cannabis has to offer, as well as an opportunity for cannabis lovers and appreciators to beautifully express themselves. The company’s ethos and slogan is “live your truth in beauty” and these designs make that possible.

The community Rodebaugh found in cannabis has brought her a deep sense of safety and appreciation for the plant, and she hopes to continue sharing that sense of safety and connection.

“I’m a creative person, and I relay myself through imagery, so being able to find a way to be a part of this community through my art has been a great joy.”

Rodebaugh has recently expanded her range, putting her design on pillows, and she says there’s more to come. “There’s significant demand for these designs, so I’m excited to see where we go from here.”

Find Chronic Biophiliac’s beautiful designs at www.chrobio.com and @ chronicbioiphiliac on Instagram. Stay tuned for up-coming open studios!