Artist Susan Lenz’s “Blues Chapel” is a tribute to African-American women who rivaled bluesmen in talent.

It’s also a tenacious exploration of another craft still pushed to the margin because largely female hands make it: fiber art.

Lenz’s exhibit, now showing in the Gough Gallery at the Center for the Visual Arts, is by turns funny, sad, devotional and defiant.

Lenz uses found objects in her work, which looks like it was created through a hybrid of quilting, lace-making and hand-dyeing.

It’s through the coincidental nature of the found objects that Lenz teaches a cheeky lesson about obscurity, and how women who should have found great fame — the inimitable Ma Rainey, Nina Simone and Ethel Waters — didn’t.

The faces of these singers are in a lot of the work, some of which recalls Orthodox Christian icons.

Meanwhile, Tapestry in Blue honors 24 early female blues singers by depicting them as martyrs, in prints pieced together as a traditional block quilt. Beneath the tapestry are wooden offering plates filled with vinyl records, empty blue wine bottles and blackened roses.

The exhibit runs through Jan. 8. Admission is free. Gallery hours are 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. The arts center, at 400 E. Hickory St., will be closed Dec. 24-25, Dec. 28, Dec. 31 and Jan 1.

For more information, or to arrange docent tours, call 940-382-2787 or visit www.dentonarts.com.

“Storybook Quilts,” an exhibit of work by members of the Denton Quilt Guild, runs through Jan. 8 in the Meadows Gallery at the center. 

— Lucinda Breeding