Leah Caroline

I Have Come to My Garden

As the final leaves are falling on Nov. 19, the exhibit “I Have Come to My Garden,” featuring the scrolled prints of local artist Leah Caroline, will be installed in the BEKI art gallery. Leah’s inspiration for her images are the poetic verses of “The Song of Songs,” and observations from her garden and nature.

Leah will be at BEKI on Sunday, Dec. 6, from 10 to 11:30 a.m., to greet and answer questions from visitors and explain her unique creative approach. The scrolls are made with cyanotypes, which, Leah explains, are “an early photographic printing process used to record nature and make blueprints.”

“To make the negatives for the prints I digitally manipulate photographs of nature, personal writings, and Biblical and other communal texts. I arrange and layer the negatives onto chemically sensitized papers, expose them to sunlight, and process in water. The processed papers turn a brilliant Prussian blue. Sometimes I layer multiple printings and collage actual plant materials into the prints. The layering of photos and text within the images mirrors the layering of my memories of nature, myself and my community.”

Leah, born in Brooklyn and raised in the Chassidic community of Crown Heights, received her BFA from Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Old Lyme. She is the founder and teacher of the Connecticut Artists’ Beit Midrash and leads art workshops. She has exhibited at the Yale Slifka Center and various shows, galleries, and institutions in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.