The Wharton Esherick Museum (WEM) is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition by its current artist-in-residence, Kelly Cobb: Working at a Joyous Creative Thing: Weaving, Making, and Material Culture in Letty Eshericks Legacy, an exhibition highlighting Cobbs ongoing research and creative work at WEM. Just now I want a chance to do what you have been doing all your life, working at a joyous creative thing, which I hope will pave the way for my being self-supporting. This may be too late for me, but I still want to try. This is what Letty Esherick wrote in a letter to Wharton Esherick in 1947. Unlike most Wharton Esherick Museum artists-in-residence, Kelly Cobb has focused her research not on Wharton himself but on Leticia (Letty) Nofer Esherick, the dynamic artist, dancer, educator, and creative powerhouse whom Wharton married in 1912. While Whartons career was shaped in large part by Lettys support, financial, intellectual, emotional, and otherwise, her own creative legacy has too often been overlooked. The letter excerpted above, written after her separation from Wharton and the raising of their children, reflects Lettys intense desire for artistic recognition, creative opportunity, and economic independence. Working at a Joyous Creative Thing showcases original textiles by Letty Esherick discovered by WEM staff in 2022. They include garments, weaving samples, and works-in-progress, and likely date from the 1940s through her death in 1975. Cobb is among the first scholars to study these textiles. She combines material-based research with WEMs extensive paper and photographic archives related to Letty, as well as fieldwork at sites like Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, where Letty studied weaving in the late 1940s. Cobbs research is supported in part by a College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Go Grant from the University of Delaware. This installation marks the first public presentation of Lettys textiles in at least five decades. They are shown alongside new works by Cobb, as well as artworks across disciplines by a group of skilled collaborators that range from handmade garments to sound art to embroidery. Together, they situate Lettys practice within broader narratives of artistic ambition, gendered labor, and creative survival. The objects and ideas presented in Working at a Joyous Creative Thing represent the midpoint of Cobbs residency. Her research continues, with further insights to be shared in programs at WEM this fall, as well as new creative materials to be presented in spring 2026. The new exhibit opened Sept. 18 and will run until Sunday, Dec. 28. The Wharton Esherick Museum is the home and studio of Wharton Esherick (1887-1970), an artistic polymath and foundational figure in 20th-century contemporary craft and American Modern design. Wharton Esherick is widely credited as the founder of the Studio Furniture Movement and was present at many of the landmark events which shaped the field of contemporary craft on an international level. The museum is in Paoli, Pa. Kelly Cobb is an associate professor of Fashion and Apparel Studies at The University of Delaware. Her research program examines the complexities inherent in apparel and textile supply chains through creative project-based work that seeks to reintegrate the wearer of clothes to local trades and economies, restoring integrity and kinship to the origins of materials and to the environmental resources and human labor involved in textile and apparel production. For details about visiting the museum, visit www.whartonesherickmuseum.org.