The University of Alabama Gallery is pleased to present Shaken By the Roots: Works by Leanna Leithauser-Lesley in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center, January 12 through February 25, 2022. There will be an artist’s reception in the gallery on Friday, February 4, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. during Tuscaloosa’s First Friday festivities.

Leanna Leithauser-Lesley is a fiber artist who characterizes herself as “an avid needlepointer compelled by the power of jazz music, the drama of photography and the intention to raise the awareness of needlepoint as an art form.” “Jazz,” she notes, “is an American art form, the product of a cultural collaboration and a universal language of tolerance and freedom.” And her subjects include jazz icons like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles, Thelonious Monk, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Dinah Washington, and Nina Simone.