Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
Perhaps no artist epitomizes Red Brick Center’s spirit of community and empowerment more than Leah Potts. Voted Ms. Aspen, she paints nature and wildlife using her non-dominant hand in her studio at Red Brick.
About three months after graduating college with a degree in graphic design, she broke her neck skiing at Eldora Mountain. She suffered an incomplete spinal injury, meaning she has some feeling and control of movement below her neck. Prior to the accident, she was an athlete and an artist.
“After I broke my neck, they told me I’d never walk or paint again, and I believed them for like 20 years,” she says. “But something was missing in my life, and so that’s when I decided I needed to start painting.”
Prior to her first post-injury art class in 2018, where she learned to paint with her non-dominant hand, she spent two decades proving she could heal from paralysis.
Right after the accident, she spent three months at Craig Hospital in Englewood, where she met Denis Murray, the current plans examination manager for the city of Aspen. They had broken their necks a week apart and stayed in touch. He lived in Aspen and assured her she could “have a life,” living independently here, due to the community’s “small-town support.”
In 2001, she moved to Aspen, where Challenge Aspen taught her to ski again with outriggers.
“The lifties know me and ask, ‘Do you need anything’ and help with my boots or push me to the lift line,” she says.
Yet, getting to that point took years of hard work. For eight months after her accident, she couldn’t sit up by herself. She begin working with a family friend, Mickey Cobb, who happened to train the Kansas City Royals, in her hometown of Kansas City. After learning to sit upright, she found another trainer who worked with boxers and the wives of Kansas City Chiefs players, thanks to her brother, who competed nationally as a wrestler. Neither trainer specialized in spinal cord injuries, but, without financial assistance, Potts had to rely on the kindness of the professionals, the latter of whom said to her: “I don’t charge; I just choose who I work with.”
When she moved to Aspen, The Aspen Club hired her for a front desk position. It provided the free training and massage she needed.
“I still had all these braces on,” she says. “I didn’t have money, and … they didn’t have the technology then, so I did anything I could do — stretch, yoga, (massage) — so I didn’t atrophy.”
She still walks with a cane because her “right side doesn’t work as well” as her left, so she prefers to ride a three-wheel recumbent bike, which Boogie Weinglass gave her, around town.
“Here, I can ride my bike to Carl’s or to the grocery store or to Meat & Cheese or to the pet store, and they come out and hand me (products),” she says.
Though she had regained a measure of physical independence by 2018, she still yearned to produce art, which she hadn’t done for 20 years.
“I couldn’t use my right hand, which I used to paint with, and there were so many stages before I could even paint. I had to learn how to write; I had to learn to hold a pencil and put pressure on the paper. It was really overwhelming,” she says about her first week-long class at The Art Base, “but the week ended up awesome. I never quit. I just kept painting and painting and got a scholarship for the next week.”
She held her first art show at The Art Base and sold 35 paintings. Then, she began selling at the farmers market. In July 2022, she participated in an art show at the Red Brick Center. Last April, Red Brick’s committee selected her from 10 artists to work in one of its studios.
“My art is really saving me. It’s given me opportunities, it’s taken me places — I (sell) at the farmers market, so I’m not sitting at home on Saturdays — because I can only ride my bike for an hour a day. It’s opening my whole world up. I have a community with all of these artists and non-profits,” she says. “I just feel so grateful to be around other artists and other creative people. It’s really good mental health because it’s hard to be at home by yourself. Before, I was in my kitchen painting. Now, people see and have access to my artwork, and I have opportunities for commissions. Red Brick Center is community, and it’s connection, and it’s support. It’s a place to further yourself.”
A version of this story appears in the latest Summer in Aspen Snowmass Magazine. To read more magazine stories, go to aspentimes.com/magazines.
