David f Ostwald

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: I attended Soaring Gardens in 2010, and I stayed at the church. I recall how I specifically asked for this space because of the nature of my work and its connections to spiritualities. At the time, I also wanted to be by myself. What are the histories/herstories/theirstories of the house and the church in regards to Ora Lerman and her own work?

David f Ostwald: Ora bought the Laceyville house in 1973. At the time it felt financially daring, but it was the fulfillment of a dream. From the moment she finished her graduate degree in painting at the Pratt Institute in 1968, she had longed for a place in the country where she could explore her interest in landscape painting. At first it was out of the question. She was barely eking out a living working several part-time teaching jobs in New York. Then in 1971 she got a faculty position at Suffolk Community College. With her improved financial prospects, she began searching for a place in New England, but was quickly discouraged by how far beyond her means was even the smallest bit of Vermont.

However, fortune smiled when she went to visit a painter friend in Pennsylvania. As Ora told it, her friend took her by the hand and drove her around the countryside to find her a place. When they discovered a rambling old five-bedroom house with an adjacent two-story machine shop sitting on twenty-three acres of untended farmland, her friend was sure they had hit paydirt. How could you beat the $20,000 price? Ora hesitated. Could she really come up with $151.61 each month? Fortunately for us all, her friend insisted.

It turned out that the property has an interesting history. The story is that two local brothers went to California and hit at least a small amount of “paydirt.” They returned, bought an entire section of land, built this house and the barn next door, and began farming.

Ora began to spend her summers at her new country home. Although she only sort of camped out in the big house, she converted the upstairs of the machine shop into a most satisfactory studio with a bank of windows looking out over the nearby rolling hills. On the far horizon her view included the silhouette of the “Endless Mountains,” as the locals call the northern end of the Appalachians.

For the first couple of years, she did watercolors and paintings of the surrounding landscapes and many studies of flowers. Ironically, after only a few years Ora’s interest shifted away from landscapes to figurative paintings, and except for her continuing delight in doing water colors of flowers, her paintings were set in interior spaces. 

Curiously, the event that brought about the biggest change to the landscape of her country place occurred in France. In 1988 Ora received a grant from the Readers Digest Foundation to spend six months as an artist-in-residence at Monet’s estate at Giverny. The gardens there reignited her love of flowers, and she began to wish for a garden of her own. It was then she realized that she could create a “Giverny” in Pennsylvania. And so she began creating “Soaring Gardens.”

By the spring of 1992, when we met, she had already created the allée with its five green arches and many of the old stone walls had been rebuilt. She had also created flowerbeds and erected curious trellises. Once a gardening novice, Ora soon became an expert on the plants that interested her most. Inevitably they sported extravagant flowers: wisteria, lilacs, clematis, peonies, lilies, and tulips.

By the time we were married in 1994, the house and studio were no longer just a summer retreat, but the refuge where we also spent most of our spring and fall weekends. Ora remodeled her studio again with a dramatic slanted ceiling designed to catch the northern light; we created a small lake, and the house itself began to get the loving attention that it so badly needed.

Ora had no relationship with the Church because it was gifted to the Trust three years after she died. I hope you’ll be able to come back and stay there again, as I think you will be happily impressed with the way we have gradually improved it.

NDEREOM: I would love to return, David. It is interesting how Ora Lerman traveled the world–I would say for inspiration and for connection–and how today the movement outwards that she made into other places has reversed. I am saying this because you have creatives from many locations traveling to Soaring Gardens, so the pilgrimage has changed course. Any thoughts about that?

DfO: Although Ora was born and raised in a small Kentucky town, I think in her heart she was always an internationalist. As soon as she could, she fled Campbellsville for New York, quickly dropped the use of her southern sounding name Ora Ann for Ora, and just as quickly erased every bit of her southern accent.

The seeds of her internationalism may have been planted by her parents, particularly her father, who came to New York with his four brothers from a small village in the Ukraine in the twenties. How they landed in Kentucky I’m not sure, but, like other Jewish immigrants of the time, they began making their way as street merchants and ended up owning a chain of successful department stores. Her father, however, was never much interested in the business and as soon as he retired, he and Ora’s mother moved to Israel where he could pursue his real passion which was Torah studies.

Ora’s foreign travel started with a Fulbright she received at 25 to study sumi-ye (brush calligraphy) in Japan. That trip was highly influential and led to visits to many countries over the years. As she later wrote, “To develop a repertory of images, I have needed to visit, work and explore symbols in key places on the globe.” I’m quite sure that her awareness of the importance of travel to support her creativity, made her sympathetic to that potential need in other artists.

In a sense, between being born before World War II and being of European parents, her grounding was quite old fashioned—consider her attraction to traditional Japanese brush painting, the works of Manet and her commitment to painting with “the old masters medium” which she mixed herself. Somehow, she had a profound affinity to the artists who gathered in Paris at the turn of the last century and their bohemian lifestyle, which manifested in her fierce commitment to the women’s movement and, in a more light hearted way, her eclectic mode of dressing.

As we know, after the end of World War II, the center of the contemporary art world began to shift to the Untied States and by the late sixties New York had become the new Paris. So it is hardly surprising that the United States became the new pilgrimage destination for artists from around the world. We are fortunate to offer a creative space to at least some of them at Soaring Gardens. 

NDEREOM: Tell me about the gardens within the context of the residency and perhaps the impetus for those who apply to attend the program? I am curious as well about residents working with themes of healing, something that some of us have been doing for decades and that now have been accepted within the arts. Have you seen any shift in this direction in terms of residents?

DfO: To my observation the importance of the gardens as a magnet for the residents varies enormously. For the plein aire artists their attraction is obvious; less clear is how important they are to the other visual artists, the writers and the music folks. However, I think of near universal appeal is the chance to get out of the city and to be in a setting that emphasizes the opportunity to “create in tranquility,”–our motto, and one of which I am proud. (It is in support of a tranquil environment that we do not allow children, guests, or pets.)

This year, for the first time, thanks to the energy of our residency manager, we were able to have an extensive vegetable garden, which not only supplied an abundance of healthy food, but gave our residents a chance to enjoy more direct interactions with the plants and soil. Our two locally based gardeners are very knowledgeable about the amazingly large variety of herbal and edible plants on our twenty-three acres. Sensitive to the increased interest in combining art and healing, the very trend you mention, they offered occasional guided walks which were much appreciated. In fact, there is sufficient interest among some residents and certainly in our gardeners that we will be expanding our plantings of native and medicinal plants and herbs this year.

In the years ahead we are planning to develop an historical garden, a “Giverny in Pennsylvania,” based on Monet’s garden in France. I expect, like his, it will have edible plants as well as ones chosen for their beauty. 

NDEREOM: What is the vision for Soaring Gardens as more artists are working outside and seeking to connect with communities? And how would you say the space might serve as a refuge for those who, like me, do work centered on encounters and with social networks within towns and city? 

DfO: It seems as if we’re thinking in the same direction. It is my hope that in the next few years we will increase our interactions with the surrounding communities. We are starting in this direction by reserving the Church for a week this June where we will offer art classes for young people from the Montrose area, which is about 20 miles north of us. As we expand our offerings in the coming years, we are committed to using working artists as our teachers. I can imagine that in the future some of the faculty will be Soaring Garden’s alumni or artists who are in residence. This summer the teacher will be artist Josephine Dunn. 

We see this as the beginning of a commitment not only to bring local people to our home base, but to make a variety of offerings available in nearby communities.

In a different, but not unrelated direction, starting last summer we began making an active effort to make our residency program known and available to artists from minority and under-served communities. And in one season we went from a program attended almost exclusively by white artists to one in which almost half of our residents were from those groups. 

NDEREOM: The issue of legacies and archives comes up over and over for creatives, especially as we age. There is the impeding presence of mortality. How would you say programs like Soaring Gardens can serve both to honor and keep an artistic legacy alive, while going beyond the honoree to open possibilities for other creatives? This is a major concern for artists who make objects.

DfO: It is not a problem for folks like myself who make various forms of theater, which only exist while they are happening. However, along with the residency program, the other branch of the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust is taking care of Ora’s artistic legacy. The Trust is deeply committed to exploring legacy issues. To that end, we have sponsored a series of public panel discussions in NYC discussing them. But, of course, the center of our focus is taking care of Ora’s legacy. We hold about 90 of her oil paintings, and 1,500 of her works on paper. In past years we have published an elegant catalogue and sponsored several exhibitions of her work. Currently we are making a compete survey with images of all our holdings, which will be available in digital form into the future. More immediately the archive will serve as a resource from which we intend to develop a number of small exhibitions as well as for sales and possible gifting.

NDEREOM: I know your title within the foundation. However, what is your involvement in the program behind the scenes. In other words, how do you continue to keep in touch with it beyond administrative tasks?

DfO: My arrangement with the Trust is that the Trust has the use of our property near Laceyville in Pennsylvania from mid-May to mid-September for use as an artist residency. I have the use of it the rest of the time. The house is not winterized, but I and my wife are regularly in residence there from mid-March into May and in October and November. While we are there, I pay close attention to the maintenance that needs to be done. I oversee the work, as well as envisioning improvements that will make our spaces serve our residents better. This brings me into close contact with our staff of gardeners, maintenance and cleaning people. We have made a commitment to taking good care of the environment. We compost, have solar panels and a heat pump and we only use organic materials to take care of our gardens.

NDEREOM: What parts of you does Soaring Garden might nurture? I will always remember my meeting with the church space. I never told you, but the work I did while in residence entailed caring for the place. I dusted, swept, cleaned… every corner. Not that this was not cleaned, but that was my way of building relationship. I actually wrote a piece that I hope to find and publish in the near future. It is somewhere in my archives. 

DfO: My quite constant supervision of improvements to the House, Studio, Church and gardens, although quite time consuming, does feed my sense of being of service. At the same time, my wife and I enjoy luxuriating in the magical tranquility of Soaring Gardens, nurturing our spirits with walks in the woods and quiet morning meditations. For me it is also a place of creative work. Much of my book on Acting for Singers published in 2005 was written there. It has also has offered creative space for writing my current book on Opera Stage Directing, which is serving to help bring closure to my more than fifty-five years of directing.

NDEREOM: Thank you so much, David. I hope to visit Soaring gardens soon.

David f Ostwald’s / Ora Lerman’s / and Soaring Garden’s links: Acting for Singers / I Gave You My Song: The Art of Ora Lerman / Soaring Gardens website / Application to Soaring Gardens / David f Ostwald’s website / Ora Lerman’s webiste

David Ostwald has directed over 170 productions of plays and operas in the United States and abroad. They span the centuries from the Renaissance to the present and encompass Shakespeare to Shepard and Monteverdi to Moran.

David has also maintained an active teaching career specializing in teaching acting to singers. His book, Acting For Singers, published in 2005 by Oxford University Press has been widely adopted as a classroom text. It is available at Amazon in both printed and e-book formats.

In June 2019, David directed the world premiere of COLLOQUIA, a play by David Zarko in Orvieto, Italy. In July 2019, he was on the faculty of Premiere Opera Vocal Arts Institute, Trani, Italy.

Currently he is team teaching an acting class for singers online for the University of Central Florida with Thomas Potter, Head of the Opera Program there. He is also engaged in writing a book on opera stage directing.

Best known for her colorful narrative paintings inspired by folk tales and Aesop’s Fables, Ora Lerman often drew on her personal collection of handmade toys and dolls acquired during her travels. They appear in her work as protagonists, delivering life’s most essential lessons.

Born in Campbellsville, Kentucky, of Russian Jewish parents, she earned a BA at Antioch College and an MFA at Pratt Institute. From 1971 to 1998, she was professor of art at Suffolk Community College.

During those years, she maintained active studios in New York City and Laceyville, Pennsylvania, where she had a country home. After her death in 1998, her Laceyville property became part of the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust, and since 2000 the trust has offered summer residencies through the Soaring Gardens Artists Retreat.

A dedicated activist for women in the arts, she was one of the founders of the New York chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art and contributed a number of articles about women artists to ARTS magazine. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for study in Japan (1963—1965) and later studied in India under an International Exchange of Scholars (1989). Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Regional Fellowship (1992), Reader’s Digest Artists-in-Residence in Giverny, France (1988), Pennsylvania State Council on the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship (1988), and Andrew Mellon Fellowship (1984).

Her impressive sixty-foot mural, Inside the Ark (1993—1995), commissioned by New York City’s Percent for Art program, is permanently installed in Public School 176 in Manhattan.

Soaring Gardens Artists Retreat in Laceyville, PA, offers visual artists, writers, and composers, and instrumentalists a quiet country setting for residencies to focus on their creative endeavors. Spaces are available from mid-May to mid-September. Soaring Gardens has no fees, makes no demands, and there are no intrusions from the administration—only the studios, gardens, deer, other creatures, and time. 

The residency is located in a farmhouse with an adjacent studio building and in a small nearby church. At any time, there are only a few artists in residence—usually three or four residents at the farmhouse and two at the church. Since residents share the living spaces, we encourage artists to apply as a group (a combination of artistic disciplines is fine), although applications from individuals are also welcome.

Residents are encouraged to have a car to get to Soaring Gardens and to use while they are in residence. However, transportation will be provided to and from nearby cities for arrival and departure at Soaring Gardens, and to help run some errands during their stay as needed. There is no public transportation close by. With the exception of a weekly communal dinner, artists are expected to shop, cook, and clean up after themselves; a gardener maintains the grounds. As the purpose of the residency is to provide time for undisturbed work, no children, pets, or overnight visitors are permitted. Read our Native Land Acknowledgment