Local artist Leah Marchand takes inspiration from her Louisiana roots

She was born in New Orleans but grew up in Baton Rouge, the city where Leah Marchand has built a life with her husband and children.

There was once a time when the family considered leaving, but they planted roots instead.

“Baton Rouge is home,” Marchand says. “When we made the decision to stay, it became less about, ‘Let’s get away from Baton Rouge,’ and more about, ‘How can we make Baton Rouge better and celebrate Baton Rouge?’”

While a lot of her art is already inspired by south Louisiana, Marchand’s signature is her Leather Maps Series: gold maps of the Red Stick painted on the ridged back of an alligator.

Marchand takes commissions for the collection, tracing maps of clients’ lives on the backs of the reptiles. It’s reinforced her appreciation of how intertwined our community is with nature, Marchand says.

“Art transcends all. It breaks language barriers,” she says. “It breaks cultural barriers. Artists are able to take things that are really hard to understand—grief, politics, anger—and put it in a way for people to understand it, to make it understandable, relatable.”

This article was originally published in the November 2025 issue of 225 Magazine.