Marlene G. Leonard

Born Jan. 6, 1944 and raised in Warren, PA, she was the daughter of Gene and Helen Mascaro. Marlene worked as a hairdresser and raised her family in Warren, alongside her sisters and their families with joy and great support from her parents. She was a lifelong artist and creator. She went back to school in her late 30s earning her BFA from Edinboro College. She worked in many mediums including oil paint, stained glass, and ceramics. She, along with several students, created the Warren Area High School dragon from slab glass. It has been a permanent installation in the high school exhibition area since 1980. She filled the homes of her children and grandchildren with functional pieces like bowls, plates, and mugs as well as sculptures and paintings. Marlene’s favorite way to describe her artistic style was the term wabi-sabi; she embraced imperfection and was always experimenting with new techniques. She almost never made the same thing twice.

Marlene left Warren in 1988 to move to sunny Arizona where she expanded her skills to include many construction projects, designing and building her own home as well as a number of others with her son, Michael. She and Norman later lived in Florida, where she remodeled another house, worked in a flower shop, loved going to auctions, and spent many an afternoon in the yard with her granddaughter Maddie. For a few years she lived with her daughter Kristen’s family in Brooklyn, New York, operating a framing business and practicing her vegetarian cooking skills. Marlene returned to Warren in 2011 and began cultivating a small community of ceramicists in her basement studio. She called her space the “Experimental Clay Workshop” and she offered open classes for others to experiment along with her in building, throwing, and glazing. Most recently, in 2022, she moved to a new home near two of her children in the Hudson Valley and recreated her workshop there. Just last month, when one of her granddaughters asked if she had any projects that she was excited to be working on in the studio as the weather warmed up, she replied “oh about a million of them”.

Marlene enjoyed cooking, spoiling her dogs, celebrating Christmas, and renovating her homes. She was always working to make the places she lived more beautiful and more functional. She will be remembered for her fierce love of her children, grandchildren, and animal children, her artistic prowess, and her get-to-it attitude.

She is survived by her two sisters, Joan Tridico and Delores Berry of Warren; her three children and children-in-law, Michael and Jennifer, Kristen and Frank, and Deane and April; and her three granddaughters Madeleine, Isabel, and Lily. And of course, her Italian mastiff, Ivy. A memorial is planned for July, in Warren.