Déjà View

I have always recalled small memories with a hefty amount of nostalgia.  I cannot for the life of me tell you where I left my keys or what I ate for breakfast.  To be honest, I don’t even remember most of my wedding.  But I do vividly remember the tie-dyed t-shirt my best friend was wearing when I met her, the feeling of gliding around the roller rink to Miss Jackson at a classmate’s birthday party, and the sound of a storm hitting my cabana roof while on vacation.  It truly is the little things, the fragments of memories, that are the best things.  We gravitate to authors who give us the small details that make a story feel real.  We use #tbt on old photos of regrettable haircuts to make people smile for just one tiny second.  We search for easter eggs in movies because knowing something small can feel so big.  

All of the work in this collection is hand cut from a single sheet of paper using a knife.  These papercuts are based on photos I’ve taken all over the world.  They are reminders of life’s daily serendipities.  So stop to smell the restaurants.  Listen to the music blasting from a hoopty.  And feel the sun on a man’s back as he waits at a crosswalk.   By carving away at a sheet of paper, I reveal the wonderful humdrum we failed to acknowledge yesterday in the hopes that we’ll remember to appreciate today’s delightfully uneventful trip to the grocery store.  Let these moments get stuck in your head like a bad song.  Belt them out alone in your car.

Between painting alongside her grandmother and watching her father build reproduction antique furniture, Rosa Leff grew up seeing no distinction between fine art and craft.  What mattered was that things were made by hand and done well.  It is with that in mind that she creates her hand cut paper pieces.  Each of Leff’s papercuts is cut by hand from a single sheet of paper using a knife.  Her cityscapes are based on photos she’s taken in her neighborhood and all over the world.  While Leff is best known for her ability to capture thin tangles of powerlines and intricate brickwork, she also enjoys experimenting with novel media such as paper plates and paper towels.  Leff delights in bringing a modern, urban perspective to a traditional folk medium. 

Leff has served on the board of The Guild of American Papercutters (GAP). In addition to being a GAP member she is a member of The Paper Artist Collective.  Leff has exhibited her work throughout the United States, in China, and in Mexico.  Her work has been acquired by The Canton Museum of Art (Canton, OH), The Colored Girls Museum (Philadelphia, PA) and The Museum of International Folk Art (Santa Fe, NM).  She is the recipient of a 2021 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award, the 2021 Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Artist Travel Prize, and the 2023 360 Xochi Quetzal BIPOC Residency.  Leff resides in Puerto Rico with her husband and chihuahuas, Chalupa and Refrito.