Craft Education Fellowship
2025
Leia Lewis is a teaching artist, cultural architect, and mother whose creative practice uplifts ancestral memory, Black cultural resilience, and community healing. Through mixed media, textiles, and immersive experiences, she celebrates her deeply rooted North Louisiana heritage while drawing inspiration from global studies and travels. Her work explores themes of heritage, spirituality, identity, transformation, and love—illuminating wisdom of the African Diaspora and womanhood.
Leia Lewis is a teaching artist, cultural architect, and mother whose creative practice uplifts ancestral memory, Black cultural resilience, and community healing. Through mixed media, textiles, and immersive experiences, she celebrates her deeply rooted North Louisiana heritage while drawing inspiration from global studies and travels. Her work explores themes of heritage, spirituality, identity, transformation, and love—illuminating wisdom of the African Diaspora and womanhood.
For over three decades, Leia has cultivated a distinguished path as an arts administrator, nonprofit leader, educator, and community builder. She is a grounded participant, visionary leader, and enthusiastic collaborator who uses art and culture as powerful tools for social change. Also known as “Queen Leia” in kinship collectives, Leia is the founding producer of MAAFA New Orleans, the annual citywide commemoration of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its enduring legacy. She is founding director of Sankofa Gardens Shreveport, a community garden and learning campus expanding to establish Louisiana’s first folk school. She also leads RECLAIMING INDIGO and INDIGO DRIP, a cultural restoration initiative and arts-in-education program remembering and renewing Louisiana’s indigo dye traditions.
Leia Lewis holds BA and MA degrees from the University of New Orleans, and the MAT from Centenary College of Louisiana, along with continuing education and certifications in educational leadership, entrepreneurship, gardening and urban agriculture, holistic healing modalities, and art. Her honors include Teacher of the Year, 40 Under 40, Green for All Fellow, Whole Communities Thinking Fellow, Louisiana Foods Fellow, Louisiana Farmer Training Fellow, Tiny Founder with 4.0 Schools, and Voqal Partners Fellow.
Selected works
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67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
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Gallery Hours: Closed — Reopening Fall 2019
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