Soaring Gardens Artists' Retreat offers residencies to visual artists, writers and composers between May and September.
Soaring Gardens is located in rolling hill country dotted with dairy farms approximately one hour west and slightly north of Scranton, Pennsylvania. From the house and studios you can see the northern end of the Appalachian mountains-one hours drive away. It is a ten-minute drive to Laceyville, the closest town.
Soaring Gardens Artists' Retreat consists of two separate properties:
Soaring Gardens itself. This was Ora Lerman's country retreat. It consists of a large four-bedroom farmhouse and an adjoining studio building with two 720 sq. ft. studios on twenty-three acres of land. Around the house are extensive flower gardens and a pond. The house was built in 1850 by Frank Gay who made his fortune in the California Gold Rush. For many years the house was the center of an extensive farm. Gradually various parts of the farm were sold off.
In 1973 Ora Lerman, looking for a country place where she could paint landscapes, purchased the house and its adjoining machine shop.
Ora converted the upstairs of the machine shop into a studio. Until her death she lived and painted here in the summers. The rest of the year she lived in Manhattan, where in addition to painting, she was an active teacher.
In the late 1980s Ora was a guest artist at Giverny on the first of two grants she received from Reader's Digest. Inspired by Monet's garden, Ora designed a grand allé here and gradually developed extensive perennial gardens, which inspired her to call her property "Soaring Gardens".
The Church. Ten minutes drive from the house is a small turn-of-the century church. Some forty years ago it was converted into two studios and living quarters by the painters, Jules and Cornelis Kirschenbaum. Cornelis gifted it to The Ora Lerman Charitable Trust in the fall of 2000.