Direct from Gee's Bend - Quilters Loretta Pettway Bennett and Louisiana Bendolph

Loretta Pettway Bennett and Louisiana Bendolph 

"The quilts gave us a voice." 

With these simple words, Louisiana Bendolph summed up the history of the quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama. The tradition of women quilting in this small community -- current population approximately 250 -- dates back to the days of slavery. They scavenged fabric from whatever was available -- be it a worn out work shirt, a frayed blanket or a feed bag -- cut the materials into pieces and stitched them together into quilts. There was no pattern or purposeful design; the creations were strictly utilitarian. A quilt might have been put on the floor and used as a rug or on the bed for warmth. It might even have been hung on a wall, but not as art. Instead, its purpose would have been to keep out the cold. Fast forward to the 1960s, when a minister on the hunt for folk art came through their tiny community and saw their work in a new light. That happenstance not only changed the lives of the people in Gee's Bend forever; it also impacted the world of modern art. But first, more about the history of the community. 

Housetop Variation quilt by Louisiana Bendolph (2007)

Gee's Bend is located in the bend of the Alabama River and is part of the region known as the Black Belt. The name comes from the rich black soil there that made the area perfect for growing cotton and tobacco. In fact, Louisiana grew up picking cotton. She noted with an ironic smile that the same cotton she hated to pick now hangs on museum walls. Camden, the county seat, is located just across the River from Gee's Bend and can be reached by taking a 15 minute ferry ride. An easy journey, until it wasn't. 

The people of Gee's Bend were politically active during the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King visited Camden, and many of the Gee's Bend citizens went to hear him speak. They were inspired by his words, and many residents both participated in demonstrations and registered -- or at least tried to register -- to vote. The County's response was to terminate the ferry service, an action that made Camden much more difficult to reach. What had been a short ferry ride now required a 45 minute drive. The ferry service was not reinstated for more than four decades. The community became so isolated that they didn't hear about MLK's assassination until well after it had happened. 

Maquette for American Housetop (for the Arnetts)
by Louisiana Bendolph (2005)

It was in the midst of this political turmoil that Father Francis X. Walter spied a quilt made by one of the women of Gee's Bend hanging from a clothesline. Walter had $700 in his pocket to buy folk art that would be auctioned off in New York, with the proceeds going to his church. When he met the women of Gee's Bend, that plan went out the window. 

Walter did use the funds to buy quilts from the women (for $10 each) and sold them at auction in New York. But the proceeds went back to the community rather than to his church. Suddenly the same quilts that the women of Gee's Bend had been making for more than a century were no longer utilitarian; they were art. The women gained economic independence from the sale of their work, and they liked it. They established the Freedom Quilting Bee as a vehicle for their business. After a few years, they diversified into making corduroy pillow shams that were so popular that Sears Roebuck came calling. At the height of their work for Sears, the women produced 30,000 shams every six months (which, if you do the math, is 200 shams per day). While the original Freedom Quilting Bee is no longer in existence, a new non-profit named the Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy has been established, and Loretta is a member of the Board of Directors. For more information on the Bee, click here. 

"Blues" by Loretta Bennett (2007)

Today the quilters of Gee's Bend are established artists in the world of art. Their first museum exhibit was held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in 2002. Since then,their work has been exhibited in group and solo shows at museums and galleries across the country, including the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. As I write, their work is on display at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. And, like other popular artists, their work has been reproduced in many forms. There are Gee's Bend puzzles and bags and notecards. One of Louisiana's quilts was converted into a sculpture made of ceramic tile that hangs in the San Francisco Airport. (You can see it by clicking here.) And thanks to Paulson Fontaine Press, the work of the Gees Bend quilters has been immortalized as prints. some of which are now on display at Sarasota Art Museum (SAM).   

I mentioned at the top that the quilts made by the women of Gee's Bend have inspired many artists working today. Take, for instance, Amy Sherald's official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama. Sherald chose the dress Obama is wearing in part because the design evoked the work of the Gee's Bend quilters. You can see it once you know what you're looking for. Lillian Blades, an artist whose work is now on display at SAM, noted in her artist talk that the creations of the Gee's Bend women are recalled in the improvisational nature of her own work. Like the quilters, Blades makes her art of whatever bits and pieces have found their way into her studio. Her veils in particular have a quilt-like quality to them. Click here for an example of Blades' work now on display. There are many more examples, but I've already gone on too long. 

"Personal to Political: Celebrating the African American Artists of Paulson Fontaine Press" runs through this Sunday, so time is short to see the exhibit. There are quilts, maquettes for prints and prints on display, so you get to see the entire gamut of their work. For a wonderful video of Louisiana and some of the other women working at Paulson Fontaine, click here. And for a deep dive into the quilters of Gee's Bend, click here. It's an incredibly special story.