Quilts of Gee's Bend

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A 1979 quilt by Lucy Mingo of Gee's Bend, Alabama. It includes a nine-patch center block surrounded by pieced strips.

The quilts of Gee's Bend are quilts created by a group of women and their ancestors who live or have lived in the isolated African-American hamlet of Gee's Bend, Alabama along the Alabama River. The quilts of Gee's Bend are among the most important African-American visual and cultural contributions to the history of art within the United States. Arlonzia Pettway, Annie Mae Young and Mary Lee Bendolph are among some of the most notable quilters from Gee's Bend. Many of the residents in the community can trace their ancestry back to enslaved people from the Pettway Plantation.[1] Arlonzia Pettway can recall her grandmother's stories of her ancestors, specifically of Dinah Miller, who was brought to the United States by slave ship in 1859.[2]

History[edit]

Just southwest of Selma, in the Black Belt of Alabama, Gee's Bend (officially called Boykin) is an isolated, rural community of about seven hundred inhabitants. The area is named after Joseph Gee, a landowner who came from North Carolina and established a cotton plantation in 1816 with his seventeen slaves. In 1845, the plantation was sold to Mark H. Pettway. Many members of the community still carry the name. After emancipation, many freed slaves and family members stayed on the plantation as sharecroppers.

Jennie Pettway and another girl with the quilter Jorena Pettway, Gee's Bend 1937

In the 1930s, Gee's Bend saw a significant shift in their community, as a merchant who had given credit to the families of the Bend died, and the family of this merchant collected on debts owed to him in brutal fashion. These indebted families watched as their food, animals, tools and seed were taken away, and the community was saved by the distribution of Red Cross rations. Much of the land of this area was sold to the federal government and the Farm Security Administration, and those organizations set up Gee's Bend Farms, Inc., a pilot project that was a cooperative-based program intended to help sustain the inhabitants of the area. The government sold tracts of land to the families of the bend, thus giving the Native and African American population control over the land, which at the time was still rare. The community of Gee's Bend was also the subject of several Farm Security Administration photographers, like Dorothea Lange. During the latter half of the Great Depression the inhabitants of the area faced challenges as farming practices became increasingly mechanized, and consequently, a large portion of the community left.[3]

However, many inhabitants of the community stayed. In 1949, a U.S Post Office was established in Gee's Bend. In 1962, the ferry service, one of the only accesses into Gee's Bend, was eliminated, contributing to the community's isolation. Among other effects, this hindered residents’ ability to register to vote. Ferry service was not restored until 2006.[4]

From the 1960s onward, the community of Gee's Bend, as well as the Freedom Quilting Bee in nearby Alabama, gained attention for the production of their quilts. Folk art collector, historian, and curator William Arnett brought further attention to this artistic production with his Souls Grown Deep Foundation in Atlanta, Georgia. Arnett organized an exhibition titled, "The Quilts of Gee's Bend", which debuted in 2002 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and later travelled to a dozen other locations across the country. The exhibition featured sixty quilts created by forty-five artists.[5] This exhibition brought fame to the quilts. Arnett's management of Gee's Bend quilts was not always viewed positively. In 2007, two Gee's Bend quiltmakers, Annie Mae Young and Loretta Pettway, filed lawsuits saying that Arnett cheated them out of thousands of dollars from the sales of their quilts.[6] The lawsuit was resolved and dismissed without comment from lawyers on either side in 2008.[7]

Despite this former controversy, Arnett's foundation Souls Grown Deep Foundation continues to collect and organize exhibitions for Gees Bend Quilts.[8] The foundation manages multiple campaigns to support Gees Bend Quiltmakers. They aim to provide documentation, marketing, and fund-raising, as well as education and opportunity for quiltmakers. The foundation is also involved in a multi-year campaign with the Artists Rights Society to gain intellectual property rights for the artists of Gee's Bend.[9]

Quilts[edit]

The quilting tradition in Gee's Bend goes back beyond the 19th century and may have been influenced in part by patterned Native American textiles and African textiles. African-American women pieced together strips of cloth to make bedcovers. Throughout the post-bellum years and into the 20th century, Gee's Bend women made quilts to keep themselves and their children warm in unheated shacks that lacked running water, telephones and electricity. Along the way they developed a distinctive style, noted for its lively improvisations and geometric simplicity.[1] Many of the quilts are a departure from classical quilt making, bringing to mind a minimalist quality. This could also have been influenced by the isolation of their location, which necessitated using whatever materials were on hand, often recycling from old clothing and textiles.[10]

The quilts have been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Turner Contemporary in the UK, among others. The reception of the work has been mostly positive, as Alvia Wardlaw, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston wrote, "The compositions of these quilts contrast dramatically with the ordered regularity associated with many styles of Euro-American quiltmaking. There's a brilliant, improvisational range of approaches to composition that is more often associated with the inventiveness and power of the leading 20th-century abstract painters than it is with textile-making".[10] The Whitney venue, in particular, brought a great deal of art-world attention to the work, starting with Michael Kimmelman's 2002 review in The New York Times which called the quilts "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced" and went on to describe them as a version of Matisse and Klee arising in the rural South.[11] Comparable effect can be seen in the quilts of isolated individuals such as Rosie Lee Tompkins, but the Gee's Bend quilters had the advantage of numbers and backstory.

Women from Gee's Bend work on a quilt, 2005

In 2003, 50 quilt makers founded the Gee's Bend Collective, which is owned and operated by the women of Gee's Bend.[1] Every quilt sold by the Gee's Bend Quilt Collective is unique and individually produced. In recent years, members of the Collective have traveled nationwide to talk about Gee's Bend's history and their art. Many of the ladies have become well known for their wit, engaging personality and, in some cases, singing abilities.

In 2011, the Gee's Bend quilters were featured in the episode "Gee's Bend: The Most Famous Quilts in America", which was part five of a nine-part series titled Why Quilts Matter: History, Art & Politics.[12]

Quilting, Gee's Bend, 2010

In 2015, Gee's Bend quilters Mary Lee Bendolph, Lucy Mingo, and Loretta Pettway were joint recipients of a National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.[13]

In 2022, the Gee's Bend quilters provided the guiding metaphor of a quilt for a book about women's work by Ferren Gipson in which they were included.[14]

In 2023, the quilters collaborated with generative artist Anna Lucia to create digital works of art on the blockchain in a project called Generations.[15]

In February 2024, in celebration of Black History Month, a "Gee's Bend by Target" collection became available for sale online and in Target stores across the United States.[16][17]

Further reading[edit]

  • Beardsley, J. (2002). Gee's Bend: The Women and Their Quilts. Greece: Tinwood Books. ISBN 0-9719104-0-5.
  • Finley, C., Griffey, R. R., Peck, A., Pinckney, D. (2018). My Soul Has Grown Deep: Black Art from the American South. United Kingdom: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 9781588396099.
  • Arnett, W. (2006). Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. Greece: Tinwood Books. ISBN 9780971910478.
  • Cassel Oliver, V. (2019). Cosmologies from the Tree of Life: Art from the African American South. United States: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. ISBN 9781934351161.
  • Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville, Tenn.), Arnett, P. Creation Story: Gee's Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial. (2012). United States: Frist Center for the Visual Arts. ISBN 9780826518811.
  • Beardsley, J. (2002). The Quilts of Gee's Bend. Greece: Tinwood Books. ISBN 9780965376648.
  • Burgard, T. A. (2017). Revelations: Art from the African American South. Germany: Prestel Publishing. ISBN 9783791357171.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Wallach, Amei (October 2006). "Fabric of Their Lives". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved March 23, 2018.
  2. ^ Halper, Vicki; Douglas, Diane, eds. (2009). Choosing craft : the artist's viewpoint. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807831199. OCLC 646811437.
  3. ^ Stephens, Kyes. "The History of Gee's Bend Alabama". Alabama Online University. Auburn University. Archived from the original on March 25, 2015. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  4. ^ Dunner, Shermika; Bass, Erin Z. (April 17, 2012). "The Future of Gee's Bend". Deep South Magazine. Retrieved December 5, 2017.
  5. ^ Duffy, Karen (2007). "Review: [Untitled]". The Journal of American Folklore. 120 (475): 94–95. doi:10.1353/jaf.2007.0008. S2CID 162304552. Retrieved December 17, 2020.
  6. ^ Dewan, Shaila (July 29, 2007). "Handmade Alabama Quilts Find Fame and Controversy". The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2020.
  7. ^ "Alabama: Quilters Resolve Lawsuit". The New York Times. The Associated Press. August 26, 2008. Retrieved December 17, 2020.
  8. ^ Sheets, Hilarie (November 12, 2018). "Five More Museums Acquire Art From Souls Grown Deep Foundation". The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2020.
  9. ^ "Souls Grown Deep Community Partnership". Souls Grown Deep. Souls Grown Deep. Retrieved December 17, 2020.
  10. ^ a b "'The Quilts of Gee's Bend': A Showcase of Distinctive Work by African-American Artists". NPR.org. February 4, 2003. Retrieved December 5, 2017.
  11. ^ Kimmelman, Michael (November 29, 2002). "Art Review: Jazzy Geometry, Cool Quilters". The New York Times. Retrieved November 19, 2017.
  12. ^ "Why Quilts Matter: 05: Gee's Bend: The Most Famous Quilts in America". Folkstreams. 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
  13. ^ "NEA National Heritage Fellowships 2015". www.arts.gov. National Endowment for the Arts. Retrieved November 19, 2020.
  14. ^ Gipson, Ferren (2022). Women's Work: From Feminine Arts to Feminist Art. London: Frances Lincoln. ISBN 978-0-7112-6465-6.
  15. ^ Dafoe, Taylor (May 10, 2023). "The Quilters of Gee's Bend Head to the Blockchain, Collaborating with a Young Generative Artist on a Series of NFTS". Artnet.com.
  16. ^ Hitson, Hadley (February 4, 2024). "Alabama's famous rural quilters partner with Target". Montgomery Advertiser. pp. A01. Archived from the original on February 5, 2024. Retrieved February 4, 2024.
  17. ^ "Gee's Bend x Target : Black History Month Home & Stationery Collection". Retrieved February 4, 2024.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

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