“A new exhibit brought to light the brilliant, bold and dynamic quilts created by a group of women who live in the isolated, African-American hamlet of Gee’s Bend, Ala. Like many American quilters, the women transformed a necessity into a work of art — but their innovative and often minimalist approach to design is unique.
“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,” says Alvia Wardlaw, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts.
The 60 quilts in the exhibition, created by 42 women spanning four generations, provide a fascinating look at the work of 20th-century artists who lived and worked in solitude. Gee’s Bend is located in southwest Alabama on a sliver of land five miles long and eight miles wide, a virtual island surrounded by a bend in the Alabama River. Without a ferry service for decades, the residents were confined by the river unless they made the hour-long drive to the county seat of Camden, directly across the river from Gee’s Bend.
Gee’s Bend was named after Joseph Gee, the first white man to stake a claim there in the early 1800s. The Gee family sold the plantation to Mark Pettway in 1845. Most of the approximately 750 people who live in Gee’s Bend today are descendants of slaves on the former Pettway plantation. Their forebears continued to work the land as tenant farmers after emancipation, and many eventually bought the farms from the government in the 1940s. Isolated geographically, the women in the community created quilts from whatever materials were available, in patterns of their own imaginative design.
The exhibition was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The quilts in the exhibition are drawn from the collection of Tinwood Alliance, a nonprofit foundation for the support of African-American vernacular art. The Quilts of Gee’s Bend were on display through March 9, 2003, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, after premiering in the fall of 2002 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.”-by Neal Conan, npr.org
Lillie Mae and her sister Mary Lee Bendolph shared their mothers enthusiasm for rectangular patterns with bold colors.
Links must be added to the monthly challenge post comments (this post)..
Monthly Challenge Winners
Please add the tag or title SEP ABS to your photos. Include a short description, who created the art beads and a link to your blog, if you have one.
Beaded beads, stamped metal pendants or wire-wrapped components are not considered art beads for our challenge.***
Alice
September 2, 2011 at 5:52 pmI've been hoping you would feature one of their quilts!!! Their story is so rich with history that one can not help but be moved by it.
Now the wheels are turning…..
Birgitta Lejonklou
September 2, 2011 at 6:05 pmthats is a great challenge ! unusual and colorful…."muse" starts spinning at once 🙂
diane hawkey
September 2, 2011 at 7:49 pmoooooh I love the quilts of Gee's Bend!
This will be a great challenge.
Jen V.
September 3, 2011 at 1:20 amFantastic palette!! I love it!!
mairedodd
September 3, 2011 at 11:02 pmi have one deadline that has to be completed by monday – and then i am all over this – absolutely beautiful inspiration…
Malin de Koning
September 5, 2011 at 8:17 amMy goodness! Did you pick this one especially for ME?! Couldn't be more fitting/suiting. The colors, the patterns, the forms, all of it. I feel I could just take any of my already made jewelry and say I made it for this challenge. I wount however. Of course not! I hope I will be able to put something together especially for this months challenge. It is a busy month for me in many ways.
It's an extraordinary beautiful quilt. Ooooohhhhhh!
Drewl!
Diva Designs Jewelry
September 24, 2011 at 8:13 pmI just uploaded my entry to the pool at flickr, and blogged the challenge at
http://scdiva.blogspot.com/2011/09/september-abs-challenge-entry-corn.html
Thanks ladies! Interesting choice this month.
Lynda
Molly Alexander
September 24, 2011 at 9:49 pmThis is one of my most favorite monthly challenges to date! It took a while, but I have finally finished my necklace, which you can read about here: http://beautifullybrokenme.blogspot.com/2011/09/grandmas-quilt-september-art-bead-scene.html
Thanks so much for hosting!
🙂 Molly
Mackin-Art
September 26, 2011 at 12:36 amI've posted my submission, full details at: http://mackin-art.blogspot.com/2011/09/around-bend.html
Cece
September 28, 2011 at 2:33 pmThanks again for the inspiration. Took up the challenge, see the post here: http://www.thebeadingyogini.com/2011/09/24/september-abs-challenge/