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Leveille, Rogers set holiday exhibit
Weaver Susan Leveille and blacksmith William Rogers have created a unique exhibit for the holiday season.
Using her eye for design, Leveille has created a display of Rogers’ metalwork, showing off his heirloom tableware in an antique oak cabinet. The tableware includes silver and steel serving spoons, a long-handled barbeque fork, hammered-silver ladles, and a pie server embellished in repousse, which is a technique of shaping flat metal into a three-dimensional form by persistent hammering. Popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, the technique was largely replaced by casting in the 19th century. Rogers remains one of its few practitioners. Also on view are fire pokers and a number of other forged home accessories.
Leveille owns Oaks Gallery in Dillsboro, and Rogers’ studio is in Cullowhee. Both have been practicing their art for the past three decades.
This window grille, made by Cullowhee blacksmith William Rogers, will be on display at Oaks Gallery throughout the holidays. It is part of an exhibit by Rogers and weaver Susan Leveille, who owns the gallery.
Lucy Morgan, the founder of the Penland School of Crafts weaving program, spends time making one of many creations. Morgan’s great-niece Susan Leveille, a Penland graduate, weaver and owner of Oaks Gallery, is hosting a special exhibit throughout the holidays with Cullowhee blacksmith William Rogers.
Leveille is a grand-niece of Lucy Morgan, who founded Penland School of Handicrafts in 1929. After learning to weave at Berea College in Kentucky, Morgan returned to Penland to establish a weaving program there.
Born in Franklin and raised in Murphy, “Miss Lucy” Morgan retired to Webster in the 1960s after directing Penland for many years. Her favorite nephew, Dr. Ralph Morgan, spent much of his youth on Penland’s campus where he learned to work pewter. He mastered the craft and was joined by his wife and daughter in establishing a pewter-making studio in Dillsboro. In 1957 Dr. Morgan, his wife Ruth, and their daughter, Ruth McConnell, established Riverwood Shops in the historic home that once belonged to C.J. Harris. Leveille is another daughter of Ralph and Ruth Morgan. During Riverwood’s 50th anniversary celebration last year, Leveille said part of Riverwood’s magic is that “all of us are here to share what we know and love.”
Following in the footsteps of her aunt Lucy Morgan, Leveille turned to weaving and is a life member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild and a past SHCG president. She opened Oaks Gallery in 1978 with the aim of establishing a showcase for regional crafts.
Rogers, a native of east Tennessee, began working seriously in metal around that same time. He first used his grandfather’s blacksmithing equipment to experiment with welding and fusing metal to glass. After high school, he studied jewelry at Middle Tennessee State University before opening his own studio in 1979.
Rogers has trained blacksmith interpreters at a children’s museum in West Virginia, restored an entire graveyard fence for an historic house in Virginia, and he developed a forge system and blacksmith village for Jackson County’s Green Energy Park. In 2000 he taught a sculpture course in Central America using a hammerhead locked into a vise as an anvil and drawing pictures in a sketchbook to make up for the fact that he spoke no Spanish.
Rogers’ ironwork retains an element of delicacy that can be traced to his jewelry-making background. He works mainly in steel and is known for his creative combinations of metal. He adds variety through color and texture by incorporating copper, silver, and brass into his work. He recently completed a bronze doorplate for the HandMade House, an experimental model home that brought craftsmen together with architects and interior designers. He believes in sharing his skill and craft philosophy in classes and workshops, teaching at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, and the Jackson County Green Energy Park.
Leveille is on the board of the Penland School of Crafts and Western Carolina University’s Craft Revival project. Rogers has been named to the national board of Artist-Blacksmith of North America.
Oaks Gallery will feature Rogers’ work from Thanksgiving into the holiday season. In addition to its regular hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, the gallery will be open during Dillsboro’s Luminaire, a celebration of lights and open shops that takes place every year during the first two weekends in December. Shops remain open in the early evening hours on Friday and Saturday, Dec. 5 and 6, and Friday and Saturday, Dec. 12 and 13. Visitors can meet the artist on the Luminaire’s opening night, Friday, Dec. 5, from 5 until 9 p.m.
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