Current Exhibition

Norah Lovell: Glacial Retreat

Exhibition Dates: April 11 – May 3, 2026

Opening reception: Saturday, April 11, 6-9pm

Gallery Hours Sat. & Sun. 12-5pm

Staple Goods presents an immersive mixed media installation by Norah Lovell in which image, pattern, sculpted forms and texture converge to evoke a fantastical geological landscape shaped by personal narrative drift and ecological grief stirred by reports of retreating glaciers. 

In Glacial Retreat, Lovell combines photo-collage textiles, prismatic sewn sculptures, and tactile embroidered elements in an icy palette punctuated by vivid color. Small, detailed triangular paintings imagine early arctic explorers, while a brocaded tapestry depicts contemporary glaciologists studying the melting Thwaite (Doomsday) Glacier. The graphic novella Continental Drift anchors the installation, with enlarged pages dispersed throughout the space. Diamond shapes appear throughout, but glaciers and icebergs dominate as motifs-symbols of geological time and metaphoric states. Formed through immense pressure over billions of years, the diamond stands in contrast to the glacier, a vast body of ice slowly moving under its own weight. As viewers move through the installation, they encounter overlapping passages-temporal, earthly and symbolic, marked by the presence of insistently retreating phantom forms.

Norah Lovell creates densely layered, visually complex work inspired by sources ranging from historical wallpaper and textiles to scientific illustration and maps. Working across printed textiles, graphic novels, painting and drawing, she explores the decorative, especially domestic interiors, as sites for storytelling and meaning-making. She exhibits nationally and internationally, teaches interdisciplinary humanities courses at Tulane University and is a member of Staple Goods in New Orleans. Her residencies include the Emily Harvey Foundation (Italy), International Curators and Scholars Program (New York) and Cill Rialaig Art Centre and Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland). Her work is held in the New Orleans Museum of Art and featured in Hyperallergic.

For more information, please contact norahflovell@gmail.com | 504-913-8883

or staplegoodsnola@gmail.com | 504-723-9020

Connections: Staple Goods 10th Anniversary Exhibition Catalog

Exhibition catalog commemorates the collective’s 10th anniversary exhibition, Connections (May 2021), and is available for $5.

Curated by Laura Richens. Text by Amy Mackie. Book Design by Tiffany Lin. Printed at Paper Machine.

Participating Artists: Minka/Thomasine, Aaron Collier, Robyn Denny, William DePauw, Abe Geasland, Daniel Kelly IV, Kristina Knipe, J Knoblach, Norah Lovell, Kaori Maeyama, Anne Nelson, Jack Niven, Laura Richens, Cynthia Scott, Sadie Sheldon, Lorna Williams