Lesch | Oldham Needlework

Lesch | Oldham
Needlework
Jan. 13- March 11, 2023
Cressman Center for Visual Arts
100 E Main St. Louisville, KY 40202

The Hite Institute of Art and Design is pleased to present “Lesch | Oldham: Needlework,” a two-person exhibition featuring Alma Lesch (1917-1999) and Elsa Oldham (b. 1983). Originally installed for a short duration in Fall 2022 to coincide with the annual meeting of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT), (a global consortium founded by Harald Szeemann, designed to offer a novel approach to art that is both nationally oriented and locally grounded) the show is back by popular demand and has returned to the CCVA for a full 8 weeks. 

Lesch and Oldham are fiber and needle-based artists who work with material and cultural vernacular from Kentucky. But both artists also work at the intersection of representational-visual art and novel (sometimes even bewildering) technology in ways that are decidedly engaged with the most pressing visual problems of their moment. The exhibition thus begins to answer a question posed by the IKT conference: What might constitute art of “Global Appalachia.”  

The Cressman Center is Open Wed: 11-2 pm; Thursday 11-6 pm; Friday 11-5; and Saturday 11-2:30.

Images:  Left: Alma Lesch, Southern Gothic, 1973, fiber collage, 26” x 38”; Right, Elsa Hansen Oldham, Facing Ali (detail), 2017, silk and velvet hand embroidery on linen, quilted on cotton, 21” x 32”, Image courtesy the artist and Dickinson Gallery, New York

Exhibition Catalog: