Alayna Altman, Visual artist and former Jewish Outdoor Food and Environmental Education Director at the Trager Family Jewish Community Center

Alayna Altman 

Meet Alayna: I am a member of many communities—environmentalists, artists, my family, and friends. However, in this fellowship I feel I most represent the Jewish community, which is both multifaceted and deeply connected. As diverse as we are in ritual and affiliation, we have a unique bond. This internal tension is one of the many reasons I feel drawn to archival work, and my goal is to merge archival research with my artistic practice. Drawing from old photographs and textbooks has always excited me. It is my way to give new life to something lost. I am interested in exploring a topic related to the intersections of land usage and Jewish communities. One of my favorite lessons to teach in the garden is seed saving. By saving the seeds of the past, we create an heirloom collection that can be passed down from generation to generation. It is an amazing process for the kids to plant a seed they harvested themselves. They can see firsthand how the past affects the future. My hope is that my project can be an extension of this work by creating a visual heirloom trove of Louisville’s past.