(AAPNW) – Since 2002, the Alma Wallace Lesch Award has been presented annually at the Kentucky State Fair for fiber or textile work using innovation in color or technique, which is administered by the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft. This year, the award went to Trish Korte’s “Red Vessel” ( 10″ x 7″ x 7″) work made of merino wool and mohair and embellished with glass beads.
“Fiber has been my passion since my first Fiber Arts class at the University of Louisville in 2000,” said Korte. “I work in several areas of Fiber Arts due to its endless opportunities for experimentation and its connection to historical and traditional techniques. Wet felting is the technique I choose for my three dimensional vessels.”
Korte is a visual arts teacher at New Albany High School in Indiana and Art Curriculum Chair for the New Albany Floyd County School Corporation. She is also a District Representative for the Indiana Art Education Association and a member of the Louisville Area Fiber and Textile Association. She said, “In my 3-D work, I construct a form and then build layers of wool, choosing my colors intuitively. I see my strands of wool as physical color with the ability to flow abstractly across the surface. The uneven and serendipitous results contribute to the spontaneity and expressiveness of the work; I embellish with beads or recycled jewelry.”
About
The award is named for Alma Wallace Lesch (1917 – 1999), a native of McCracken County, who had a lifelong love of fabric. She completed her first quilt at age 12 and came to making art much later after retiring as a third-grade teacher. By 1961, when Lesch was 44, she had a new job teaching textile arts at the former Louisville School of Art.
Over the next 30 years Lesch became the undisputed Grande Dame of Kentucky textiles and a pioneer of the national crafts movement, working from her basement studio and living room “sewing chair” in Shepherdsville. In 1970, two of her art works were part of the acclaimed national touring exhibition “Objects U.S.A.,” which helped make contemporary crafts part of the fine-arts world.
Lesch, whose interests were always broad, published a book on vegetable dyes that same year. It is still a textile artists’ classic. Her innovative art, especially those pieces that pioneered the use of clothing as portraits, were frequently used to illustrate the new wave of contemporary crafts.
For more information, call 502.589.0102 or see: www.KentuckyArts.org.