Art Reception: Hannah Petrikovsky & Leah Caroline

 From the Earth: growth, decay, and regeneration 

A two-person art exhibit:

Hannah Petrikovsky & Leah Caroline

Hannah Petrikovsky combines oil paint and charcoal to create aesthetically lush, vivid paintings which explore themes of beauty and impermanence. She exhibited in a group show at Lyme Academy and two group shows at the Richard and Dolly Maas Gallery. She has her BFA in Lyme Academy of Fine Arts and has an MFA and MA from SUNY Purchase. She lives in Hamden with her family.

Hannah Petrikovsky is an Adjunct Professor of Fine Art and History "Exploring Visual Culture" at Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT, 2021 to the present. She was Adjunct Professor of Art History and Art Design at SUNY Purchase College, NY, 2018-2022, and Sacred Heart University, 2023, and Gateway Community College, 2022.

She had a Strypemonde Fellowship at the Art History Department, SUNY Purchase College, 2020-2021. Since 2022, she has been a Painting Instructor at Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven. Her artwork has been shown frequently at at Richard & Dolly Maass Gallery, Purchase; also at Casa Somati, Pomona, NY, Essex Flowers Gallery, New York City, and Chauncey Silliman Gallery, Old Lyme.

chanarosaart.com

ARTST STATEMENT - Leah Caroline

My works are personal and communal journals. “I have come to my garden” is a series of cyanotype scrolls, containing Hebrew texts from Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs), Hasidic commentary, and my pregnancy writings. This work grew out of an odd attachment with an aloe plant I wrote about in my nature writing, where it signified my experiences of pregnancy.  The aloe became me and when it died over the winter I felt its loss. The very personal writings of my garden, recalled memories of an important Chasidic text I studied in my youth—called “Basi LeGani” (“I have come to my garden”), it is based on chapter 5 of Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs).

I used photographs of the dead aloe plant, scientific drawings of pregnant wombs, and the texts to make negatives for the cyanotype prints. Cyanotype is 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, mirror the layering of my memories of nature, myself, and my community.

Henry David Thoreau said, “The only people who ever get any place interesting are the people who get lost.” One summer I was a resident artist at Weir Farm in Wilton, CT, and I got lost. I wandered the woods, collected plants and other natural materials, and scanned the plants in various stages of life. Once, the scanner started before I was ready and it created an image of my hand arranging some flowers. This “accident” became a more intentional series of scans, Arrangements, where I introduced movement and my body. My wanderings (I did actually get lost in the woods) and accidents broadened my scope of documenting, and the materials I use.  And they all—materials, images, texts— become new layers in my stories.

Leah Caroline was raised in the Chassidic community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She received her BFA from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Her exhibits include solo exhibitions and a commission by Artspace Inc. for site-responsive work for City Wide Open Studios in New Haven, CT. In 2017, she participated in Jerusalem Between Heaven and Earth for the Jerusalem Biennale. Caroline has been an artist in residence, including at Weir Farm in Wilton, CT and at Governors Island with Art Kibbutz.  Most recently, she co-curated the new site “Art in Jewish Sacred Spaces” for the Jewish Art Salon. She has also written and illustrated for Chabad.org. Caroline currently lives and works in New Haven with her husband and five children.

leahcaroline.com

Contact -- Curator: Johnes Ruta, independent curator & art theorist
iPhone 203.668.6933 or azothgallery@comcast.net
AzothGallery.com