VAM galleries including this work:
Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft | Young at Art || VAM Home

Alma Lesch earned her reputation as a pioneer in the contemporary craft movement by combining traditional quilting techniques with her own innovative stitchery and by incorporating found objects to create complex narrative works. Rebecca shows her use of old clothing items to create textile portraits.

About the Artist

Alma Wallace Lesch was born in McCracken County, Kentucky. She began working with fiber at the age of 5, stitching panels for a quilt that she completed at the age of 12. Even before attending school, Lesch practiced embroidery with her mother and grandmothers. By the time she was in grade school, she was creating her own textile objects and sewing her own clothes.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Murray State University and a master’s degree in education from the University of Louisville, Lesch made a career teaching art and textiles. She taught elementary school and later taught at the Louisville School of Art and U of L.

Much of Lesch’s work in the 1960s reflected Biblical and rural themes. Toward the end of the decade, she began to incorporate discarded and antique clothes and accessories into her stitchery pieces. She quickly became nationally recognized, then internationally in 1968, when the Kunstegewerb-museum in Zurich included her work in the exhibition “The Art of Collage.” In 1970, two of her works were included in a national touring exhibition, “Objects, U.S.A.,” that gained recognition for contemporary crafts as part of the fine art world. In 1974, the World Craft Council recognized her as a Master Craftsman. She received a Kentucky Governor’s Award in the Arts for Lifetime Contribution to the Visual Arts in 1987, and in 1996 she was honored as the first recipient of the Rude Osolnik Award for lifetime achievement in craft from the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.

Lesch inspired generations of artists, both at home in Louisville and through workshops she gave across the United States. Her works are in numerous private and museum collections, including the American Crafts Museum in New York.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: What does this portrait tell you about its subject? What do we learn about “Rebecca” from it? Compare this work to the other two works by Lesch in the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft gallery of the Kentucky Virtual Art Museum (The Colonel’s Lady and Judy O’Grady). Which work do you like the best? How would you classify this work? Would you consider it collage? How does it compare to the contemporary quilts shown in the Museum of the American Quilter’s Society gallery of the Kentucky Virtual Art Museum?

Activities: Bring in old clothes and create a fabric portrait in the style of Alma Lesch.

Imagine who Rebecca is and write a story about a day in her life.

Links

Read the article Textile Artist Alma Lesch Remembered as a Pioneer on the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft web site.
[www.kentuckyarts.org/alma_lesch.htm]

See other works by Alma Lesch at the Kentucky Library and Museum and the Speed Art Museum.
[www.wku.edu/Library/onlinexh/kwa/lesch.html]
[www.speedmuseum.org/lesch_n.html]