Alma Lesch
Medias Used or Areas of Interest:
Fiber
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For more than 35 years, Alma Lesch, in her quiet way, has influenced a generation of fiber artists. She has been an active artist, teacher, lecturer and author.
Born in McCraken county, Kentucky in 1917, Alma Wallace Lesch began working with fiber as early as the age of five, stitching panels for a quilt which she finished at the age of twelve. She embroidered with her mother and grandmothers before attending school, and in grade and high school made textile objects and sewed some of her own clothing.
Lesch was educated at Murray State University and University of Louisville. She has taught at the Louisville School of Art, University of Louisville, Arrowmont School of Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Chicago Institute of Art, Memphis Academy, and the Philadelphia College of Art and Science.
She is widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary crafts movement for her use of traditional piecing and quilting techniques in creating complex, narrative works. Her highly personal work reflects her deep Kentucky roots while at the same time portraying a range of universal human emotions.
Lesch was recognized as a Master Craftsman by the World Craft Council in 1974. She was presented with an award for distinguished work and included as one of only five artist from the United States to have fiber work included in the first World Crafts Exhibition. She received a Kentucky Governors Award for Lifetime Contribution to the Visual Arts in 1987, and has most recently been honored as the first recipient of the Rude Osolnik Award, given by the Kentucky Craft Marketing Program and Kentucky Art and Craft Foundation for lifetime achievement in craft.
Her work appears in the permanent collections of the American Craft Museum, the Johnson Collection of Contemporary Crafts, the J.B. Speed Art Museum and Evansville Museum of Art. Her book Vegetable Dying, published in 1970 in New York and London, has become accepted as a standard text amongst fiber artists.
Alma Lesch has said, "My lifelong experience with textiles has been full because I have done what I wanted to do. I pieced quilt blocks and embroidered with my mother and grandmothers before I attended school. In grade and high school I made textile objects and designed and sewed part of my clothing. I later found out that this was art.
Throughout the university years great teachers expanded my technical knowledge and taught me sensitivity and seeing. Students motivated and challenged me until it was difficult to keep up. It is abundantly true in my life that one is the product of those we encounter."
Alma Lesch passed away May 15, 1999, in Louisville.
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