Honoring a Legacy: Leah Leitson’s Retirement
Eliot Ward | April 4, 2024
This spring, Leah Leitson will retire after 20 years as a professor of ceramics at Warren Wilson College (WWC). Since joining Warren Wilson’s faculty in 2004, Leitson has worked to build a flourishing ceramics department and started traditions that will remain for years to come.
Leitson is a porcelain potter, drawing inspiration from 18th- and 19th-century decorative art, integrated with plants and other natural shapes. Her personal work is mainly functional, wheel-thrown pottery, but she is trained in a wide range of ceramic methods.
Leitson first dabbled in clay as a child in classes at the Flint Art Institute. Later, she studied ceramics under a mentor at John C. Campbell Folk School in Western N.C.
“That's really where I began to feel serious about ceramics,” Leitson said.
She went on to receive various art degrees from Haywood Community College, Alfred State College, and Louisiana State University. Leitson also worked as a resident ceramic artist at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana and Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada.
For several years, Leitson operated independent studios as a production potter in Asheville, N.C., and Blowing Rock, N.C. She said that she went “full force,” selling her pottery and participating in local craft guilds.
Leitson said that ceramics was not an official department before she arrived at WWC in 2004. Occasional adjuncts only taught wheel throwing until the school specifically hired Leitson to form a sculpture curriculum centered around the pottery wheel.
Currently, all WWC students enrolled in ceramics classes have 24-hour access to a spacious studio in the Holden 3-D Center. Ample tools and equipment are available, including several pottery wheels and a salt kiln that Leitson built.
Along with Leitson’s material contributions, she has influenced the greater creative environment at WWC and encouraged students to invest in their talents. Maya King, a junior at WWC and a member of the ceramics crew, said that she respects Leitson immensely.
“Personally, I really care for her. She’s a really sweet, loving professor,” King said.
She expressed appreciation for Leitson’s broad network of connections to the ceramic world, which she shares by inviting guest artists to campus and taking groups of students to the National Clay Conference every year.
For Leitson, students are a key component of working at WWC. Leitson said it feels rewarding to see students choose to continue ceramics after being inspired by a class at WWC.
“I’m learning from my students too… I find you all so interesting,” Leitson said.
On April 26, the WWC art department will hold its fourteenth annual Spring Arts Festival, another tradition started by Leitson.
Her goal was to attract traffic and attention to the art department and give art students a marketplace experience. Students also donate a percentage of their profits each year to the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, an organization that aids struggling craft artists.
Leitson hopes that the Spring Arts Festival will continue even as she moves on from WWC, as will the annual Empty Bowls fundraiser to aid food insecurity, which she helped coordinate throughout her time at WWC.
After taking classes and working with Leitson for the last three years, King said that future Warren Wilson ceramic professors will have some “big shoes to fill.”
Nevertheless, King seemed excited for the future.
“I hope that while respecting and upholding her legacy in what she built, [future professors] will also bring their own voice to it and bring a new set of knowledge about ceramics,” King said.
In retirement, Leitson plans to continue throwing pottery from her home studio. She is also lined up to teach workshops in California and Italy in the coming months.
WWC will miss Leitson’s presence on campus, but her energy put toward WWC ceramics will be felt for years to come.