GEES BEND QUILT Handsewn Potholder Set X 2 WITH COA AFRICAN AMERICAN SIGNED

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (807) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176277808908 GEES BEND QUILT Handsewn Potholder Set X 2 WITH COA AFRICAN AMERICAN SIGNED.

      Handcrafted following the Gee's Bend quilting tradition that goes back three generations, this set of two potholders are hand-sewn in coordinating pink and burgundy prints. The quilted potholders measure 12 x 11 and 11 x 9.5 inches, and were hand-sewn using cotton fabric. WITH COA AND BOTH SIGGNED BY GEES BEND ARTIST DORIS PETTWAY MOSELY


  • Potholder Details:
    - 12 x 11 and 11 x 9.5 inches, set of two
    - Hand-sewn using cotton fabric
    - Handmade by a Gee's Bend Quilter in 2021


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 slaves 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] Contents 1 History 2 Quilts 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links History 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 Alberta, 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 first 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 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 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, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, 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. 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.[12] Philadelphia Museum of Art How curious a land is this,—how full of untold story, of tragedy and laughter, and the rich legacy of human life; shadowed with a tragic past, and big with future promise! – W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk GEE’S BEND: THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE QUILT AND AFRICAN AMERICAN QUILTMAKING TRADITIONS  A RESOURCE GUIDE FOR TEACHERS TABLE OF CONTENTS OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................................... 1 QUILT BASICS ................................................................................................................................. 2 QUILTS IN THE GEE’S BEND: THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE QUILT EXHIBITION: ABOUT GEE’S BEND ........................................................................................................... 3 QUILTMAKING IN GEE’S BEND .......................................................................................... 4 QUILTMAKERS: WILLIE “MA WILLIE” ABRAMS ............................................................................. 5 LOUISIANA P. BENDOLPH ...................................................................................... 7 MARY LEE BENDOLPH ........................................................................................... 9 LORETTA P. BENNETT .......................................................................................... 11 LUCY MINGO ....................................................................................................... 13 LORETTA PETTWAY ............................................................................................. 15 AFRICAN AMERICAN QUILTS IN THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART’S PERMANENT COLLECTION: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 17 QUILTMAKERS: UNKNOWN QUILTMAKER (GEE’S BEND, ALABAMA) ......................................... 19 PEARLIE POSEY .................................................................................................... 21 FAITH RINGGOLD ................................................................................................ 23 SARAH MARY TAYLOR ........................................................................................ 25 SELECTED CHRONOLOGY ............................................................................................................ 27 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR STUDY ......................................................................................... 30 VOCABULARY .............................................................................................................................. 33 BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF QUILTS .......................................................................................... 36 DIAMANTE POEM FORMAT ......................................................................................................... 37 Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt has been organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta. The exhibition is supported by a MetLife Foundation Museum and Community Connections grant, by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and by The Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Education and community outreach programs are funded by The Delphi Project Foundation, Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, the Connelly Foundation, Paul K. Kania, and Lynne and Harold Honickman. Promotional support is provided by NBC 10 WCAU and The Philadelphia Tribune. Pictured on the sticker: Blocks, Strips, Strings, and Half-Squares Quilt, 2005, by Mary Lee Bendolph (Collection of the Tinwood Alliance. Photo by Stephen Pitkin, Pitkin Studio, Rockford, Illinois) 1 OVERVIEW This resource guide was developed by the Division of Education of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to complement the exhibition Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt (September 16–December 14, 2008) and to serve as an ongoing resource for teachers. The guide provides information about ten quilts created by African American women who worked throughout the twentieth century. Six of the quilts are on view in the Gee’s Bend exhibition and the remaining four are in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The ten quilts in this guide suggest the range of the many styles, influences, and materials found within African American quiltmaking traditions. The quilts have many stories to tell of artistic innovation, triumph over hardship, and pride in heritage. It is important to note that these quilts are a small sampling of a much larger production, for many quilts have been lost to history. Each quilt is a product of its own particular social, historical, and personal context. For this reason, the text prioritizes the quiltmakers’ own words, biographical information, and descriptions of their working methods. Note: The quotes from the artists were taken from personal interviews and therefore reflect the informality of that form of communication. As you read the quotes, listen for the richness of the spoken word and the rhythms that characterize the dialect of the American South. RESOURCES The resources listed below can be used to introduce the material to K–12 students as pre- or post-visit lessons, or instead of a Museum visit.  A full-color poster  A CD-ROM containing a PowerPoint presentation that includes digital images of the quilts examined in this printed guide and “looking questions” to initiate discussions  Information about ten quilts and the artists who made them  Language arts, social studies, math, and art curriculum connections  A selected chronology  A resource list for further study  A vocabulary list, which includes all words that have been bolded in the text  2 QUILT BASICS  Most quilts are made of three layers: a top that is decorative, a middle of soft batting that adds thickness and provides warmth, and a back.  These three layers are stitched, or quilted, together.  The quilts included in this guide fall into two categories: pieced and appliqué. Pieced quilts have a top made of bits of fabric stitched, or pieced, together. Appliqué quilts have tops that consist of background blocks of fabric with cutout shapes of fabric sewn on top.  3 ABOUT GEE’S BEND Gee’s Bend, Alabama, is a rural community of about 700 people, most of whom are African American, located on a fifteen-mile stretch of land nestled in a hairpin turn of the Alabama River. The area is named for Joseph Gee, who established a cotton plantation there in 1816. In 1845, Mark Pettway bought the estate, which encompassed thousands of acres of land and 101 enslaved people. Pettway also forced slaves from his North Carolina home to walk across four states to Alabama. Many residents of Gee’s Bend are descendants of these people, a large number of whom still bear Pettway’s last name. After the American Civil War (1861–65), the majority of the freed slaves in Gee’s Bend became tenant farmers and remained in the area. During the Great Depression (1929–39), the price of cotton plummeted, causing economic strife in Gee’s Bend. It was identified as one of the poorest towns in the nation, prompting the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to establish a program to build new homes and offer residents low-interest mortgages. While many African American families in the South moved North in the ensuing years, these homeowners stayed. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., visited Gee’s Bend in 1965 and encouraged citizens to register to vote and to join him in a march to Selma, Alabama. Many Gee’s Bend women were jailed for these actions. In additional retaliation, the ferry service that connected Gee’s Bend to the larger town of Camden was cancelled, cutting off access to services and supplies (this ferry service was restored in 2006). Still, the community endured, and when King was assassinated in 1968, two farmer mules from Gee’s Bend were chosen to pull his casket. For over a century, the people of Gee’s Bend have come together to overcome the struggles of poverty, isolation, and prejudice. Although Gee’s Bend remains geographically remote, it is recognized worldwide as a center of artistic production and a symbol of community perseverance and pride. 4 QUILTMAKING IN GEE’S BEND The quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend first garnered attention for their skills in the 1960s, when the Freedom Quilting Bee, a sewing cooperative that produced quilts and other sewn products for department stores, was established. The Bee provided women with an income and a sense of independence during the tumultuous Civil Rights era. In the mid-1990s, while researching African American folk art in the South, art collector William Arnett became interested in the history of quiltmaking. After seeing a photograph of Gee’s Bend quiltmaker Annie Mae Young standing with one of her quilts, he visited her and the other accomplished quiltmakers in the community. Working together, they organized the acclaimed exhibition The Quilts of Gee’s Bend in 2002. The overwhelming positive response to the show led to a renaissance of quiltmaking in the area. Since the 2002 exhibition, younger artists have been inspired to pick up needle and thread and older quiltmakers who had abandoned the practice took it up again. The current exhibition, Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, showcases much of this new work.  5 LET’S LOOK! What shapes and patterns are in this quilt? This quilt is made of corduroy. How do you think it would feel to sleep under it? How are the blocks different from each other? How are they similar? WILLIE “MA WILLIE” ABRAMS American, 1879–1987 Roman Stripes Variation Quilt c. 1975 Corduroy 85 1/2 x 70 1/2 inches (217.2 x 179.1 cm) Collection of the Tinwood Alliance Photo by Stephen Pitkin, Pitkin Studio, Rockford, Illinois  I believe she was quiet not because she didn’t have anything to say, but because she came from a world where you did not speak until you were spoken to. I think this is also how she was able to create many beautiful quilts . . . because in her moments of quietness she would think of things to do and visualize it and just make it. – Louise Williams, speaking about her grandmother, Willie Abrams  ABOUT THIS ARTIST Willie “Ma Willie” Abrams lived in Rehoboth, Alabama, a settlement north of Gee’s Bend. She helped operate the Freedom Quilting Bee with her daughter, Estelle Witherspoon, who served as its head manager for over two decades. Abrams is remembered as a quiet person and gifted quiltmaker who often shared pattern blocks and designs with others. Scholars have noted that the quiltmakers of Rehoboth have a unique style, characterized by daring color combinations and innovative compositions. This distinctive style might result in part from Rehoboth’s geographical distance from the heart of Gee’s Bend. ABOUT THIS QUILT In 1972, the Freedom Quilting Bee received a contract with Sears Roebuck and Company to make corduroy pillow shams. The abundance of leftover fabric from that project inspired many local quiltmakers to incorporate it into their designs. Although difficult to work with due to its rigidity, corduroy was well suited for minimal yet bold designs. This quilt, made from Sears corduroy, has a warm feeling due to the gold, red, and brown colors, accented by avocado green. The design is dominated by a variation of the Roman Stripes pattern, made of rows of horizontal strips. However, Abrams rotated the rows throughout the design and manipulated the size of each block. One row of blocks near the middle of the quilt features a sampling of other quilt patterns including Bricklayer, Log Cabin, and Housetop.  6 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH Elementary and Middle School – Poetry of Design As a class, brainstorm words that can be used to describe the textures, colors, shapes, and patterns in Abrams’s quilt. You can view the quilt together as a class by projecting the image in the PowerPoint presentation (on the CD-ROM included with this resource guide). Using the long list of words, have students create poems that capture the feeling of the quilt. SOCIAL STUDIES Middle and High School – The Freedom Quilting Bee and the Civil Rights Movement Abrams helped to manage the Freedom Quilting Bee, a sewing cooperative established in 1966, which employed women in the Gee’s Bend and Rehoboth areas. They produced quilts and other sewn pieces that were sold in department stores. Have students research the history of the Freedom Quilting Bee and its relationship to the Civil Rights Movement (see Nancy Callahan’s book on the subject, listed in “Additional Resources for Study” on page 30). MATH/ART Elementary School – How Many Ways? Ask students to put three rows of three dots on a piece of paper. Have them connect the dots with straight lines in any way they like (just as long as the large square is enclosed). Compare and contrast the solutions, then ask students to work on several more designs. How many ways are there to divide up the square using the dots? What happens if you add more dots to each row? Elementary School – 100 Dots Give students sheets of paper with 10 rows of 10 dots (100 dots total). Have students connect the dots with straight lines to make a symmetrical design (they don’t have to use every dot). Invite students to color in the entire design. Compare and contrast the resulting compositions. Elementary School – Variations on Quilt Patterns Have students look at some of the different quilt patterns (see “Basic Building Blocks of Quilts” on page 36). Then ask students to choose one that they’d like to reinterpret and have them design a quilt with nine blocks (three rows of three blocks), with each block featuring a variation of the quilt pattern they chose. Discuss how students altered the original pattern in their designs. 7 LET’S LOOK! If this quilt were a map or an aerial view, what kind of place could it be? What colors did the artist use? What do these colors remind you of? Bendolph says she bases many of her designs on the Housetop pattern. How does this quilt remind you of that pattern (see illustration on page 36)? LOUISIANA P. BENDOLPH American, born 1960 Housetop Variation Quilt 2003 Cotton and cotton blends 97 1/2 x 66 3/4 inches (247.7 x 169.5 cm) Collection of the Tinwood Alliance Photo by Stephen Pitkin, Pitkin Studio, Rockford, Illinois  We came from cotton fields, we came through hard times, and we look back and see what all these people before us have done. They brought us here, and to say thank you is not enough. – Louisiana P. Bendolph  ABOUT THIS ARTIST Until she was sixteen, Louisiana Bendolph worked in the fields from sunup to sundown every day of the week except Sunday, when she went to church with her family. She and her husband Albert (whose mother is Mary Lee Bendolph) moved from Gee’s Bend to Mobile, Alabama, in 1980, though she considers Gee’s Bend her home. She made quilts intermittently throughout her life, at times using patterns from books. However, she had not quilted for many years when she went to the 2002 opening of The Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibition inspired her to return to quiltmaking. She said, “When I was coming back from Houston . . . I started having visions of quilts . . . So I got a pencil and a piece of paper and drew them out. Finally I decided that I would get some fabric and make a quilt . . . The images wouldn’t go away . . . And I’ve kept on doing it because those images won’t leave me alone.” ABOUT THIS QUILT In this quilt, solid blocks of color alternate with blocks of intersecting lines that recall maps, mazes, or grids. The quilt as a whole looks like an aerial view of land, roads, and fields. When Bendolph pieces her quilt tops together, she often reworks their design by cutting them apart and rearranging them in new ways. She describes most of her designs as based on the Housetop pattern but as she works on them they become “un-Housetop.” The connection to her ancestors through quiltmaking is important to her, and today her daughter and granddaughter design quilt patterns on the computer. 8 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH High School – Are Quilts Art? Can utilitarian quilts be considered art? Discuss arguments for and against the idea that quilts should be exhibited in an art museum. Read art critics’ opinions as well, such as the differing responses that critics Michael Kimmelman and Brooks Barnes had to The Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibition (listed in “Additional Resources for Study” on page 30). SOCIAL STUDIES Middle and High School – The Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective The successful exhibitions of quilts from Gee’s Bend have created a renaissance in quiltmaking and an increased demand for work done by these quiltmakers. Fifty local women created the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective in 2003 to sell their quilts. When a quilt is sold, part of the income goes directly to the quiltmaker and the rest is distributed among the members of the collective. Learn about how the collective works and how it might serve as an example for other communities on the website quiltsofgeesbend.com. MATH Elementary School – Patterns and Pattern Breaks Using quilting tiles (available through the ETA/Cuisenaire website; see “Additional Resources for Study” on page 30) or shapes cut out of construction paper (one-inch squares and triangles cut from one-inch squares), have students create a clear pattern within a nine-patch block (three rows of three squares). Then, have students exchange patterns with a partner. The partner must change one or two pieces to break the overall pattern and create visual interest. What changed? How does the pattern break affect the design? ART Elementary and Middle School – Digital Quilt Designs Louisiana Bendolph’s daughter and granddaughter create quilt designs on the computer. Using Adobe Photoshop or another graphics editing program, have students make quilt designs digitally and use them as inspiration in a quilt project. Middle and High School – Aerial Views Bendolph’s quilt recalls an aerial view of a landscape, including plots of land, roads, and other geographic elements. Have students create designs based on aerial views of their neighborhood, town, or city.  9 LET’S LOOK! If this quilt could make noise, what would it be? Describe some of the patterns in this quilt. How are the patterns different from each other? How are they similar? Where have you seen similar patterns in the world around you? MARY LEE BENDOLPH American, born 1935 Blocks, Strips, Strings, and Half-Squares Quilt 2005 Cotton 84 x 81 inches (213.4 x 205.7 cm) Collection of the Tinwood Alliance Photo by Stephen Pitkin, Pitkin Studio, Rockford, Illinois  I can walk outside and look around in the yard and see ideas all around the front and back of my house. – Mary Lee Bendolph  ABOUT THIS ARTIST The seventh of sixteen children, Mary Lee Bendolph has spent her entire life in Gee’s Bend. She learned how to quilt from her mother, Aolar. Bendolph gave birth to her first child at age fourteen, which prevented her from attending school beyond sixth grade. She married Rubin Bendolph in 1955 and their family grew to include eight children. Over the years, she has worked in a variety of textile-related jobs, mostly making army uniforms. Since retiring in 1992, Bendolph has found more time to quilt. She gathers design ideas by looking at the world around her. Anything—from people’s clothes at church, to her barn, to quilts hanging on clotheslines in front yards, to how the land looks when she’s high above it in an airplane—can inspire her. For her materials, she prefers fabric cut from used clothing because it avoids wastefulness and because she appreciates the “love and spirit” in old cloth. ABOUT THIS QUILT Radiating energy and a lively rhythm, this quilt is made of stacked blocks of pieced fabric, each presenting a different design variation. The pattern changes are sometimes referred to as syncopation, a term also used to describe a rhythmic shift in music when a weak beat is stressed. This quilt includes strings, or wedge-shaped pieces, that are commonly used by quiltmakers in Gee’s Bend, in addition to strips (long rectangles) and triangles, which come together in various ways. Its overall asymmetry defies predictability, encouraging our eyes to jump to different areas of the quilt. 10 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH High School – “Crossing Over” Read and discuss J. R. Moehringer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning story about Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee’s Bend, and the reopening of the ferry service on the website pulitzer.org/year/2000/feature-writing/works. ART Elementary and Middle School – Yard Art Show Mary Lee Bendolph has talked about being inspired by neighbors’ and friends’ quilts that were displayed in their front yards. She says: We just walked out together, and the peoples have the quilts on the line. They have them hanging out . . . And all the quilts they made, they had them hanging out on the wire fence, just like an art show. They be looking so beautiful. I asked them about how they made them, you know, what was the name of the quilt. They’d tell us. They named their own quilts and they’ll tell you about it. And it would be so pretty. Stage a “yard art show” of your own in a hallway, school yard, or other common area, and have students respond to each others’ designs. Middle and High School – Photography After discussing the places where Bendolph finds inspiration for patterns, have students find and photograph patterns—both symmetrical and asymmetrical—in their neighborhood. Encourage students to look everywhere, as patterns emerge in everything from a stone wall, to the bark of a tree, to links on a fence. Print the photographs (if possible) or create designs based on these patterns. MUSIC Elementary and Middle School – Music Many quiltmakers, including Bendolph, speak about the connection between music and quiltmaking. Nettie Young explained: We do lots of singing when we making a quilt, and it could have music and a song to it, because that’s the way we make the quilt. Mostly singing . . . Sewing, singing, sewing and singing. It’s in that quilt because that’s what I do when I quilt. Ask students to discuss what kinds of music each quilt reminds them of. The quilts can be viewed together as a class by projecting the image in the PowerPoint presentation (on the CD-ROM included with this resource guide). Then, play songs from different African American musical genres (such as ragtime, jazz, blues, or spirituals) and have students respond visually. For ideas, consult Toyomi Igus’s and Michele Wood’s book I See the Rhythm, or listen to recordings of songs recorded in Gee’s Bend in 1948 on the website arts.state.al.us/actc/music/index-music.html. 11 LET’S LOOK! What do you notice first? Where does your eye travel next? What drew your eye there? What do you think this quilt could represent about the artist’s childhood? LORETTA P. BENNETT American, born 1960 Two-Sided Geometric Quilt 2003 Corduroy and velveteen 69 1/2 x 59 inches (176.5 x 149.9 cm) Collection of the Tinwood Alliance Photo by Stephen Pitkin, Pitkin Studio, Rockford, Illinois  I came to realize that my mother, her mother, my aunts, and all the others from Gee’s Bend had sewn the foundation, and all I had to do now was thread my own needle and piece a quilt together. – Loretta P. Bennett  ABOUT THIS ARTIST Loretta P. Bennett is the great-great-granddaughter of Dinah Miller, a woman who was brought to Alabama from Africa as a slave in 1859. As a child, Bennett picked cotton and other crops. She attended school in Gee’s Bend until seventh grade, when she was bussed to high schools that were a two-hour drive away. Bennett was introduced to sewing around age five by her mother, Qunnie, who worked at the Freedom Quilting Bee, a sewing cooperative established in 1966 in the nearby neighborhood of Rehoboth. She married Lovett Bennett in 1979. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and for the next twenty years they lived in numerous places including Germany and Texas. However, she always returned to Gee’s Bend to reconnect with family and quilt with her mother. The 2002 exhibition of quilts from Gee’s Bend inspired her to reinvigorate her own work. ABOUT THIS QUILT Bennett often sketches her ideas for quilts and colors them before beginning to piece fabric together. While many quilts are made up of numerous blocks, Bennett is known for enlarging one block to the size of the quilt. She prefers to use fabric from thrift stores due to the range of colors and quality of older materials. In speaking about this quilt she said, “The triangle I put in there to make the quilt stand out, I wanted it to be like a window into my background and my childhood and where I came from. That quilt honors my mother, Qunnie, and Arlonzia.” She decided to use hot pink fabric because it was her mother’s favorite color and used the leftover pieces to make the back, which offers a simple, yet complementary, design. Front of the quilt Back of the quilt 12 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH Elementary and Middle School – Family Traditions Quiltmaking is a tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation in Loretta Bennett’s family. Have a class discussion about traditions. What traditions do the students have in their families? Do they do anything special on particular holidays, or did a relative teach them to do something like bake, paint, or play a sport or musical instrument? Have students write about a family tradition that has passed from one generation to the next. Ask them to include details such as when the tradition began, how it feels to be a part of that tradition, and what makes the tradition special. You may also want to listen to an interview with quiltmaker Lucy Mingo and her daughter, Polly Raymond, to learn about their family tradition of quiltmaking. The interview can be found on the website arts.state.al.us/actc/1/radioseries.html. SOCIAL STUDIES Elementary, Middle, and High School – Oral History After discussing Loretta Bennett’s quilt and how she took inspiration from her ancestors for its design, begin a discussion about family and community history. What questions do the students have about their own family or community history? Have students conduct oral history interviews with a family or community member. Questions to ask during the interview could be brainstormed by the class or taken from those developed by NPR for their StoryCorps project, which can be found on the website storycorps.net/record-your-story/question-generator/list. You could also record these stories for StoryCorps. MATH Elementary and Middle School – Enlarging Images Bennett is known for enlarging one quilt block to the size of the entire quilt. Have students find an image from a magazine, newspaper, or art reproduction and draw a grid of one-inch squares on it. Next, have them draw a larger square on a blank sheet of paper, perhaps a two-, three-, or four-inch square. They can then choose an interesting square from their gridded image to reproduce in this larger square. A discussion of ratio and proportion can follow. ART Elementary, Middle, and High School – Visualizing History After conducting an interview with a family or community member, have students draw, paint, or collage a visual interpretation of their family or community history. It can be abstract, like Bennett’s quilt, or include representational elements. 13 LET’S LOOK! What moods or feelings do these colors remind you of? Where might you see colors like the ones in this quilt? Why might someone make a quilt out of used clothes? LUCY MINGO American, born 1931 Blocks and Strips Work-Clothes Quilt 1959 Cotton and denim 78 3/4 x 69 1/4 inches (200 x 175.9 cm) Collection of the Tinwood Alliance Photo by Stephen Pitkin, Pitkin Studio, Rockford, Illinois  You know, we had hard times. We worked in the fields, we picked cotton, and sometimes we had it and sometimes we didn’t. And so you look at your quilt and you say, “This is some of the old clothes that I wore in the fields. I wore them out, but they’re still doing good.” – Lucy Mingo  ABOUT THIS ARTIST Born in Rehoboth, a settlement just north of Gee’s Bend, Lucy Mingo grew up picking crops, cooking for her family, and walking four miles to and from school each day. Her father worked as a longshoreman in Mobile. Mingo married her husband, David, in 1949, and together they raised ten children. In 1965, she joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on a march to Selma and also bravely registered to vote in Camden, Alabama, with other residents of Gee’s Bend. In 2006, Mingo and her daughter, Polly Raymond, received a Folk Arts Apprenticeship grant, given by the Alabama State Council on the Arts, which matches master artists with apprentices. The grant covered the costs of Mingo teaching her daughter how to quilt. ABOUT THIS QUILT This is a work-clothes quilt, also known as a “britches quilt,” which is typically made from reused denim overalls, trousers (britches), and cotton and flannel shirts. Looking closely at this quilt, we can identify seams, pockets, and various shades of blue where knees have left their mark. The light blues and grays testify to a life of physical labor. The soft hues also recall the environment in which the clothes were worn: clouded skies, dusty roads, and fields of crops. In this way, work-clothes quilts can be viewed as portraits of the people who wore the clothes as well as of the time and place in which they lived. They not only provide warmth, but also hold the memory of long days in the fields. The transformation of worn-out work clothes into objects of comfort and protection speaks to the strength of the human spirit to overcome hardship.  14 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH Elementary School – Objects Telling Stories How do quilts tell stories? Lucy Mingo has said about quilts: It looks like they have songs to them. You could tell stories about this piece, you could tell stories about that piece . . . They have songs to them. Discuss what you think Mingo means by her statement. What kinds of stories and songs does this quilt convey? Ask students to think of an object at home that holds special memories for them or tells an interesting story. Have them bring their object in, write its story, and share with the class. The objects and stories could also be displayed together. SOCIAL STUDIES Elementary, Middle, and High School – The Civil Rights Movement Lucy Mingo joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on a march to Selma, Alabama, where she and other Civil Rights activists protested discrimination against African Americans. Ask students to research Dr. King, his speeches, and the marches and demonstrations he organized. What were the strategies, objectives, and outcomes? How did the involvement of people like Lucy Mingo help to bring about social change? Middle and High School – The Great Depression Lucy Mingo was born in 1931, at the beginning of the Great Depression. This was a time of hardship in Gee’s Bend due to the plummeting value of cotton. Have students learn about this time period in history and its impact on rural areas such as Gee’s Bend. Incorporate primary documents by having students visit the Library of Congress website to study photographs of Gee’s Bend taken by U.S. government photographers working for the Farm Security Administration: memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html; enter “Gee’s Bend” in the search box. What can we learn from about life in Gee’s Bend from these photographs? Why would the government have wanted to photograph Gee’s Bend and other poor areas? ART Elementary and Middle School – Patchwork Quilts Using Recycled Materials Have students bring in scraps of cloth from home, such as old shirts, jeans, ties, or other fabric. Cut squares out of the usable parts, and have students sew or collage together simple four-patch or nine-patch designs. 15 LET’S LOOK! How are the blocks similar? How are they different? What shapes and patterns are created in each block? Discuss Pettway’s quote on this page. How are the shapes and patterns in this quilt similar to a brick house? LORETTA PETTWAY American, born 1942 Bricklayer–Sampler Variation Quilt 1958 Cotton and corduroy 82 x 78 inches (208.3 x 198.1 cm) Collection of the Tinwood Alliance Photo by Stephen Pitkin, Pitkin Studio, Rockford, Illinois  I always did like a “Bricklayer.” It made me think about what I always wanted. Always did want a brick house. – Loretta Pettway  ABOUT THIS ARTIST Loretta Pettway has overcome many obstacles in her life. As a child she suffered emotional pain when her mother abandoned her family. Pettway also faced physical hardship, walking for miles each day and working in the fields. She endured a thirtyyear marriage to an abusive husband, with whom she had seven children. Like Loretta P. Bennett, she is a descendent of Dinah Miller (Pettway is Dinah’s greatgranddaughter). She pieced her first quilt together when she was only eleven years old, learning skills from her grandmother, stepmother, and other female relatives. Many of them preferred the Bricklayer pattern. Pettway did not always enjoy sewing, as it was a chore added to her heavy workload; now, her attitude has changed. Given all the adversity that she has faced, Pettway’s brilliantly designed quilts reflect her personality and strength. ABOUT THIS QUILT One of Pettway’s earliest quilts, this work is made of twenty blocks, each one presenting a different variation of the Bricklayer pattern. Her later quilts often focus on this pattern but usually feature one large Bricklayer block instead of many. Her husband, Walter, worked at the Henry Brick Company in Selma, and Pettway remembers being inspired by two picture boards of bricks that he brought home. Each block in this quilt can be interpreted as representing stacks of bricks, or perhaps four sides of a house reaching a single peak. If the blocks represent houses, perhaps the quilt as a whole depicts a neighborhood. Pettway used a variety of solid colored and patterned fabrics so that different shapes and patterns appear to emerge and recede throughout the quilt.  16 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH Elementary School – Architecture How are houses and quilts similar? Brainstorm some ideas together as a class. (For example, both houses and quilts protect people from the cold, contain memories, and include geometric shapes.) How else are they similar? SOCIAL STUDIES Middle and High School – Slavery’s Legacy in Gee’s Bend Loretta Pettway and Loretta P. Bennett are both descendants of Dinah Miller, who was brought to Alabama from Africa as a slave. Have students investigate slavery in Gee’s Bend by listening to interviews from 1941 with former enslaved people on the Library of Congress website: memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/index.html; type “Gee’s Bend” in the search box. Discuss the interviews as primary source documents. What can we learn from them? What issues might have affected what the interviewees did or did not say? MATH/ART Elementary School – Symmetry The Bricklayer pattern has reflective symmetry (also called bilateral or mirror symmetry), which means that the size, shape, and arrangement of parts of the left and right sides, or the top and bottom of a composition or object are the same in relation to an imaginary center dividing line. Discuss reflective symmetry and find other objects that have reflective symmetry (such as a butterfly). Middle and High School – Architecture Many quiltmakers get pattern ideas from the buildings that they see in their everyday lives. The names of some of the quilt patterns also refer to buildings, such as Log Cabin, Bricklayer, and Housetop. What are the different ways that we can represent buildings in a 2-D format? Have each student draw the plan of the school building (the floor plan or footprint), the elevation of the building (what it looks like from the front), and a section of the building (imagine you made a vertical slice into one side and expose the inside). How do the drawings differ? What information do you get from each? Have students choose a building in the community (their house, the school, or another neighborhood building) and create a geometric design based on its plan, elevation, or section. Alternatively, make a visual map of the neighborhood or town. For more information on introducing architecture to students, see the Architecture in Education website: aiaphila.org/aie.  17 AFRICAN AMERICAN QUILTS IN THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART’S PERMANENT COLLECTION INTRODUCTION The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s textile collection includes examples by many leading African American quiltmakers. A number of these quilts are on view in the current exhibition: QUILT STORIES: THE ELLA KING TORREY COLLECTION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN QUILTS AND OTHER RECENT QUILT ACQUISITIONS This exhibition is on view at the Museum’s Perelman Building from now through February 2009. Quilt Stories includes thirteen African American quilts collected by Ella King Torrey (1957–2003), an innovative and dynamic arts leader in Philadelphia and San Francisco, who had a long-standing interest in popular culture and folk art. While a graduate student at the University of Mississippi she became especially interested in African American quiltmaking. Her research and fieldwork included extensive interviews of two of the quiltmakers included in the exhibition: Sarah Mary Taylor and Pearlie Posey. Quilt Stories also features other recent Museum quilt acquisitions, such as an early twentieth-century Amish quilt made in Arthur, Illinois, with a distinctive alternating fan pattern, and an 1846 album quilt made by the Ladies of the Third Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. The album quilt was given to Mrs. Mary Brainerd, the wife of the church’s pastor, as a measure of solace because their daughter had succumbed to scarlet fever. Three of the quilts in this guide are on view in the Quilt Stories exhibition—those by Sarah Mary Taylor, Pearlie Posey, and the unknown quiltmaker from Gee’s Bend. 18 19 LET’S LOOK! How do you think this pattern relates to the pattern name, “Birds in Flight?” What shapes and patterns are formed by the triangles? How are the blocks similar? How are they different? Do you think that the artist wants us to look at the quilt as a whole, or just one part? How do you know? How is this quilt’s design different than the other quilts you’ve seen that were made in Gee’s Bend? UNKNOWN QUILTMAKER “Triangles in Squares” Quilt Gee’s Bend, Alabama 1970s Cotton and polyester; running stitch 76 3/8 x 76 1/2 inches (194 x 194.3 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Ella King Torrey Collection of African American Quilts, 2006-163-4 ABOUT THIS QUILT It is not known who made this quilt, but we do know it was made in Gee’s Bend. Its back is made of red and blue corduroy remnants from pillow shams made by women at the Freedom Quilting Bee for Sears Roebuck and Company, the same fabric that Willie Abrams used in her quilt (see page 5). Some of the oldest surviving quilts in Gee’s Bend, from the 1920s and 1930s, feature triangle patterns. Similar patterns are also found in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Euro-American patchwork quilts, as well as in textiles and other surface adornments from West and Central African groups. Although the exact origin of triangle-based patterns in Gee’s Bend is unknown, quiltmakers today agree that similar patterns have been passed down for generations. This quilt is made up of three rows of three blocks, each featuring fifty triangles. The design is a variation of a quilt pattern known as Birds in Flight or Birds in the Air. The intricate pattern, consisting of many small pieces, would have required a skilled and patient hand. Following the direction of the triangles, our eyes bounce around from one corner of the quilt to another, never finding a place to rest. Similarly, migrating birds fly tirelessly to their new home, pausing briefly before moving on again. Could each triangle symbolize a single bird, and each block a group traveling together? Or perhaps each small triangle could represent a flock of birds, as the shape itself mimics the arrangement of birds in flight. What do you think? 20 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH Elementary, Middle, and High School – Diamante Poems Taking inspiration from the shapes and patterns in this quilt, have students create diamond-shaped poems using the diamante poem format (see worksheet on page 37). Discuss how patterns in language can respond to patterns in quilts. High School – Gee’s Bend Performed at the Arden Theater The play Gee’s Bend, written by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder, will be performed at the Arden Theater in Philadelphia from October 9–December 7, 2008. The play follows two Gee’s Bend women who face segregation, family struggles, and the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement. Quilting provides comfort and context to their lives. Gee’s Bend is a deeply personal story of family, self-discovery, and artistic expression. MATH Elementary School – Exploring Four-Patch Patterns Using either quilting tiles (one-inch squares and triangles that have two one-inch sides; available through ETA/Cuisenaire; their website is listed on page 32) or paper shapes with the same dimensions, have students explore the variations of four-patch designs. Each pair of students starts with twenty squares and twenty triangles (ten each of two different colors). Have them experiment with ways to arrange the pieces in a two-bytwo square, making at least three different patterns. Groups then choose one design to share with the class. Which designs are the same configuration of squares and triangles? Remove duplicates and see how many different arrangements were found. Compare the designs and the shapes created. You can also try three-by-three squares, allowing for more design possibilities. Similar explorations can be pursued with sets of pattern blocks, which include additional shapes such as hexagons and diamonds. ART Elementary, Middle, or High School – Capturing Flight in Art How have other artists represented flight or movement? For example, compare and contrast this quilt and Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space. What is each artist capturing about birds and flight? Find Bird in Space and other examples on ARTStor (artstor.org) and discuss similarities and differences. Have students create a work of art that captures their idea of flying. 21 LET’S LOOK! What are some of the animals in this quilt? What are they doing? How would you describe the mood of this quilt? What do you see that makes you say that? What are some strategies that the artist used to make the different animals stand out? PEARLIE POSEY American, 1894–1984 “Animals” Quilt 1980–83 Cotton; running stitch 76 1/4 x 62 1/2 inches (193.7 x 158.8 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Ella King Torrey Collection of African American Quilts, 2006-163-7  In my time, would be a family there and a family there and a family there and we would get together and tear up old clothes, overall and linings and everything and piece quilt tops and linings . . . If I was ready to quilt one, well, four or five women Sunday morning come to my house and put one in. That’s the way we quilted, just quilt and laugh and enjoy ourselves. – Pearlie Posey  ABOUT THIS ARTIST Pearlie Posey lived a life of physical labor, spending her days working on plantations in Mississippi and her evenings taking care of her family. She suffered the loss of her mother at age five and was raised by her grandparents. Nonetheless, her mother spent time at the end of her life sewing quilt tops so that she could provide warmth and love for her daughter even after she was gone. Later in life, Posey’s grandmother taught her how to make pieced quilts such as nine-patch, four-patch, and strip quilts. Material and thread were scarce, so they used what they had, obtaining thread by unraveling flour and meal sacks. ABOUT THIS QUILT Although Posey made pieced quilts for many years, she was inspired by her daughter, Sarah Mary Taylor (see page 25), to make appliqué quilts toward the end of her life. Due to her failing eyesight, she would have Taylor cut out the forms, then she’d group the figures together on blocks of fabric, often varying their arrangement in each section. Posey created lively quilts and became known for her use of bright colors. In this quilt, animals run, play, and gather together. Each block seems like an excerpt from a larger story. Posey’s use of contrasting colors and values adds to the animated feeling of the quilt. 22 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH Elementary School – Valerie Flournoy’s The Patchwork Quilt Read this story and discuss what the quilt means to Tanya, her grandmother, and the other members of their family. Elementary School – Stories As a class, imagine Posey’s quilt is a storybook, with each square showing a different scene in the narrative. You can view the quilt together as a class by projecting the image in the PowerPoint presentation (on the CD-ROM included with this resource guide). Brainstorm how all of the scenes in the quilt fit together, or have individual students determine what is happening in each quilt block, then tie them together into one long story as a class. Middle and High School – Alice Walker’s short story, Everyday Use Have students read Alice Walker’s short story Everyday Use. Discuss the characters’ sense of their heritage and their relationships to the quilts. What are the arguments for giving the quilts to Dee or to Maggie? Why do you think Mama makes the decision that she does at the end of the story? ART Elementary School – Appliqué Quilt Have students draw animals or people in interesting poses, either from images in magazines and newspapers, or from life. Make templates of the images, trace them onto cloth, and cut them out. Ask students to create a scene with the figures by applying them to a background square of cloth with stitches, glue, or a double stick fusible web product such as Steam-A-Seam 2 Double Stick (available at craft stores), which attaches pieces of fabric together with the heat of an iron. Taking inspiration from Posey’s quilt, assemble the students’ blocks together in a class quilt.  23 LET’S LOOK! Can you find Cassie in a red dress? How many times do you see her? Where? Where is this story taking place? How do you know? How is this different from other quilts you’ve seen? How is it similar? FAITH RINGGOLD American, born 1930 “Tar Beach 2” Quilt 1990 Silk 66 x 67 inches (167.6 x 170.2 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with funds contributed by W. B. Dixon Stroud, 1992-100-1  I think most people understand quilts and not a lot of people understand paintings. But yet they're looking at one. When they're looking at my work, they're looking at a painting and they're able to accept it better because it is also a quilt. – Faith Ringgold  ABOUT THIS ARTIST Born in Harlem (a neighborhood in New York City) in 1930, Faith Ringgold grew up in the wake of the Harlem Renaissance. As a girl, she was often bedridden with asthma and spent time drawing while she rested. She taught art in city public schools from 1955–73, pursuing a career as a painter simultaneously. She had her first solo show in 1967, which featured paintings that dealt with Civil Rights and other political issues. In the 1970s, she began to create sculptures made of cloth in collaboration with her mother, Willi Posey Jones, who was a successful fashion designer. Soon Ringgold developed the idea for “story quilts,” pieced quilts with narratives written and illustrated on their surfaces. She has also written and illustrated eleven children’s books, which have received numerous awards. ABOUT THIS QUILT When she was growing up, Ringgold and her family often spent summer evenings on the roof of their apartment building. This childhood memory served as the impetus for a series of story quilts, the first made in 1988, and her book Tar Beach, which was published in 1991. Tar Beach 2 features images of Cassie, the protagonist in the story, on her building’s roof with her family and neighbors. In the story, she dreams of flying, a symbol of freedom and power. Here, she soars over the George Washington Bridge. Ringgold used a quilting pattern of eight triangles within a square, derived from a traditional design of the Kuba peoples of Africa. She made this quilt using the screenprinting process at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. It is one of an edition of twenty-four. 24 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH Elementary School – Flying Have the students imagine that they can fly above their neighborhood, town, or city. Ask them where they would go, what they would see, and what it would feel like. Have them write a story about their adventures as they soared above it all. Elementary School – Tar Beach Read and discuss Tar Beach. How does this quilt relate to the story? Compare and contrast the images in the book to those in this quilt. How does this quilt add to the story? View the quilt together as a class by projecting the image in the PowerPoint presentation (on the CD-ROM included with this resource guide). Middle School – Childhood Memories as Inspiration Ringgold used her memory of going to the roof of her building as inspiration for her story. What special memories do the students have from childhood of a special place or family tradition? Have them write a short story about this memory. SOCIAL STUDIES Middle and High School – American Labor Unions In the story, Cassie’s father is prevented from joining the union because he is African American. Research the history of African Americans and labor unions. When were the unions in your area integrated? What were the reasons given why African Americans could not join? Who were some of the leaders who helped change the situation? What problems still exist? ART Elementary School – Illustrating a Story with One Image After reading a story, have each student make one illustration to summarize the story. Ask them what they will include and what they will leave out. Have them decide how to convey the plot of the story through one image. Middle and High School – Fabric Art Ringgold transformed her art by using fabric to make sculptures and creating pieced cloth borders around her painted canvases and quilting the entire work. Have the students experiment with using fabric to make works of art such as sculptures, collages, and paintings. 25 LET’S LOOK! Describe some of the color combinations in this quilt. Are any two blocks the same? Why might the artist have paired certain colors together? Why might she have chosen the image of hands to repeat? What kind of mood do the hands create? What could the hands represent? SARAH MARY TAYLOR American, 1916–2000 “Hands” Quilt 1980 Pieces and appliquéd cotton and synthetic solid and printed plain weave, twill flannel, knit, dotted swiss, and damask 83 1/4 x 78 inches (211.5 x 198.1 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Ella King Torrey Collection of African American Quilts, 2006-163-11  Every time I piece one I tries to make something different from what I made. I don’t want what I been piecing; let me find something different. – Sarah Mary Taylor  ABOUT THIS ARTIST Known for her use of vibrant colors and bold designs, Sarah Mary Taylor inherited a love of quilting from both her mother, Pearlie Posey (see page 21), and her aunt, Pecolia Warner. Her mother taught her how to quilt at a young age, but Taylor didn’t make a quilt of her own until she was married and left her mother’s house. She was married five times, but never had children. She lived on plantations throughout the Mississippi Delta, working as a cook, a field hand, and a housekeeper. For many years, Taylor made pieced quilts out of the skirts of long dresses, but began making appliqué quilts in 1980 after her aunt Pecolia received attention for her work from a professor at the University of Mississippi. Taylor soon gained recognition for her appliqué quilts as well. ABOUT THIS QUILT To create her quilts, Taylor drew shapes on paper and cut out templates for the appliqué pieces. She gathered design ideas from images she saw in magazines, newspapers, catalogues, and from objects she encountered in her everyday life. She added the appliqué shapes onto squares of fabric and combined them together with vertical strips. She arranged the blocks in a way that was visually striking to her, often resulting in energetic compositions. Taylor’s appliqué quilts were typically not used and instead were sold, given away to friends, or stored. A version of this “Hands” quilt was commissioned for the film adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple.  26 CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH Elementary School – Expression in Hands How do hands express emotion? Discuss what emotions are expressed in the outstretched hands in this quilt. What other emotions can we express with our hands? Have a brainstorming session and write about what each hand gesture can communicate. As an extension, have students design quilt blocks with their own hand gestures and combine them together in a class quilt. High School – The Color Purple A version of this quilt was commissioned for the film adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. Have the class read the novel and discuss what sewing and quilts symbolize in the story. MATH Elementary School – Variations After discussing the different color combinations of hands and background colors, explore similar permutations using colored paper squares and circles. Give each student two squares of different colors and two circles of different colors. How many different design variations can you make (four)? Then try with additional squares and circles. How can you prove that you’ve found all of the possible variations? ART Elementary School – Color Combinations While looking at the quilt, discuss which hands stand out. What color combinations make the hands pop out the most? Why could this be? Discuss ideas such as complementary colors, value, and contrast. Using a wide range of colored paper, have the students create collages in which they produce vibrant color combinations that make different shapes stand out. 27 SELECTED CHRONOLOGY Gee’s Bend United States History 1808 The direct importation of slaves from Africa to the United States is banned, although it continues illegally for decades. 1816 Joseph Gee purchases land and establishes a cotton plantation in Gee’s Bend. 1819 Alabama becomes a state. 1824 Joseph Gee dies and his heirs contest the inheritance of his plantation. 1831 1845 Nat Turner leads a slave revolt in Virginia. Mark Pettway buys the plantation from the Gee family and brings 100 of his slaves from North Carolina to Gee’s Bend. 1859 Dinah Miller, Gee’s Bend’s earliest identified quiltmaker, was brought to Alabama on an outlaw slave ship from Africa. 1861–65 The Civil War 1861 Mark Pettway dies. 1863 President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in rebellious areas to be free. 1880 Gee’s Bend becomes the property of Mark Pettway’s son, John Henry. 1870 The Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing all citizens the right to vote, is ratified. 1875 Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which bans discrimination in places of public accommodation. 1895 John Henry sells approximately 4,000 acres of the old Pettway plantation to the Dew family. 1896 The Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites is constitutional. 1900 Adrian Van de Graff buys the entire property from the Dews. After his death, his son inherits the land. He later sells it to the Roosevelt Administration. 1909 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is formed. 28 Gee’s Bend United States History 1914–18 World War I Late 1920s The price of cotton plummets. Merchants in Camden advance credit to Gee’s Bend farmers, many of whom fall into debt. 1929 The stock market crashes and the Great Depression begins. 1920–30s The Harlem Renaissance 1932 Collectors foreclose on Gee’s Bend debtors, seizing everything they own. Many residents of Gee’s Bend face near-starvation. 1933 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issues New Deal reforms in order to relieve the economic strife caused by the Great Depression. 1934–35 The Federal Emergency Relief Administration provides some relief to Gee’s Bend residents by giving them seeds, fertilizer, farming tools, livestock, and loans. 1939–45 World War II 1937 and 1939 U.S. photographers Arthur Rothstein and Marion Post are sent by the Farm Security Administration to Gee’s Bend to photograph the community. 1937–40 Approximately 100 Roosevelt Project Houses are built in Gee’s Bend. Other buildings constructed include a school, store, cotton gin, mill, and a clinic. 1941 Robert Sonkin documents traditional spirituals, sermons, and singing groups in Gee’s Bend for the Library of Congress. 1945 The federal government offers Gee’s Bend residents loans to buy farmland. 1955 Activist Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, when she refuses to give her seat on the bus to a white man. 1962 A dam and lock are constructed on the Alabama River, just south of Gee’s Bend, flooding much of Gee’s Bend’s best farming land. 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr., gives his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. to 200,000 activists who participated in the historic March on Washington. 29 Gee’s Bend United States History 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., visits Gee’s Bend and preaches at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. Many residents march with him to Selma and register to vote in nearby Camden. Many of these people lose their jobs after marching or registering to vote. Ferry service from Gee’s Bend to Camden is terminated. 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination in housing, employment, and education. The U.S. begins to bomb Vietnam. 1966 The Freedom Quilting Bee is established in Rehoboth (just north of Gee’s Bend). 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated. Mules from Gee’s Bend pull his casket through Atlanta. Mid-1970s Water and telephone service is established throughout Gee’s Bend. 1973 The United States withdraws troops from Vietnam. 2002 The Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibition opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and then travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Eleven more museums sign on to host the show. 2003 Fifty local women found the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective. 2006 Ferry service from Gee’s Bend to Camden reopens. The U.S. Postal Service issues ten postage stamps commemorating Gee’s Bend quilts. Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt is organized. 30 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR STUDY BOOKS AND ARTICLES Arnett, Paul, Joanne Cubbs, and Eugene W. Metcalf, Jr., eds. Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2006. Barnes, Brooks. “Museums Cozy Up to Quilts.” Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2002, sec. W. 12. Beardsley, John and William Arnett, Paul Arnett, Jane Livingston. Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts. Atlanta: Tinwood Books in association with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2002. Beardsley, John and William Arnett, Paul Arnett, Jane Livingston, Alvia Wardlaw. The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. Atlanta: Tinwood Books in association with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2002. Benberry, Cuesta. Always There: The African-American Presence in American Quilts. Louisville, Kentucky: The Kentucky Quilt Project, Inc., 1992. Brackman, Barbara. Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. Paducah, Kentucky: American Quilter’s Society, 1993. Callahan, Nancy. The Freedom Quilting Bee: Folk Art and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1987. Kimmelman, Michael. “Jazzy Geometry, Cool Quilters,” New York Times, November 29, 2002, sec. B, 31. LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS Flournoy, Valerie. The Patchwork Quilt. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1985. Igus, Toyomi and Michele Wood. I See the Rhythm. San Francisco, California: Children’s Book Press, 1998. Mckissack, Patricia. Stitchin’ and Pulllin’: A Gee’s Bend Quilt. New York: Random House, 2008. (to be released October 28, 2008) Ringgold, Faith. Tar Beach. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991. Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. In In Love & Trouble. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, Inc., 1967.  31 WEB Gee’s Bend  The Library of Congress’ American Memory website has photographs of Gee’s Bend from the 1930s (search for “Gee’s Bend”): memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html  A lesson plan based on the photographs of Gee’s Bend from the 1930s: memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/98/grand/geesbend.html  “Voices from the Days of Slavery” has recordings and transcripts of interviews with former slaves from 1941 (do a search for “Gee’s Bend”): memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/index.html  Quilters Collective History: quiltsofgeesbend.com  Four 1948 recordings of gospel music from Gee’s Bend: arts.state.al.us/actc/music/index-music.html  Interview with Lucy Mingo and her daughter Polly Raymond (scroll to find): arts.state.al.us/actc/1/radioseries.html  J. R. Moehringer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning story “Crossing Over:” pulitzer.org/works/2000,Feature+Writing  Michael Kimmelman’s review of the 2002 exhibition The Quilts of Gee’s Bend: query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E6DF1238F93AA15752C1A9649C8B63  Gee’s Bend play at the Arden Theater (October 9–December 7, 2008): ardentheatre.org/2009/geesbend.html Stories  StoryCorps (National Public Radio) project; resource for conducting interviews: storycorps.net  Share the story of your quilt on the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s website: philamuseum.org/exhibitions/311.html?page=5 Quilts  Leigh Fellner refutes claims about the quilt codes that some believe to have been used on the Underground Railroad: ugrrquilt.hartcottagequilts.com 32  A website dedicated to the PBS film The Art of Quilting has teacher resources, lesson plans, and interviews. PBS also produced two other films, A Century of Quilts and America Quilts, and there are links to those programs on the website: pbs.org/americaquilts  ETA/Cuisenaire sells Quilting Tiles: etacuisenaire.com  The Illinois State Museum’s “Keeping Us in Stitches: Quilts & Quilters” is a list of quilt-based activities, lesson plans, and interactive online exercises for students: museum.state.il.us/muslink/art/htmls/ks_actres.html  Faith Ringgold’s website: faithringgold.com Images  ARTstor is a database of high quality art images. You can search without a membership and can download images with a membership, which can be obtained for free by registering at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Wachovia Education Resource Center, located in the Perelman Building (philamuseum.org/education/33- 530-416.html). artstor.org VIDEO Carey, Celia. The Quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend. Alabama Public Television in association with Hunter Films, 2004. DVD. 33 VOCABULARY Appliqué quilt — A quilt with a top made of cut-out pieces of fabric that have been sewn on top of background fabrics. “Appliqué” is the French word for “applied.” Asymmetry — A lack of exact repetition between the opposite sides of a form. Back — The underside of a quilt. Batting — The soft middle layer of a quilt that is between the top and the back. It is usually made of cotton and provides warmth. Birds in Flight pattern — See “Basic Building Blocks of Quilts” on page 36. Block — A rectangular or square section of a quilt. Bricklayer pattern — See “Basic Building Blocks of Quilts” on page 36. Civil Rights Movement — A movement that aimed to abolish racial discrimination against African Americans. It occurred from 1955–68. Complementary colors — Pairs of contrasting colors: red and green, yellow and violet, blue and orange. Contrast — A design principle that involves the use of opposite effects or shapes near each other to add tension or drama to a work of art. Elevation — A drawing of the outside walls of a building (the front, back, and each of the sides). Farm Security Administration (FSA), Office of War Information — A program created as part of the New Deal whose goal was to combat rural poverty. The FSA was first created as the Resettlement Administration. Its photography program (1935–44) documented the challenges of rural poverty. Four-patch pattern — A square quilt block made of two rows of two squares; see “Basic Building Blocks of Quilts” on page 36. Freedom Quilting Bee — A sewing cooperative established in Rehoboth (just north of Gee’s Bend) in 1966 that employed women from the local area who produced quilts and other sewn products for department stores in the North. 34 Great Depression — An era in U.S. history defined by an economic downturn, which is often associated with the stock market crash on October 29, 1929. Harlem Renaissance — A movement, centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, in which artists, philosophers, and other intellectuals found new ways to explore the experiences of African Americans. The movement, which lasted from the 1920–30s, produced a wealth of literature, drama, music, visual art, dance, as well as new ideas in sociology, historiography, and philosophy. Housetop pattern — See “Basic Building Blocks of Quilts” on page 36. Log Cabin pattern — See “Basic Building Blocks of Quilts” on page 36. New Deal — The name that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave to the programs he initiated from 1933–38. These programs aimed to relieve poverty, help the economy recover, and reform the financial system during the Great Depression in the United States. Nine-patch pattern — A square quilt block made of three rows of three squares; see “Basic Building Blocks of Quilts” on page 36. Pieced quilt; Patchwork quilt — A quilt whose top is made from bits of fabric stitched together to form patterns and borders often with a geometric motif. Piecing — The process of stitching together separate pieces of fabric to create a larger cloth, such as a quilt top. Plan — A view of a room or building that is seen as if the roof has been removed and someone is above the building looking straight down onto the rooms (also called a floor plan). Quilting — The sewing that holds the top layer, the middle filling layer (batting), and the bottom layer (back). It makes the quilt more durable and also traps air between the layers of cloth, which provides insulation and warmth. Reflective symmetry (also called bilateral or mirror symmetry) — When the size, shape, and arrangement of parts of the left and right sides or the top and bottom of a composition or object are the same in relation to an imaginary center dividing line. Roman Stripes pattern — See “Basic Building Blocks of Quilts” on page 36. 35 Screenprinting — A process that uses a fine cloth mesh stretched over a frame, with parts of the mesh sealed, to create an image (often using stencils). Ink is pushed through the unsealed areas onto paper or fabric underneath, creating a screenprinted image. Section — A view of the interior of a room or building that is seen as if the building has been cut in half and someone is looking straight into the interior. Strings —A term used among Gee’s Bend quiltmakers to describe wedge-shaped pieces of fabric. Strip quilt — A type of pieced quilt made by sewing long rectangular pieces of cloth together to make a quilt top. Syncopation — A temporary displacement of the regular metrical accent in music caused typically by stressing the weak beat; in quiltmaking, a break in pattern. Top — The side of the quilt that is presented outward. Work-clothes quilt — A quilt made of reused work clothes such as denim pants and overalls, and cotton or flannel shirts. Value — Degree of lightness on a scale of grays from black to white. 36 BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF QUILTS Four-Patch Log Cabin Housetop — also called Pig in a Pen, Hog Pen, or Chicken Coop Birds in Flight (many variations) Bricklayer — also known as Courthouse Steps Roman Stripes Nine-Patch 37 (This activity is related to the quilt made by an unknown quiltmaker from Gee’s Bend; see Language Arts/English Connection, page 20) Diamante poem format: _______________________________ Line 1: one word (subject/noun) that is contrasting to line 7 ___________________________________________________________ Line 2: two words (adjectives) that describe line 1 ______________________________________________________________________ Line 3: three words (action verbs) that relate to line 1 ______________________________________________________________________________ Line 4: four words (nouns), first 2 words relate to line 1, last 2 words relate to line 7 ______________________________________________________________________ Line 5: three words (action verbs) that relate to line 7 ___________________________________________________________ Line 6: two words (adjectives) that describe line 7 _______________________________ Line 7: one word (subject/noun) that is contrasting to line 1 Gloria lIoppilltl: medalflOIl dellign, roo 1975, rorr/llrQlI, 9/ 111188 illthn . AfI880,trl Pell.roll: Hlotu and ,trip, work·dothe, quilt, f9U', rottOIl, rordUrrJII, rolloll llad;/lIg material, 90 b:., .:. ",---;... 104 Oclob6r2003 Gee's Bend Modern The isolated Alabama community of Gee's Bend has long nurtured a quilting tradition that resonates deeply with aspects of modernist abstmction. Now the quilts are the subject of an exhibition that is touring u.s. musemns. BY RICHARD KALINA I t is a given that most museum shows of recent an serve to ratify accepted tastes and standards. A Johns or Flavin retrospective, or a survey of Fluxus art, while certainly deepening our knowledge of the subject, is not about to change perceptions significantly. f)'en a large·scale re\icw of a first-rate but underappreciated artist-the still traveling Joan Mitchell retrospecth'e, for example--essentially rearranges lhe pieces on the board. It is rare to find an exhibition that throws something totally unexpected our way, that forces us to can'e out. a meaningl'ul chunk of historical space to make room for a new body of work. "The QUillS of Gee's Bend," organized by the Museum of Pine Arts, Houston, and shown last winter at the Whitney Museum, does just that. The 60 quilts in the exhibition were made by a group of women in a small, isolated fa rming community in central Alabama, southwest of Selma. Gee's Bend was and is an almost exclusively Mrica n-American hamlet. Surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River, is virtually an island; after the residents began to assert their civil rights in the 1960s, its feny sen'ice was terminated (Ilrobably not coincidentally), and its one access road, some 15 miles from the nearest highway, remained unpaved until 1967. Today the area is starting to become more connected with the outside world, and is at the same time losing its quilting tradition. The town's isolation during the '50s, '60s and '70s-the period when most of the quilts in the exhibition were donemade it nearly imllOssible for the quilters to have been eXllOsed in any conlextualized or coherent way to modern art, although images of abstract art or design may ha\'c crossed their paths via magazines and neWSllapers,' And yet these works seem io resonate harmonically wit h many strands of and materially innovative postwar American abstraction, as well as with that abstraction's European antecedents.  Although the Gee's Bend quilters were not part of the mai nstream art world, it is important to understand that they formed an art world of their own, that is, a coherent social groulling dedicated to the con· strucUon of a visual language. They shared a sense of esthetic lincage (patterns and ways of worki ng were handed down through extended fam il ies and known to the rest. of the community), a recognized means of display (the quilts were hung out on clotheslines not just Lo dry, bUl to be seen), a concern wilh the interplay of individual and collahorative work and, importantly, a set of common limi ts. The women knew each other and were onen related-of the 41 artists in the show, 18 belong to the Pellway family, which Look its name from wtUha I't ttlCQlI' quill, en. 1950, dtlliM, cottOIl, 8(J b,lBf illcllt •. All plioltn tAU arlicle Piti/" Studio, Rodiford, l/I. the area's principal sla\'e·owner, Religion also played a vit..'ll, unifyi ng role in the Jives of Gee's Benders. The Baptist. church was the place where people not only Ilfayed but organized their community and exchanged information, including ideas about sewing and qUilting.2 lt is clear that Gee's Bend quilters were neither insular Yisionaries pursuing idiosyncratic personal paths, nor were they simply the skilled passers-on of traditional forms, Instead, they were like other artists of their time, adept, committed practitioners engaged ill a measured and ongoi ng esthetic give-and-take. Arlill Amen'Go ,  The quillS of Gee's Bend are quite unlike the quilts .... 'e are 1.JSCd to seeing--eilhcr the traditional or contempomry high-end ones, or the homey items readily a\'ailabJe in stores or yant sales. Bold and decIar.uh.'C in design, material and ronnat, they looked perfectly at ease on the Whitney's InU, .... 'hite \mlls. While it is possible 10 wlderst:tnd the Gee's Bend quillS in the context of vernacular an., outsider IU1 or craft, they are more than that. n "IC ir UUlO\'atr.-e power, combined .... iUl the restraints imposed by n4'l1crial, time and a compressed Iocal lradilion, argue for their examination as cullUrally infonnt'(l ruld emolionally tl\'OCIttivuJOI"mal objects. To do so mighl seem like treading on dangerous ground. The histOlY of 2Oth-cenlury art. is rife with attempts to rev "ll the contempordl'}' and cosmopolit .. m with the raw power of the art of Africa, Oceania or the Amenclls, to infuse sophisticated studio products .... ith the artlessness of children or the skewed sensibilities of the insane. In this way, "high art" can be bolstered by the art of the Other I and the transacUon rendered morally frictionless by decontexlualization In the ostensibly neutral space of a museum or gallery. TIle classic example of this was the 1984 exhibition '''PrimitMsm' in1\\'enlieth·CentUlY Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern" at New York's Museum of Modem Art. The l)(llemics 106 (klober 2003 Rathtl Cartll G«Jrgt': On, 6id, 010 two-Md«1lWrk.cli:lthtt quill, NI. 1935, dtnim, ItOOl tnlUJIUfl, matlnu tickilli, tOIIOII, 'l2 111182 /J,,:ht •. occasioned by that show, most notably Thomas McEvilley's article Lawyer, Indian Chief" (Arifonml, November 1084), made the art. .... -o rld considerably more aware of iLs ethnocentrism. It seems, as if to compensate for past errors, that we mo\'ed in the Olher directionlowards an o\'er-contcxtualization (marked by the proliferation of W'.ul text and SUJllllcmenlmy material) that serves to cocoon Ihe Objl.'Cts in (Iucstion and can, in its own W8,)', be erery bi!. as condescending. I am scarcely ad\'OCating cultural but mther noting that too much stage-setting and explanation can reinforce the dichotomy of cen· trality and marginality. Things, however, may have changed again, and this exhibition can be seen as one clement of an expanded frame of reference for both the mak· ing and viewing of art. The art. we look at now comes from far more places physically, conceptually and emotionally than it did before. This decentralization, evident in the diversity of image-based art, 81>]llies to abstraction as well; ror abstraction, by virtue of its looser mimetic anchoring to the world around it, is particularly able to cliSL itselr in a  Used clothing is scarcely a neutral art material. Not only does it embrace a range of social signs, but it can also carry the physical imprint of the wearer. variety of Comls, to entertain mulUple readings. The Gee's Bend quillS are exemplars of that broadened approach to abstraction. Their allusive complexlty-their scale, their reference to the body, to physical work, to social structures and to the land-greaUy enriches our perception of them. But there is something else. The quillS are remarkably powerful and compelling visual statements.. They declare themsehoes viscerally, directly. I beJie\'e that they are entitled, e\'ery bit as much as a Frank Stella or a Kenneth Noland painting of that period, to lay claim to an unfettered optical reading as well, in other words. to participate fully in the esthetics of modernism. One of the things that makes ordinruy quilts so likable is the way that they (:yJlicaJly frame a wealth of detail in smallish, repealing patterns. You can look at a part of U1CIll and easily deduce the whole. There may be some framing devices. but essentially the pattern could repeat endlessly. The Gee's Bend Quilts don't do thaL They are bounded, unique and rareJy symmetrical. Even when symmetry is there, it is given a sawy, destabHi7.ing push. In Gloria lIoppins's "Housetop" pattern quill (ca. 1975), for example, she inserts one thin \llrtical red stripe on the lelt-hand side or the orange center portion or a set or off-kilter nestled AllnffJ MOfJ Young: emln' "'Mollion IIlrl/Ullrlfh bordUff, rn. /965, rollOIl, r.orrturoll, IIl1fJeling, II!OOI, 91 bll 81 LorttlD PtttlU/r. "Log "",WIock mriadoll, rn.. 1970, de"u.., Sf squares. I That stripe Sl1.111S the quilt into place, as does the dark \-ertlcal denim band by three smaller, similarly colored edge piCCi!S in Lorraine Pettway's light gray medallion pallerned quilt or 1974. Identified by three alternate pattern names, Lorella Pettway's "Log Cabin-Courthouse (ca. 1970) juxtaposes a stepped series or vertical dark blue pieces edged in white .... ith similarly sized light blue pieces on the horizontal. The pieces get smaller as they approach the center, creating the look or one-point perspective. The however, warp, and their thickness is ne'l'e.r unifonn. So instead of being locked-in and static, the composition opens up and mO\'e:S. It disthe wit and whimsical \'3.riation or a Paul Klee architectural rantasy, with logic used, paradoxically, to subvert order. It is almost as if symmetry in the Gee's Bend quHts is a condition established precisely so that it may be creatively violated. If symmetry is import.nnl in traditional quilts, a more or less evenly weighted display or detail seems equally asential. Detail in {he Goo's Bend quilts functions differently. Rather than being the substance or the quilt, it more often than noL, an accent, a fillip or a fonnal destabilizer. Slmllie \ocrtical and horiwnlal forms tend to predominate, and since quilting Is an addith'e process, a reasonably srrd.ightfrnward design can be gi\'en piquan· cy and personality by sewing in something small and unexpected. In Arlorula Pettway's Gal (Bars)t" ca 1975, a motif or bold green and while \'ertical stripes is bomered at the top and bottom by just a hint of a delicate floral pnUern. The change in ronnal and emotional scale is finely calibrnted and tremendously satisfying. Irene Williams's "Bars" (ca lOGS) Art in America I  Site Jfil/le&lIzer: "/lousefop" nine-block, "fla{fLog I.Mation, co. /955, roUt"., ' IIII/helle blend. , 8() bll 76 inrhe •. features a composition of four thick vertical hars in solid cream and black, topped with a similarly sized horizontal in deep blue-green This archil.ectonic structure is of'fsct by a flower-IJ.1ttemed border on both sides and the bottom. It however, the narrow top border that gP.'eS the quilt its kick. The right-hand half of the border is the same blue·green as the horizontal bar directly below it, while the left-hand half is divided into three sections-gray and cream, a small light-blue grid and a slice of vibrant red completely out of chromatic character witillhe rest of lhe quilt. That foot or so of crimson makes the quilL It's a formal mO\'(l that incorpcr rates a sure sense of scale with a usc of olJ-complementaries worthy of Josef Albers. Simple, forceful design, unencumbered by is a hallmark of the Gee's Bend qu ilts. The quilts speak of a work ethic, not a "make-..... one. Quilting was often a social activity, particularly during lhe labor-intensive stage of sewing (he designed front onto the backing and fuLLS sandwiching in the cotton filler. But it was not a hobby, a way of whiling away Lhe hours. The women quiltel'S were vital parts of a barely self-sustaining agricultural society, and their labor was needed in the fields during the day. The field work tiring, and there were household duties on lOp of thatchores not assisted by the time- and labor-saving devices so common in the rest of American society. One reason for lhe quills' relative simplicity is purely Ilractical: the quitters 108 Oclober 200S Annie Mae }'oung: Strip', 00_ 19'15, rordufOlI, 95 bll l 05 (nc,,"" Ordinary quilts tend to frame details in regularly repeating patterns. Gee's Bend quilts don't do that. They are bounded, unique and rarely symmetrical. \\-'allted to fmish them reasona.bly quickly so that they could be used for their intended purpose-to keep warm_ Gee's Bend \\"3.5 a vel)' poor community that could ill alford luxuries like swre-bought blankets and bed coverings. Even if, like Loretta Pettway, one or the most talented of the Gee's Bend quilters, you didn't like to sew, there wasn't much choice in lhe matter. As she said, WI had a lot of work to do. Feed work in the fi eld, take care of my handicaPIKld brother. Had to go 1.0 the fi eld. Had to walk about fifty miles in the field evel)' day. Get home too tired to do no sewing. My grandmama, Prissy Pen-way, told me, 'You better make quillS. You goil18 to need them.' I said, 'I ain't going to need no quilts.' but when I got me a house, a raggiy old house, then I needed them to keepwarm_"· The Gee's Bend quilts embody a moral as well as a formal eronolllY. In contrdSl to lhe larger culture of obsolescence, waste and disposability, in Gee's Bend nothing usable was thrown away (although not evel)'thing was won1i some polyester leisure suits sent dO\\71 from the north were so out of style that they could only be recycled into bedding). Scraps of cloth were saved up ror quilting-any sort. of cotton, corduroy, knit or synthetic fabric was fine. Clothing was wom until it was worn out, and then ripped up into quilt material rather than being discarded. Used clothing is scarcely a neutral art material. Not only does it embrace a range of social signs, but it can also carry the physical imprint of the wearer, the trace of his or her hody. We CtUl see the pressure of elbows and knees, feel the stretch of fabric under the neatly applied patches_ Denim clothing shows this Lo particular advantage, and some of lhe most emotionally affecting quilts were made from sun- and washfaded work clothes. Missouri Pettway's daughter, Arlonzia, spoke of her late mother's quilt, a blue, white, reddish-brown and gray block-and-strip design made in 1942. Wit was when Daddy died. I was about se\'Cnteen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight momhs and passed on. Mama say, 'I  going to take his work clothes, shallC them into a quilt to remember him, and OO\'er up under it for love."" In these .... ,ork-clothes quilts the quietness of the colors--blues, g:rays, creams, browns-allows fo:r an extremely subtle interplay or hue and value, and also ro:r the counterpoint of darker passages: se .... 'Hln patches, the unfaded area unde:r removed pants pockets, o:r seams that had, prior to ripping, been unexposed. The c\omes, by virtue of their hard use, were sometimes stained with earth, rust and sweat That discoloration, rather than diminishing Ole power of the quilts, gh'es them a and emt>- tional 1)''1lina. This can be clearly seen In R.'1chel Carey George's quilt from around \035, made of denim, wool trousers, mattress ticking and colton. III It, a large horizontal rectangle of stained blue-and-white tickHiflUuru: rnri6tJQf'J nJ. 1965, rrool bit, Until, IIDullk kIIlt, t:OIloII drGptrf ",uttriDl, St Of i9 illo" .... ing is contrasted with wide strips of oval-patched pants legs and another large :rectangle of white-stitched gray wool. The staining of the mattress ticking is echoed by similar brown areas in other parts of the quilt, particularly In the pants The sense of lime's passage, of difficulties endured and O\-ercome, is palpable. Something similar can be felt in Lorella Pettwats Gal (Bars)," ca. 1005. One of the seemingly simplest ..... urks on \1ew, it consists solely coldim/Cd on page 148 Art jll America t(  Gee's Bend continued/rom page 109 of vertical bars. There is a bortler on the left and right of dark navy (edged with a hint of pattem), a field of quiet blue-violet, and left of cen· ter, two equal·si1.ed white bands. Measuring a bit under 7 by 6 feet, this quilt cannot help recalling, for today's viewer, Bamet!, Newman's paint, ings. As wilh Newman, it carries with it the air of the spiritual. Indeed, the current of faith runs deep in Gee's Bend, while the quilts are not part of a specific spiritual practice in their making or their iconography, it is not unreruiOnable to assume that, the clJe<:ts of such a religiously innected life are to be seen in the community's art. Probably the most viscerally powerful .... ork-clOlhes quilt in the show is Lutisha Petv.va.v's "BarsM (ca. 1050). Composed entirely of faded and patched denim pants legs, laid out in vertical bands, the heavy quilt sat$, bends and buckles. Edging it on the right are a pair of pants legs, wide at the waist and narrow at the ankles. They are sewn together at the small ends, and their symmetrical mirroring gi\"CS the right edge a sharp bow inwards, in clear contrast to the retatively straight bottom, top, and left sides. While other quilts use CUleUp clothing in small enough pieces so thnt we are Oftell forced 1.0 infer its originlll use, this quilL uses pants legs in virtually their entirety, and as such, the sense of the body undemealh the clothing remains parlicularly strong. Color, too, makes a mf\jor contribution- Its monochrome quality adding purposefulness, consistent'Y and intensity. Denim, while hem)' ruld hard to work with, brings with it a coloristic bonus. lis fading creates a wide variety tlf blues, from dt'C]l indigo to the I)''llest pinked IiZtlre, a color mngc IUltumlly suggestive of sky and atmosphere, That property is used to mar'l'elous effcct in a 1076 work by Annie Mac Young, an artist whose originality and conwositionaJ bmvum stand out in remarkably talented group. The quill floats a centml vertically striped portion against a field of variously faded denim bars. TIle sl.rijM!<i area is di\ided in Imlf horir.ont.'llly. The top portion alternates red and stripes, the botwm red and brown. The two sections don't quite match uj>-the striJles are of different widths and are drawn (there is no other word for it) with a loose, expressive line. The center stril>ed secLion has an emblematic, flaglike qulllity th31 seems both w embed the stripes in the atmosJlheric blue field and suspend them above it. One the sense of a fL'Ig or a heraldic banner in YOlUlg'S 1975 cor· duroy quilL as .... 'ell. This large hori7.ontalty dispia,}' ld piece, a bit under 8 by o feet, is one of the high points of the exhibition. A series orthin horizontal stripes-allcrnating red and brown on the wp half, reds, browns, greens, blues and oranges on the bottom half- marks otrtlle right·h:Uld quarter of the quill On the left edge is a tlIin column of vcrtical multicolored stripes divided roughly into thirds horizontally. The remainder, approximately tv."{)-thirds of the area of the entire quill, is an astonishingly rich ccrule:UI. Composed of horizontal strips of closely \'alued fabric, this section allows for a complex visual interplay between its subtlety and Ule boldness of the stripes flanking it, and also for an interchnnge between the horizontalily lUld vcrticality of the two striped secLions. Words can hardly do justice to tile sophisticated and satisfying play ofvisu.'lI elements--the way the same blue as the center sneaks into the stripes 011 the sides, or how the heft or the horizontally striped area perfectly balances the narrower or why lhe Illtematin.g of red lUld brown stripes on the upper portion of the righl hand section putsjust the right. anlountofweighl alld pressure on the slightly thinner multicolored stripes below them. The LL'IC of corduroy by Young and a number of other Gee's Benders is a study in fortuity. In 1972, Sears, Roebuck and Company contracted with the local (Iuilting cooperati\·c to produce low·priced corduroy pillow shams. They sent down bolts of the material, lUld while the shams \\'ete mechanical Jliecework, the corduroy wa..'! soon incoll)Qntted inlo the 148 October2fJ03 Sally /H"M.t/ Jonf!t: em/n- mmafUolI u/th nlllltipk bomf!nI, 1966, RltlOll, 86 by 77 1nthl!l/. area's quiltmaking style. Corduroy has real limitations-it works best. when cut al. right lUlgles; it tends to pull, distort and fmy when cut on the diagonal. These constraints are offset by the cloth's rich color, sensual light-reflecting qualities and softness. In practical temls, the materia) was virtually free, and it was very Wllnll. The fabric posed challenges, but art often lhrives when Ule \'atiables are reduced. In any case, boldness of design and reclilinearity are chamcteris· tics of the Gee's Bend quilts; and for some qu ilters, corduroy called forth their best efforts. China Pettway's block quilt, (ca. 1!)75), for example, is Bauhausian in ils Simplicity and elegance. There are only six color areas, each in a rich but muted earth tone. Small and large, \'ertical and horizontal, dark and light are blended in a composition, classical in its form and balance. Arcola Pettway's Gal (Bars)" variation from 1976, the year of the Bicentennial, has the rough composition of an American nag, with 13 more or less equal horizontal stripes and a small square area in the UPllcr left where the stars go----excepl in this case the Qstars" are three addi· tional vertical stripes, and the colors, inslead of red, white and blue, are apple green, tan, corn yellow, rusty brown, slate blue, crimson and orange· red. Color and form work togelher to artfully undermine expectat.ions, and the quilt is bolh delightful and moving. The Gee's Bend quilts are so evocatk-e, so emotionally and esthelical· Iy fulfilling, as .... 'ell as so individulll, ,h:lt it feels unfair not 10 men· tion more artists and describe more quilts. Fortunately, many more pe0- ple around the country will now get the chance to see them. The exhibition was to have sWPI>ed with the Whitney, but it has generated such a grounds ..... ell of inlerest thlll eight other museums hm'e signed on to take the show, and it wiU travel for three year.!. This seems like the perfect, moment fo r this exhibition, even though Gee's Bend has been  known to the wider art world (or decades. Int.erest In the quilts over the years has been sporadic--there was a spike in New York in the late '60s, and in 1967 an appreciative Lee Krasner visited Gee's Bend with her dealer and bought a number of them. This was the time,lOO, when artists were entranced by Navajo blankets. These enthusiasms faded, quite p0ssibly because quilts and blankets, although resembling the art being made then, shared few of its stated premises. Now, however, the Gee's Bend quilts have a deeper a mnectlon to CUfrent concerns. They speak to the widening base of art production, as well as to an int.erest in ethnicity and identity. This interest seems to thri\'e in the exploration of the territory which lies between cultural sign and indio viduality, that is, between the more easily chartable products of a bounded group Identity and the open-ended activities of the indMduaJ. The quilts are \'ery much of a time, place, gender and ethnic grouPi but they are also intensely personal and lm'entn'e. Patterns are often not used at all, or when they are, they are freely adapted to the artist's own interests and history. There is also an interest, these days, in the use of nontraditional materials in abstraction. This often leads LO an Investigation of the Inherent three-dimensionality of "Oath work. A Gee's Bend quilt is not, as is a stretched rectangular canvas, a historically given depictn'e arena that also happens to be made of cloth and whose materiaJily might be tacitly acknowledged by, for example, staining the canvas. A quilt is both an image and a constructed, pliable physical object The shape of the quilt-the irregularity of its edge and the waviness of its surface-is a natural product of its makin& and its use creates an inherent ambiguity of orientation. Its two-dimensionality is also conditional since it canjust as easily be nat or draped. Another artistic concern today is layering. Multiplicity of purpose and rorm is a given in these quilts. Not only are they, at heart, assemblages (with all the complexity of facture and reference that implies), but the rhythmic, patterned stilChing or the g:ridded yam ties that hold the front to the back are aspects of the quill that function semi-independently. Frequently done by more than one person, the stitching sets up a quiet but complex counterpoint to the larger design. Finally, the growing interest in craftlike methodologies among artist.s also speaks to the lessened aulhority of the brush. No longer valorized as an extension of the artist's persona, a guarantor of painterly, gest.ural (and often male) authenticity, it has become another tool, an option in a wide menu of artmaking procedures. Piecing and stilChing has pf'(l\'en to be as sensitive, energetic and direct a means of expression as the most adept brushwork. Painting in general, and abstract painting in partic:uJar, seems to have kl;t its centrality. That does not mean that the two-dimensionaI abstract object has surrendered ilS power or allure. Imbued with art-historical reference, inherently metaphorical and capable of great it sti1l exerts a strong pull on our imaginations. U great art can be found in this arena today, the question becomes, why shouldn't it be in the fonn of a quilt and, more specifically, why not these quilts? I round myself unexpectedly mO't-OO and excited by this exhibition, and that feeling has been shared by many others. "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" has turned out., rather surprisingly, to be one of the most talked·about shows in recent years.. I expect and hope that its influence will be deep and long-lasting. 0 l. In terms of Influences, It has boon noted lhal th;!re are certaln simiiarities between the Bend quilts and West alld Centnll Mrkan textiles, bul given the lack or IIIsWrica1 this COfU'II.'dJon tan only be 2. A double CD 01", music rtcOnIed h1 Gee's Hend h1 I!HI arwI2002,HottJ Hi GoI tMr: 17M 50crfd &nI!P Gftiol lkrtd, is available in oonJuncUon with the allow. A number of the quilten In the exhibition &ing on these CDs. 3. It should be IIOI.6d that IndlcaUoos oh 'ertlcal or horbontal refer W the orienl.l· lion or the quillS as dl5played. Since they were IS bed nol Iwlglnp, d!stlnctIons between left. and ri&hl arwI up and btl are aomewIW. ubi· ""Y. If great abstract art can be found today, the question becomes, why shouldn't it be in the form of a quilt and, more specifically, why not these quilts? 4. f'rom the 6IUbltlon cataIop, 7lt ikrtd, Allan" and Houston, 1lIMlOd Boob: in .saoclation the MU5eUm of nne Alta. Houson, 2002, p. 72. 0. ibid., p. 67. Quilts O/(M', &N/- 1tW Of1NJ"ind/or 1M 0/ HOII.IlotI., b¥ MUM'" AmtU, .loll" &onWey, JaN Ur:i!lf$l(Jlt alfd AltoWl UoilnUolI\ IL'iIA a.sN4I!fQIllI 1M 1Hu1"'l1 MIIMIIIN AII\triQJII Art frcnn DtOro SirIfP. E:rItibitioM dDJ# M!Ut!Um r.I FiN..tru, JIoustJJrt fStpl. 8Noo 10, t«JtJ; MIIl/eWIN rI 1411, NaD tOrt INoon, m-MQT. IIJ03J; Mobik ,41_", "Art /.Inf I+-Alig. 31/; A,., MUMII'IIt fSept.17../Q1t. of, ItXJtJ; ComwaJt GoJkrJJ r.I 1411, Itlullillg(oll. D.C /ftO. J+-Mo, 17, I1mJ; CIMItmd rt A'" /.hIM It&pt. I., I1mJ,. OtfJlSkr MIlMtlIIt rt Arl, Notjoa IOct IS, MQt.JaIL !OO5J; Mmp/li6 BrooItJ MUIftI'IIt A,., /ffA. a. NXJ5/,. MIIIftI'" rt f'iM ArtI, Bo4Unt /JwIlNtll¥, to05J,. HigA MIIIftIM 0{ Art, AUtrJtta 1\ro 6mt publiWd IJg Ti"ll'OOd Alhmla, o'lld 1M MIIItIIIII tiM An.s, 11ou.U0II, {" wilJIlM QIIibitio..: The QuillS of Gee', Bend and Gee's Bend: The Women and Their QuU\$ LomllJ hlt.Gf: StlUttpI«:«J fUIU. "60, cotl(uf t¥Ul,.".1IIdk IfUJkrW dotAlq), It .. 11 lMJtn.. Art in Amm'ca 149  ARTE POVERA Synopsis Arte Povera - "poor art" or "impoverished art" - was the most significant and influential avantgarde movement to emerge in Europe in the 1960s. It grouped the work of around a dozen Italian artists whose most distinctly recognizable trait was their use of commonplace materials that might evoke a pre-industrial age, such as earth, rocks, clothing, paper and rope. Their work marked a reaction against the modernist abstract painting that had dominated European art in the 1950s, hence much of the group's work is sculptural. But the group also rejected American Minimalism, in particular what they perceived as its enthusiasm for technology. In this respect Arte Povera echoes Post-Minimalist tendencies in American art of the 1960s. But in its opposition to modernism and technology, and its evocations of the past, locality and memory, the movement is distinctly Italian. Key Ideas Although Arte Povera is most notable for its use of simple, artisanal materials, it did not use these to the exclusion of all else. Some of the group's most memorable work comes from the contrast of unprocessed materials with references to the most recent consumer culture. Believing that modernity threatened to erase our sense of memory along with all signs of the past, the Arte Povera group sought to contrast the new and the old in order to complicate our sense of the effects of passing time. In addition to opposing the technological design of American Minimalism, artists associated with Arte Povera also rejected what they perceived as its scientific rationalism. By contrast, they conjured a world of myth whose mysteries couldn't be easily explained. Or they presented absurd, jarring and comical juxtapositions, often of the new and the old, or the highly processed and the preindustrial. By doing so, the Italian artists evoked some of the effects of modernization, how it tended to destroy experiences of locality and memory as it pushed ever forwards into the future. Arte Povera's interest in "poor" materials can be seen as related to Assemblage, an international trend of the 1950s and 1960s that used similar materials. Both movements marked a reaction against much of the abstract painting that dominated art in the period. They viewed it as too narrowly concerned with emotion and individual expression, and too confined by the traditions of painting. Instead, they proposed an art that was much more interested in materiality and physicality, and borrowed forms and materials from everyday life. Arte Povera might be distinguished from Assemblage by its interest in modes such as performance and installation, approaches that had more in common with pre-war avant-gardes such as Surrealism, Dada and Constructivism. Beginnings Arte Povera emerged out of the decline of abstract painting in Italy, and the rise of interest in older avant-garde approaches to making art. In particular, its spirit can be traced to three artists: Alberto Burri, whose painting made from burlap sacks, provided an example of the use of poor materials; Piero Manzoni, whose work prefigured qualities of Conceptual art, and which reacted against abstract, Art Informel painting; and Lucio Fontana, whose monochrome painting provided an example of the power of art that is reduced to only a few elements and concentrated in its impact. The term Arte Povera was first used by art critic Germano Celant in 1967 to describe the work of a group of Italian artists. In the same year he organized the first survey of the trend, "Arte Povera e IM Spazio," which was staged at Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa, and which included the work of Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali and Emilio Prini. All of the work made use of everyday or "poor" materials. For example, Boetti's Pile (1966-67) consisted of a stack of asbestos blocks; Fabro raised an everyday task to the level of art in Floor Tautology (1967), in which a tiled floor was kept polished and covered with newspapers to maintain its cleanliness; and in his Cubic Meters of Earth (1967), Pascali formed mounds of soil into solid shapes, using a natural but "dirty" material and forcing it into clean, unnatural lines in a critique of Minimalism. Overall, the organizer of the show chose to focus on the intrusion of the banal into the realm of art, forcing us to look at previously inconsequential things in a new light. Only two months after the inaugural show, Celant wrote Arte Povera: Notes for a Guerilla War, a manifesto that added several more artists to his initial roster: Giovanni Anselmo, Piero Gilardi, Mario Merz, Gianni Piacentino, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Gilberto Zorio. With this declaration, Celant firmly associated himself and the Italians with a new movement in art, but also put forth a definition of Arte Povera that was more ambiguous than his previous iteration. This was most obvious with the inclusion of Pistoletto, since his mirror works incorporated elements of photography, a medium notably avoided by other members of the group. Notes for a Guerilla War linked the artists conceptually (rather than on any formal or stylistic basis) through what Celant saw as their common desire to destroy "the dichotomy between art and life." Concepts and Styles Arte Povera is most notable for its use of everyday materials, materials which contrasted with the apparently industrial sensibility of American Minimalism. At the same time the movement employed subversive avant-garde tactics, such as performance, and unconventional approaches to sculpture, such as installation. In their mission to reconnect life with art, the Italian Arte Povera artists strove to evoke an individual, personal response in each of their pieces, stressing an interaction between viewer and object that was unrepeatable and purely original. Crucial in the formation and success of Arte Povera was Germano Celant, and in this respect Arte Povera is typical of avant-garde groups that have been given momentum and cohesion by a single voice. Out of what is often a vague similarity of ideas and approaches, an apparent coherence is presented, and so the interests of a particular group of artists can be more effectively promoted. Hence, Celant's interpretations of the artists associated with Arte Povera have remained prominent and important, and Celant often stressed the Italians'interest in individual subjectivity. For example, Michelangelo Pistoletto is known above all for works in which photographic images of figures are displayed on mirrors; Celant once described a different but related work, the simple metal construction Structure for Standing While Talking (1965-66), as a medium to create a personal dialog between art and viewer, free from any preconceived notions. Giovani Anselmo's early work also relied on human interaction to fully experience the art, which was loosely constructed in order to react to the slightest touch. Pino Pascali and Jannis Kounellis he described as experiencing life through sensuality, engaging the senses to create a feeling of wonder, as in Pascali's colorful and spiky Bristleworms, or the installation of live animals in Kounellis' Untitled (Twelve Horses). Celant's most dramatic pronouncement was saved for the igloos of Mario Merz, and perhaps reflected his hopes for the implications of Arte Povera: "He performs a constant sacrifice of the banal, everyday object, as though it were a newfound Christ. Having found his nail, Merz becomes the system's philistine and crucifies the world." Later Developments Celant succeeded in carving out a place for Arte Povera within the avant-garde. By illustrating a relationship to Futurism and Italian classicism, as well as to more contemporary styles such as Land art, he lent the movement a place in what could be seen as a living tradition. His exhibition Conceptual Art, Arte Povera, Land Art, held at the Galleria Civica dell'Arte in 1970, showcased this contextualization. By this time, though, the artists had an international presence and were trying to break free of the name that had associated them with poor materials. For example, they opposed the use of the name "Arte Povera" in the title of an important group show at the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne; to replace it, curator Jean-Christophe Ammann proposed "Visualized Art Processes." Despite growing popularity, the movement dissolved in the mid 1970s as the individual styles of the Italian artists continued to grow in different directions. Their brief unity, however, had already made its mark on the history of art, although its importance was not fully recognized until decades later. Following a reassessment of the 1960s, with critics now paying greater attention to movements outside the United States in the period, Arte Povera has experienced a revival, and has been cited as a precursor for some recent approaches to sculpture. Significant reassessments have included "Gravity and Grace: Arte Povera / Post-Minimalism," at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1993, and "Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972" at the Tate Gallery, London, in 2002. QUOTES "The difficulty of knowledge, or of taking possession of things, is enormous: conditioning prevents us from seeing a pavement, a corner, or a daily space, and Fabro re-proposes the rediscovery of a pavement, a corner, or the axis that unites the floor and ceiling of a room. He's not worried about satisfying the system, and intends instead to disembowel it." - Germano Celant in Arte Povera: Notes on a Guerilla War "What is happening? Banality is entering the arena of art. The insignificant is coming into being or, rather, it is beginning to impose itself. Physical presence and behavior have themselves become art... We are living in a period of deculturation. Iconographic conventions are collapsing, symbolic and conventional languages crumbling." - Germano Celant, from the exhibition catalogue for Arte Povera e IM Spazio an ordeal of measurement tenuously alludes to a monumentally stretched-out version of Truth or Consequences. I ... ] In choosing representational strategies I aim for the distancing ( ostranenie the Verfremdungseffekt), the distantiation occasioned by a refusal of realism, b ' foi led expectations, by palpably flouted conventions. Tactically I tend to use~ wretched pacing and a bent space; the immovable shot or, conversely, the unexpected edit, pointing to the mediating agencies of photography and speech; long shots rather than close ups, to deny psychological intent; contradictory utterances; and, in acting, flattened affect, histrionics or staginess. Although video is simply one medium among several that are effective in confronting real issues of culture. video based on TV has this special virtue; it has little difficulty in lending itself to the kind of 'crude thinking', as Brecht used this phrase, that seems necessary to penetrate the waking daydreams that hold us in thrall. The clarification of vision is a first step towards reasonably and humanely changing the world. !The TV cookery programme presenter.I Martha Rosier, extracts from 'to argue for a video of representation. to argue for a video against the mythology of everyday life', pamphlet for 'New American Film Makers: Martha Rosier' (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1977); reprinted in Rosier, Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Writings. 1975-2001 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2004) 366- 9. Allen Ruppersberg Fifty Helpful Hints on the Art of the Everyday//1985 General The individual search for the secret of life and death. That is the inspiration and the key. The reality of impressions and the impression of reality. The ordinary event leads to the beauty and understanding of the world. Start out and go in. Each work is singular, unique and resists any stylistic or linear analysis. Each work is one of a kind. Personal, eccentric, peculiar, quirky, idiosyncratic, queer. The presentation of a real thing. 54/ / ART AND THE EVERYDAY  Allen Ruppersberg, Fifty Helpful Hints on the Art of the Everyday, 1985  The ordinary and the rare, their interconnectedness and interchangeability. There is a quotidian sense of loss and tragedy. Collect accumulate, gather, preserve, examine, catalogue read look · . · · , study research change, organize, file, cross-reference, number, assemble cat . · ' · egonze classify, and conserve the ephemeral. · Art should make use of common methods and materials so there is little difference between the talk and the talked about. [ ... ] A sort of journalist reporting on the common, observable world. Suicide is often the subject because it is a representative example of the ultimate moment of mystery. The last private thought. Look for narrative of any kind. Anti-narrative, non-narrative, para-narrative ' semi-narrative, quasi-narrative, post-narrative, bad narrative. Use everything. The artist is a mysterious entertainer. Specific [ ... ] l want to reveal the quality of a moment in passing. Where something is recognized and acknowledged but remains mysterious and undefined. You continue on your way, but have been subtly changed from that point on. I try to set up a network of ideas and emotions with only the tip showing. The major portion of the piece continues to whirl and ferment underneath, just as things do in the world at large. It is constructed to work on you after you have seen it. The act of copying something allows the use of things as they are, without altering their original nature. They can then be used with ideas about art on a fifty-fifty basis, and create something entirely new. It operates on a basis of missing parts. The formal structure, a minimalist strategy of viewer completion and involvement, is one of fragment, space, fragment, space, fragment, fragment, space, space, space. The form of each piece is determined by the nature of its subject.[ ... ] I'm interested in the translation of life to art because it seems to me that the world is fine just as it is. [ ... ] Allen Ruppersberg, extracts from 'Fifty He lpful Hints on the Art of the Everyday,' The Secret of Life and Death (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art/Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press. 1985) 111 - 14. 56// ART AND THE EVERYDAY  trategies to it. The result is formalism intensified to the qualitative crisis point. ~he work makes its intervention in the context of a formalized emptiness of existing genres. but does not create an antithetical emptiness, a purely abstract or emblematic intervention. In fusing the journalistic attitude which accepts the primacy of subject-matter together with the Situationist-conceptualist strategy of interventionism and detournement, the work establishes a discourse in which its subject-matter, a critique of Minimalism and Pop via a discussion of the architectural disaster upon which they both depend, can be enlarged to the point of a historical critique of reigning American cultural development. This approach became identified explicitly with architectural theory and discourse by 1973-74 via a series of video-performance works. These and the environmental 'functional behavioural models' use window, mirror and video control systems to construct dramas of spectatorship and surveillance in the abstracted containers of gallery architecture. Following his ideas about the relation of the work of art to the implicit semiotics of its built environment, its institutionally-designed container, the emphasis shifts through the decade of the seventies from an experimental concentration on enactment or behaviour ('performance'), to work upon the actual institutional settings of these 'dramas'. Graham's work shows new influences, particularly from Daniel Buren, Michael Asher and Gordon Matta-Clark, with the effect that architecture emerges as the determining or decisive art form, because it most wholly reflects institutional structure, and influences behaviour through its definition of positionality. [ ... ] Jeff Wall, extract from 'Dan Graham's Kammerspiel', in Real Life Magazine, no. 15 (Winter 1985/86): reprinted in Jeff Wall, Selected Essays and lnteIViews (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007) 23-33. Jonathan Watkins Every Day//1998 There is a growing interest amongst contemporary artists, worldwide, in quotidian phenomena and the power of relatively simple gestures. It constitutes a rejoinder to played-out operatic tendencies and an overloaded academic ( often pseudo-academic) discourse in visual arts, engendered by early postmodernism. The imminence of the year 2000 makes this artistic sea change at once paradoxical and timely, a foil for the portentousness of millennial cultural events. Watkins//Every Day//61  E P hasis here is placed on the significance of every day, and any day m . f , not on th distance between now and arbitrary past and uture dates in Western h' e . . f h' h'b' . . IStory The fundamental propos1t1on o t 1s ex 1 1t1on arises out of curr : . ent an1stic ractice. Selected works are characterized by efficacy and unpreciousne p . 'd II i- ss. They e unforced artistic statements, mc1 enta y pro1ound observation ar . . . . . s on the ture of our Jives as lived every day, m contrad1stmct1on to supposed! r, na . . . . . Y m-de1 .ecle appropriatiomst, neo-surreahst or mannerist strategies _ all-too-' .. s . . 1arn1har ·n living memory - and likewise new-age transcendentalist gestur . I . • • . . . es. Their impetus, derived f1~om what 1_s ord1~ary, 1s not unlike tha_t which led nineteenthcentury French artists to their realist and subsequently impressionist positi It is more human than spiritual, more empiricist than idealistic ons. . . , more philosophical than 1deological. Though this project springs from a current Western context the . . . , re 1s significant correspondence with a wide range of cultural traditions increasin 1 h h . . 1· gy being acknowledged t roug a new 111ternat1ona ism. As every day occurs everywhere in the world, participating artists hail from each of the five continents. The curatorial challenge arises from the relativism of what is everyday, the differences between what is familiar, common or ordinary within the diversity of cultures represented. The aim is to communicate the nature of every day and to be culturally specific, declaring differences without resorting to exoticism, particularly in the presentation of non-Western art. Whereas a sublime and prescriptive world-view of contemporary art is out of the question, a more balanced and ultimately more constructive global dialogue is certainly feasible. The Biennale presents an opportunity for the telling juxtaposition of work by artists whose distance from one another is normally vast. Here, for example, On Kawara Uapan/USA) meets Georges Adeagbo (Benin), Frederic Bruly Bouabre (Ivory Coast) and Jean Frederic Schnyder (Switzerland) in works that all resemble personal journals. The single-image colour photographs by Roy Arden (Canada), Noa Zait (Israel) and Pekka Turunen (Finland), so evocative particularly of the places they depict, can be readily compared. The minimalism of paintings by Katherina Grosse (Germany), Rover Thomas (Australia) and Ding Yi (China) seen in proximity suggest an affinity in spite of the virtually incommensurable thought systems which inform them. The broad area covered by this exhibition is articulated by various concerns and stances. Pronouncements with respect to style or medium (the dominance of one, the redundancy of another) are deliberately avoided, deemed pointless now, but the artists clearly do share various attitudes. Above all perhaps is an aspiration to directness, as opposed to gratuitous mediation or obscurantism. A break is made with art about art (interrogation of its own artistic identity) and continuity is affirmed between phenomena within and beyond the art world. 62//IJff AND TID EVERYDAY  Much of the work exhibited ~mbodies or marks the passage of time through traces of the process of production, thereby stressing its place in our material world. Time is _measured out !n gestures analogous to the coming and going of every day, reminders that all 1s temporary and mutable. Concomitant with this is the acknowledgement that the everyday is manifest as much in natural phenomena as it is in co~mOI~ man-ma~e or urban subjects. Carl Andre's work ep1tom1ses the d1rectness at the heart of this project, diametrically opposed to theatricality. Its concrete nature, its 'this-is-this-ness', at once conveys the artist's feeling for basic materials and a tough logic which does not distract from the fact that they are simply there. Denise Kum and Ernesto Neto similarly encourage an apprehension of material fact. The latter, who is working in a Brazilian tradition notably developed by Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark. seems to encourage a revelry in stuff - ranging from lead shot to powdered spices - and recently his exhibitions have included Iycra tent-like structures which can be entered and experienced from the inside. Kum takes raw chemical substances and combines them with extraordinary results, an abstract insistence on the possibility of invention. [ ... ) The unhindered flow of information from everyday life into the art world was made conscious and deliberate with Marcel Duchamp's introduction of the Readymade, and not surprisingly, readymade objects are found throughout this exhibition. Jose Resende is a choreographer of cranes and shipping containers, Virginia Ward resurrects discarded machinery, Desmond Kum Chi-Keung works with bamboo bird cages, while Marijke van Warmerdam invites us to gamble on one-armed bandits. It is a truism that art can be made from anything. Rasheed Araeen's recent works are made from scaffolding, Tadashi Kawamata's from garden sheds. Peter Robinson (3.125% Maori) treads a tightrope stretched between political correctness and heresy as he picks up awful nationalist cliches and racist taunts, as readymades, and then throws them back. Vladimir Arkhipov's Post-Folk Archive puts a further twist to the tale of the Readymade, consisting as it does of home-made gadgets, all ready made, collected from people living around Moscow. The ingenuity of these gadgets, in the face of shortages of the most ordinary manufactured goods, inspired him to stop being a sculptor and start collecting. Now Arkhipov's art practice bridges the gap between the useful lives of these gadgets and their acquired identity as components of an artwork. The twist lies in the fact that these are not manufactured objects, as readymades usually are, but instead unique creations which might be mistaken for folk art, implying a curatorial effort to somehow 'elevate' them. This could not be further from the truth, Arkhipov suggests, because the art world clearly does not occupy elevated ground. Watkins/ / Every Day//63  kok has an ,ut1 st1 c community, la rgely orbiting around the About Cai Bang . d' . . e. h I _ 111 extraordinJry emphasis on au 1ence part1c1patiun, asserting \\'hie p ates~ not d O ran, of objects through the use of readymades but also only a em .. , . . . · an d den ·e between artists .rnd non-artists. In the sptnt of Jorge L . inter epen t u1s ho argued for the recognition of the crucial role of the reader m Borge , w . . . . , any Thai arti t are literally making work with their audience. R1rkrit Tiravanija has at different times provided take-away fo?d· a recording studio for passers-by ,rnd art work hops for children. Suras1 Kusolwong recently organized an exchange of everyday objects with gallery visitors. Chumpon Apisuk, in a longteni, project concerned with the plight of local sex-workers, especially with re pect to HIV and AIDS, exhibits a continuing correspondence by fax and recorded messages. Navin Rawanchaikul's work for this exhibition developed out of his Navin Gallery, Bangkok, an ordinary working taxi in Bangkok which is also the venue for an exhibition programme. It is based on recorded conversations with Sydney taxi drivers. These are transformed into a small comic story book, Another Day in Sydney, freely available in taxis around town, and a sound installation involving a taxi parked inside the exhibition. Guy Bar-Amotz, an Israeli artist now based in London and Amsterdam, also derives his work from an identifiable professional group, buskers, and karaoke is the chosen form of audience participation. The gruesome cathartic sing-a-long of the overworked middle classes with underprivileged accompaniment, an increasing phenomenon around the world, is a characteristically edgy mix. Perhaps as an antidote, the home has come to signify, more than ever, a refuge, as Nikos Papastergiadis observes in his essay here: 'Not only are more and more people living in places which are remote and unfamiliar to them, but even those who have not moved increasingly feel estranged from their own sense of place.' Whether or not this is directly experienced by artists, a preponderance of current art works refer to the nature of the home, often problematically, and reflect a basic need for shelter. Desmond Kum Chi-Keung's birdcages allude to the overcrowded housing conditions in Hong Kong. Gavin Hipkins' photostrips make up an obsessive unedited analysis of the various rooms he inhabits. Howard Arkley's choice of the suburban Australian home as a subject for his spray paintings could not be more apt. Maria Hedlund's white photographs suggest the corruptible nature of the domestic spaces we create for ourselves. Absalon's actual-size white prototypes for houses epitomise a very particular daily life and at the same time anticipate his tragic early death. Ostensibly. the Cellules, to be built in various cities around the world, were to be small buildings in which the artist lived alone. with room enough for only one visitor at a time. 64// ART AND THE EVERYDAY  Shimabuku, The Story of the Travelling Cafe, 19%  With interconnected spaces for eating, sleeping, working and toilet a 1 . . . . C IVJty, the designs betray the formative 111tluences not only of classic modernism b . ut also the artist's native m idd le-eastern culture. Ideas from Arab architecture a d Be . . d . n douin life are combined for the accommo at1on of an endlessly travelling ind· .d . . . 1v1 ual. The appeal of the Cellules hes largely m the viewer's identificat· . IOn With Absalon's need to make a place for himself. Henrietta Lehtonen's work N · f I b ·1 h eSf, (1995), subtitled 'Reconstruction o . a nest. ut. t w en five years old. At the age of eighteen I started to study architecture, strikes the same chord Sof.as · . rugs blanket, pillows and a coffee table are rearranged in order to create a child-sized refuge, one to keep the adult world at bay. Other works by Lehtonen have referred directly to childhood and in this too, she is not alone amongst contemporary artists. There is a distinct revival of interest in the world of children. This is not sentimental and more than a simple acknowledgement that children are equaIJy part of everyday life - it springs from an appreciation that children's perception is relatively unhabituated and their expression of thoughts and feelings is refreshingly candid. Furthermore, children are indicative of an imagined future and thus their significant figuring as subjects in contemporary art tends to contradict notions of a washed-up, decadent culture. [ ... ] On Kawara's work is canonical, direct and economical, marking time as it passes - in the case of his Date Paintings, against an unseen backdrop of newspaper pages which reiterate his continuing existence. His famous statement 'I am still alive' (at once too much and not enough, wonderfully funny and deadly serious) is implicit in everything he does. Parts of his / Met and I Went projects (from 1968), recording everywhere he went and everyone he met on the same days thirty years ago, are also in this exhibition. The measured continuum of time embodied in On Kawara's work features in many works in this exhibition. Frederic Bruly Bouabre's postcard-sized pictures are drawn from daily life in his village of Zepregtihe on the Ivory Coast. Hung in long rows they suggest both a spelt-out pictorial language and, as each is dated, the regular diurnal cycle. The dates assert the fact that he was actually there, then. Jean Frederic Schnyder exhibits a row of forty paintings, each depicting a sunset over the Zugersee, the lake near his home. Riding his bicycle to the same place every evening during several months last year, he set about painting the same scene en plein air, one painting per day, thereby recording the incremental movement of the sun in relation to the horizon and a spectrum of impressions and meteorological effects. Intersecting in Schnyder's work are a number of concerns which exemplify the thesis of this exhibition. They include a response, as direct as possible, to his subject, a subject that is at once familiar and taken as it is, and a concern with the effects of temporality. 66// ART AND THE :EVERYDAY  In addition, Schnyder is declaring his unabashed interest in landscape and natural phenomena. Many other artists here, such as Roni Horn. Patrick Killoran, Olafur Eliasson, Gereon Lepper, Kim You ng-Jin, Dieter Kiessling. Joyce Campbell. Jimmy Wululu and Rover Thomas, are doing the same. This does not signify a sentimenta l or reactionary tendency, somehow in opposition to an avant-garde: it is rather the artistic expression of what happens every day, as innovative as it is uncontrived. The serial nature of Schnyder's work. and that of On Kawara and Bouabre, suggests another pattern which can be extended to include those artists in this exhibition whose practice involves small repetitive gestures, a certain orientation towards craft activity. There is reference to the marking of time, and a light touch on the subject of mortality, for example, in the work of Fernanda Gomes and Germaine Koh. The latter's ongoing project, Knitwork. is an accumulation of her knitting with wool unravelled from second-hand garments. Its present sixty-metre length has Sisyphean implications and becomes increasingly a heavier burden. Ani O'Neill's crocheted circles have affinities with the project of Katherina Grosse and, at the same time, bear witness to her ancestry in the Cook Islands. The woven works of Aboriginal artists Margaret Robyn Djunjiny and Elizabeth Djutarra also derive from traditional culture. Ding Yi uses paintstick on tartan fabric, playing off the pattern or mimicking the weave with a technique which clearly betrays the influence of Buddhist philosophy, through calligraphy. Kim Soo-Ja conflates fabric bundles, potent symbols of the role of women in Korean society, with video images of their movement. The reference to craft is taken to an extreme by those artists who simulate the everyday, not in games of double-take or due to a latter day PreRaphaelitism, but because the subject suggests itself as absolutely sufficient. The meticulousness of the process signifies a fascination with the smallest detail. and simulation is the logical conclusion. Fischli and Weiss produce painted polyurethane sculptures of the most humble objects, such as orange peel and cigarette ends, and Yoshihiro Suda makes painted wooden flowers and weeds. Clay Ketter and Joe Scanlan use the actual materials of their chosen subjects - respectively, plasterboard, nails and plaster for sculptures of sections of prepared walls, and timber for a coffin sculpture - and their aspiration to directness could not be clearer. Ketter and Scanlan operate within the realm of the everyday, and every day, as do Fischli and Weiss, Carl Andre, Lisa Milroy, On Kawara, Virginia Ward, Joyce Campbell, Georges Adeagbo, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and the many other artists included in this exhibition. Such diversity with respect to media, style and subject matter, such interest Watkins//Every Day//67  . all areas of ltfe and unp1etent1ousness, however, does not mean th . tn . . 1s 1s an an world where anything goes. Never does anything go. Then again. nev b · er efore has an art world been so open, and so accessible. J athan Watkins, lnrroductton, Every Day. 11th 81ennale of Sydney (Sydney: Birnnal f on e o Sydney, 1998) 15- 19. Nikos Papastergiadis 'Everything That Surrounds': Art, Politics and Theories of the Everyday//1998 [ ... ] Bringing art and life as close together as possible can be a healthy antidote to some of the academicist approaches emerging in the late 1980s. However, it can also lead to the idiocies and banalities of life being reproduced under the name of art. The relationship between art and life is never straightforward or transparent. What cannot be denied, however, is the need for the artist to start from the materiality of both art practice and experience. This appreciation of materiality does not preclude language, nor does it imply that the limitations of our specific starting points, by their mere display, should be elevated to marvellous achievements. [ ... ] In the new art there is both sensuous absorption with the present, a shameless fascination with the abject, and a candid representation of the banalities of everyday life. Neither the pleasures nor the vices expressive of this voluptuous self-presence are embedded within a social history of political solidarity or aesthetic investigation. This practice of acknowledgement is disavowed as being part of the boring politics of correctness. Yet paradoxically, in the assertion of newness there is both rejection of lineage and claim of assimilation. It is assumed that the new British art has already embraced the kernel of the old without hanging onto the academicist crust of history. This dynamic of internalization is supposedly already there in the pulse of popular culture. Can we assume that the history of resistance is already incorporated in popular consciousness, and that, by virtue of its own sensual and material practice, the production of art traces the contours of this silent knowledge and bears witness to all that is knowable and real? To attempt to forget the past is to be condemned to repeat it by other means. [ ... ] Despite repeated efforts to break the divide between popular culture and high art, the concept of the everyday has remained relatively untheorized within 68// ART AND THE EVERYDAY  d 1 Ctt dialogue with the predominant movements of critical art of their . conscious an exp 1 . . • • J>enOd. W rd ·Toe Hc1unced Museum: lnstttullonal Cnttque and Publicity' Onobf! 20 1361 Frazer J • ' r, 73 (Summer 1995) 83. . . . , . C , 11,.d this in the descnpttve list of Rosier s works found 111 Mdrthd R 1 21 1381 The tape 1s u '" os er: . the Life world ed. Catherine de Zegher (Birmingham. England· lk Po wons m · · on Gallery/Vienna: Generali Foundation. 1998). I . Martha Rosier Positions in the Life World, 31. 22 1401 Ros er in · 23 1441 Fredric Jameson, 'Periodizing the 1960s', in The Sixties without Apology (Minneapolis: . ·ry of Mi·nnesota Press 1984) 79. Additionally, Martha Rosier has said of her own w k un1vers1 · or : 'Everything 1 have ever done I've thought of "as if': Every single thing I have offered to the public has been offered as a suggestion of a work ... which is that my work is a sketch, a line of thinking, a possibility.' ('a conversation with Martha Rosier', in Martha Rosier: Positions in the Ufe World, 31 ). 24 1451 For more on the importance of privacy, see Drucilla Cornell, At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex and Equality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). I ... ] 25 147I Drucilla Cornell, At the Heart of Freedom, op. cit., 24. Helen Molesworth, extracts from 'House Work and Art Work', October, no. 92 (Winter 2000) 75_88; 90-6. Joseph Kosuth The Artist as Anthropologist//1975 Part II. Theory as Praxis: A Role for an 'Anthropologized Art' 'The highest wisdom would be to understand that every fact is already a theory.' - Goethe 1. The artist perpetuates his culture by maintaining certain features of it by 'using' them. The artist is a model of the anthropologist engaged. It is the implosion Mel Ramsden speaks of, an implosion of a reconstituted socioculturally mediated overview.1 In the sense that it is a theory, it is an overview; yet because it is not a detached overview but rather a socially mediating activity, it is engaged, and it is praxis. lt is in this sense that one speaks of the artist-asanthropologist's theory as praxis. There obviously are structural similarities between an 'anthropologized art' and philosophy in their relationship with society ( they both depict it - making the social reality conceivable) yet art is manifested in praxis; it 'depicts' while it alters society.2 And its growth as a 182// DOCUMENTARY STYLE AND ETHNOGRAPHY  cultural reality is necessitated by a dialectical relationship with the activity's historicity (cultural memory) and the social fabric of present-day reality. I ... I 7_ 8e(ause the anthropologist 1s outside of the culture which he studies he is not a part of the community. This means whatever effect he has on the people he is studying is similar to the effect of an act of nature. He is not part of lhe social matrix. Whereas the artist, as anthropologist, is operating within the same socio-cultural context from which he evolved. He is totally immersed, and has a social impact. His activities embody the culture. Now one might ask, why not have the anthropologist. as a professional, 'anthropologize' his own society? Precisely because he is an anthropologist. Anthropology, as it is popularly conceived, is a science. The scientist, as a professional, is dis-engaged.1 Thus it is the nature of anthropology that makes anthropologizing one's own society difficult and probably impossible in terms of the task I am suggesting here. The role Jam suggesting for art in this context is based on the difference between the very basis of the two activities - what they mean as human activities. It is the pervasiveness of 'artistic-like' activity in human society - past or present, primitive or modern, which forces us to consider closely the nature of art. [ ... ] 9. Artistic activity consists of cultural fluency. When one talks of the artist as an anthropologist one is talking of acquiring the kinds of tools that the anthropologist has acquired - in so fa r as the anthropologist is concerned with trying to obtain fluency in another culture. But the artist attempts to obtain fluency in his own culture. For the artist, obtaining cultural fluency is a dialectical process which, simply put, consists of attempting to affect the culture while he is simultaneously learning from (and seeking the acceptance of) that same culture which is affecting him. The artist's success is understood in terms of his praxis. Art means praxis, so any art activity, including 'theoretical art' activity, is praxiological. The reason why one has traditionally not considered the art historian or critic as artist is that because of Modernism (Scientism) the critic and art historian have always maintained a position outside of praxis (the attempt to find objectivity has necessitated that) but in so doing they made culture nature. This is one reason why artists have always felt alienated from art historians and critics. Anthropologists have always attempted to discuss other cultures (that is, become fluent in other cultures) and translate that understanding into sensical forms which are understandable to the culture in which they are located (the 'ethnic' problem). As we said, the anthropologist has always had the problem of being outside of the culture which he is studying. Now what may be interesting about the artist-as-anthropologist is that the artist's activity is not outside, but a mapping of an internalizing cultural activity in his own society. The artist-asKosuth//The Artist as Anthropologist// 183  anthropologist may be able to accomplish what the anthropologist has always failed at. A non-static 'depiction' of art's (and thereby culture's) operational infrastructure is the aim of an anthropolog ized art. The hope for this understanding of the human condition is not in the search for a religio-scientitic 'truth'. but rather to utilize the state of our constituted interaction. I ... J Toe term 'implosion· was originally introduced into our conversation by Michael Baldwin. 1 refer here to its use by Mel Ramsden in 'On Practice', this issue. 2 This nolion of ,m ·anthropologized art' is one I began working on over three years ago_ a point at which I had been studying anthropology for only a year. and my model of an anthropologist was a fairly academic one. That model has continually changed. but not as much as it has in the past year through my studies with Bob Scholte and Stanley Diamond (at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research}. While their influence is strongly felt, I obviously take full responsibility for the use (or misuse) of their material within my discussion here. 3 l footnote 5 in source] I must point out here that the Marxist anthropology of Diamond and Scholte is not included in this generalization. Indeed, due to the alternative anthropological tradition in which they see themselves, their role as anthropologists necessitates that they be 'engaged'. It is a consideration of their work. and what it has to say about the limits of anthropology (and the study of culture) which has allowed me a further elucidation of my notion of the 'artist-asanthropologist'. Joseph Kosuth, extract from 'The Artist as Anthropologist', The Fox. no. 1 (New York. 1975); reprinted in Kosuth, Art after Philosophy and After: Selected Writings 1966- 1990(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 1991 } 117-24. Stephen Willets The Lurky Place//1978 Not far from the busy shopping centre of Hayes in West London, there exists a large, seemingly abandoned, area of land known to the residents of surrounding housing estates as the 'Lurky Place'. Completely hemmed in by various manifestations of institutional society, the Lurky Place is a waste land, isolated and contained. It is this symbolic separation from an institutionalized society that gives the Lurky Place its value for local inhabitants. While the Lurky Place is, of course, actually dependent on society for its existence, the local inhabitants 184//DOCUMENTARY STYLE AND ETHNOGRAPHY 
GEE’S BEND QUILTS GRADES TEXTILE ART LEARNING OBJECTIVES In this guide, students will: • Discuss the historical and social circumstances that contributed to the conditions in which unique quilting traditions developed in Gee’s Bend • Identify the quilts designs often used to create quilts in Gee’s Bend • Express their observations, knowledge, and responses through creative writing and poetry 6–12 UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU 1 This resource is designed as a post-visit guide for K-12 educators after a class viewing of the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art’s Gee’s Bend quilts collection. It is intended to spur further contemplation and discussion. Gee’s Bend quilts are among the greatest examples of American artforms and are perfect representations of the nexus of art, history, and society. As such, they are wonderful additions to several curriculums, including history, social studies, and English. This resource captures the quilts’ versatility for teaching, guiding teachers at all grade levels in using the objects for innovative learning. This resource includes: • Historical context: The history of Gee’s Bend, Alabama • Artistic context: A summary of the start of the quilting tradition in Gee’s Bend and its current status • A vocabulary list of quilt designs • Images and descriptions of five Gee’s Bend quilts in the Stanley’s collection • Discussion questions • Connections to Iowa State Standards • Additional resources • Object-based writing activities: Creative writing – poetry • Observation & Analysis: Haiku • Social, Political, & Historical Moment: Narrative Poem • Poetry: Reflection & Connection: Rhythmic Poem The Stanley’s collection of Gee’s Bend quilts comprises a sizable number of these previously overlooked artworks and offers visitors an opportunity for detailed examination. The quilts, consisting of a combination of traditional forms and improvisation, are handcrafted by a multigenerational group of African American women from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Due to Gee’s Bend’s almost complete isolation on the banks of the Alabama River for the better part of the twentieth century, the hand-sewn quilts have a unique historic, geographical, and stylistic development. In this guide, students will: 1. ABOUT THIS RESOURCE 2. ABOUT THIS COLLECTION 3. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Express their observations, knowledge, and responses through creative writing and poetry Identify the quilts designs often used to create quilts in Gee’s Bend Discuss the historical and social circumstances that contributed to the conditions in which unique quilting traditions developed in Gee’s Bend GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU 2 Inhabitants of Alabama commonly formed communities along the state’s many rivers. Gee’s Bend, one such community, came into being when Joseph Gee, a landowner from Halifax County in North Carolina, arrived in 1816 with the intention to fertilize land and grow cotton. He brought eighteen enslaved people with him. By the point of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the original eighteen had grown into a large Black population. Now free, they remained on the cotton plantation started by Joseph Gee, working as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. The 1930s marked an era of major changes in Gee’s Bend. To repay debts to a merchant in the area, the families of Gee’s Bend were forced to give up their food, animals, tools, and seed, which thrust them into a period of great economic difficulty. After the Van de Graaf family, who purchased the land from the Gee family, sold the land to the Federal Government, the Farm Security Administration intervened with initiatives such as the Gee’s Bend Farms, Inc., a farming cooperative program that sustained the community. The government also built “Roosevelt” houses and eventually sold the land to the families, ultimately relinquishing ownership of Gee’s Bend to its inhabitants. The period of the second half of the Great Depression resulted in several people fleeing the town. Those who remained in town, unwilling to give up the land that finally belonged to them, remained resilient and dedicated to keeping the town alive. 4. HISTORICAL CONTEXT: GEE’S BEND, ALABAMA 3 GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU Arthur Rothstein, John Miller and family who live in the old Pettway Mansion, Gee’s Bend, Alabama, April 1937. Source: Library of Congress Marion Post Wolcott, Bringing home meal from cooperative grist mill, Gee’s Bend, Alabama, May 1939. Source: Library of Congress. Arthur Rothstein, Going to school, Gee’s Bend, Alabama, April 1937. Source: Library of Congress Marion Post Wolcott, First grade, showing extremes in ages of pupils, Gee’s Bend, Alabama, May 1939. Source: Library of Congress Source: John Beardsley, Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts (Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2002) pp. 24–25. Gee’s Bend, officially known as the town of Boykin, is in Wilcox County in Alabama. As of 2018, it had a population of approximately 750 people, mostly descendants of enslaved African Americans. Despite the many challenges the community faces—including poverty and underdevelopment—Gee’s Bend enjoys a reputation as a national hallmark through its quilts. Gee’s Bend quilts were first created out of necessity and used for warmth. Utilizing whatever material was available to them, the women worked together; quilting served both as an act of creation and of socializing. “At the start all they was making them out of was old clothes, pants, fertilizer sacks, dress tails, and mean and flour sacks, too,” said Bettie Bendolph Seltzer, a Gee’s Bend quiltmaker. The women taught their daughters, who taught their daughters. What started off as a practical necessity has today grown into a thriving tradition. The quilting community of Gee’s Bend has become something of an informal art class, with the elders passing down unique forms of composition to new generations of quiltmakers. Behind each quilt form is a group effort; the mutually-agreed upon composition is traditional, yet improvisational, and any imperfections are incorporated into the work. The Gee’s Bend quilts are an example of a common debate regarding the distinction between art and craft. After seeing a photograph by Roland Freeman of a quilt draped over a woodpile, Atlanta-based folk art dealer William Arnett visited Gee’s Bend in the late ‘90s and purchased hundreds of quilts. The art world soon took notice. Today the pieces are celebrated as modern art—whether used every day or on exhibition—and the women of Gee’s Bend have established production associations such as the Gee’s Bend Quilt Collective. The Stanley’s collection of quilts represents the celebration of these exquisite examples of American art—art that is celebrated in many more museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the American Craft Museum. 4. ARTISTIC CONTEXT: FROM A UTILITARIAN START TO ART 4 GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU Arthur Rothstein, Jennie Pettway and another girl with the quilter Jorena Pettway, Gee’s Bend, Alabama, April 1937. Source: Library of Congress Arthur Rothstein, Inhabitants of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, April 1937. Source: Library of Congress Carol M. Highsmith, Gee’s Bend, Alabama, April 5, 2010. Source: Library of Congress Carol M. Highsmith, Gee’s Bend, Alabama, April 5, 2010. Source: Library of Congress Bricklayer “Bricklayer” is the local name for a design pattern in which two rectangles are added to opposite sides of a central square before increasingly longer strips are sewn to each of the four sides. This results in a pattern of four pyramid-like structures around the center. Courthouse Steps Nationwide, the bricklayer design is known as “Courthouse Steps.” Lazy Girl “Lazy Girl” is one of the quilts that women first learn how to create in Gee’s Bend. These patterns are long strips of cloth sewn side-to-side and quilted. The name “lazy girl” refers to the fact that these quilts are easier to put together. Housetop “Housetop” is the local name for a design type in which strips are sewn around a central square to form a pattern of squares within squares. There are several variations of this design; most Gee’s Bend quilts are variations of housetop. Log Cabin In the rest of the United States, housetop designs are known as “Log Cabin.” In traditional log cabin designs, though, strips are sewn around a central square to form a square within rectangles pattern. The design resembles the stacked logs of a log cabin home. Designs usually have a bright red or warm color in the center, mimicking the hearth at the center of a home. My Way “My Way” is a Gee’s Bend term used to denote patterns originally intended to be a more traditional one like the housetop, but through inspiration, or available materials, or a variation of both, a unique design flourishes. 6. VOCABULARY: DESIGN TYPES GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU 5 This quilt is a four-block housetop pattern bordered with bar variations. The central bar is a dominant focal point that works with the solid prints in the housetop blocks to make for a more coherent composition. The quilt maker, China Pettway, was taught to quilt by her mother at a young age and is one of Gee’s Bend’s leading gospel singers—“we got a lot of singers around here,” she says. She is one of the few Gee’s Bend quilters who attended college and returned to live in the community. China Pettway (American, 1952 – ) Quilt (rooftop variation) Cotton fabric, thread, 84 x 74 in. (213.36 x 187.96 cm) Stanley Education Partners, 2020.51 This quilt’s name, May Day, refers to the Gee’s Bend family reunion. On the first day of May, the extended families of current Gee’s Bend residents return for a celebration. The composition of this work is a combination of the strip and stitch varieties, with bar variations throughout the pattern. This improvised design fits in the “my way” category. The scale of the quilt is smaller and intended for use as covering for an infant or small child. The quilt maker, Mary Ann Pettway, was the manager of the Gee’s Bend Quilt Collective when she made it. Mary Ann Pettway (American, 1956 – ) May Day, 2012 Cotton fabric, thread, 51 x 27 in. (129.54 x 68.58 cm) Stanley Education Partners, 2020.55 My Way, another Mary Ann Pettway quilt, may be described as a true “my way” quilt. Pettway was initially inspired to create a housetop pattern. But, through a combination of the demands of available material and inspiration, she improvised, creating this striking quilt. The central housetop pattern may be considered a medallion because of the unified but asymmetrical composition. The solid primary colors are offset by the flower-patterned fabric. Mary Ann Pettway (American, 1956 – ) My Way, 2012 Cotton fabric, thread, 86 x 69 in. (218.44 x 175.26 cm) Stanley Education Partners, 2020.52 7. OBJECT DESCRIPTIONS GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU 6 This composition, Coming Together, is a lazy girl pattern with a twist. On the right side of the quilt, colorful bars of differing lengths and widths are vertically arranged. On the quilt’s left half, though, the traditional vertical arrangement of the lazy girl pattern is flipped for a pattern of horizontal bars. This switch keeps with the tradition of inspired improvisation among Gee’s Bend’s quiltmakers. Mary Leatha Pettway, the quiltmaker, learned to make quilts by watching her mother and grandmother, who made quilts in the winter months to keep them warm. Mary Leatha Pettway (American, 1961– ) Coming Together Cotton fabric, thread, 44 1/2 x 41 in. (113.03 x 104.14 cm) Stanley Education Partners, 2020.53 When Nancy Pettway was assembling this bricklayer pattern, she carefully coordinated the color strips and arranged the symmetrical design. She then pieced all of the strips together and completed the work by hand-quilting the piece. Pettway has created and sold countless quilts since she started in 2002. “I have made way over one-hundred quilts,” she says. “When I got one-hundred, I just stopped counting.” According to her, “a quilt is like a house—when you design a house, you make in your mind how your house design to be. When you start on your sewing machine or using your hands, you bring in your mind just how you want your quilt to look, just like how you want your house to look. And when you get through, it come out in a design, whether it has squares in it or triangles or oblongs, or whatever design you have that you want it to be like. Like you want to put your rooms together in your house, you want to know just how many rooms, from your living room to your kitchen or your bathroom, and you put all your pieces together on your quilt. “ Nancy Pettway (American, 1935 – ) Bricklayer, 2005 Cotton fabric, thread, 74 x 72 in. (187.96 x 182.88 cm) Stanley Education Partners, 2020.54 7. OBJECT DESCRIPTIONS GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU 7 Teachers can adapt the lesson to apply to a number of state standards. We included a few standards that the lesson meets below. 10. STATE STANDARDS VISUAL ARTS — CONNECTING Anchor Standard 11 Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical context to deepen understanding. Enduring Understanding People develop ideas and understandings of society, culture, and history through their interactions with and analysis of art. Essential Question(s) How does art help us understand the lives of people of different times, places, and cultures? How is art used to impact the views of a society? How does art preserve aspects of life? 8TH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES — INQUIRY ANCHOR STANDARD: TAKING INFORMED ACTION Analyze how a specific problem can manifest itself at the local, regional, and global levels over time, identifying its characteristics and causes, and challenges and opportunities faced by those trying to address the problem (SS.8.11). Apply a range of deliberative and democratic procedures to make decisions and take action in classroom, schools, and communities (SS.8.12). GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU 8 OBSERVATION & ANALYSIS: What colors, lines, shapes, and patterns do you see? What kind of cloth do you see? What do you think the cloth used in the quilt was used for before it became part of the quilt? What clues lead you to these conclusions? SOCIAL, POLITICAL, & HISTORICAL MOMENT: The history of Gee’s Bend is unique. How do you think this history has shaped the development of the quilts, including the process of making, materials, and appearance? REFLECTION & CONNECTION: Gee’s Bend quilters often work together to make quilts. What are some advantages and disadvantages to working together to make a quilt? What are some advantages and disadvantages to working alone on a quilt? What are some projects that you worked on with other people to complete? What did you learn from those experiences? 8. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS Beardsley, John. Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts. Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2002. Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers, Souls Ground Deep, https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers. Quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend. Alabama Public Television Documentaries, 2004. https://www.pbs.org/video/alabama-publictelevision-documentaries-quiltmakers-of-gees-bend/ Wallach, Amel. “Fabric of their Lives.” Smithsonian Magazine (October 2006), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/artsculture/fabric-of-their-lives-132757004/. 9. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU 9 Line 1: 5 syllables Line 2: 7 syllables Line 3: 5 syllables Observation & Analysis: Haiku A haiku is a type of Japanese poetry traditionally inspired by nature but can be about several topics. Haikus have three lines and are noted for their 5-7-5 syllabic style, where the first line has five syllables, the second has seven, and the last, like the first, has five. Poets have used haiku to express their observations about artwork. Haiku might focus on works’ shape and form, color, or texture. For inspiration, see The Getty’s resource, 11 Haiku to Teach Kids about Art. You have already observed and analyzed quilt colors, lines, shapes, patterns, and other features that lend each quilt its uniqueness. Choose a quilt that appeals to you and decide which element—shape and form, color, texture, etc.—you’d like to focus on in your haiku. Remember to follow the haiku structure outlined to the right: CREATIVE WRITING POETRY I, Too By Langston Hughes I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poems/47558/i-too Social, Political, & Historical Moment: Narrative Poem A narrative poem is a poem which tells a story. Like traditional stories, narrative poems feature elements such as characters, plot, conflict, setting, and resolution. Consider the example to the right: In “I, Too” by Langston Hughes, an African American man who appears to be a domestic servant asserts that though he’s been ostracized and made to feel inferior in America, he is as American as anyone. In this poem, the speaker has a “message” for the world. This message alludes to racial segregation during the early twentieth century, when African Americans faced widespread discrimination, including being forced to live, work, eat, and travel separately from white Americans as well as having to contend with economic hardships. Gee’s Bend’s social, political, and historical identity—marked by longstanding isolation from the country as a whole—reflects this story of marginalization. You have already considered how these factors shaped the development of the quilts, including the process of making, materials, and appearance. Choose a quilt you think best captures Gee’s Bend’s history. Borrowing from the structure of “I, Too”—the first person voice, especially—write a message poem from the point of view of one of Gee’s Bend’s quiltmakers, making sure to touch on at least one aspect of Gee’s Bend’s history. CREATIVE WRITING POETRY GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU 10 We Real Cool THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. By Gwendolyn Brooks We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poetrymagazine/poems/28112/wereal-cool Reflection & Connection: Rhythmic Poem A rhythmic poem is identified through the stressed and unstressed patterns of words. Often, each line of the poem has one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed syllables. There may also be a rhyme scheme. Consider the example to the right: In “We Real Cool,” Brooks employs the communal voice of a group of rebellious teenagers she once spotted playing pool during school hours. Through stressed repetition of the word we and rhyming couplets—cool and school; late and straight, for example—Brooks creates something like a chant or song that might be recited by her subjects. You have already considered the possible advantages and disadvantages of Gee’s Bend quilters’ communal work environment. Several Gee’s Bend quilters are also singers; often, they sing together while working on quilts. Following the structure of “We Real Cool”—the repetition of “we” and rhyming couplets—write a rhythmic poem that explores the advantages/ disadvantages of working together to make quilts; something that might be sung by a group of quilters. CREATIVE WRITING POETRY GEES BEND QUILTS UI STANLEY MUSEUM OF ART RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS • xxxU 11 t is a given that most museum shows of recent an serve to ratify accepted tastes and standards. A Johns or Flavin retrospective, or a survey of Fluxus art, while certainly deepening our knowledge of the subject, is not about to change perceptions significantly. f)'en a large·scale re\icw of a first-rate but underappreciated artist-the still traveling Joan Mitchell retrospecth'e, for example--essentially rearranges lhe pieces on the board. It is rare to find an exhibition that throws something totally unexpected our way, that forces us to can'e out. a meaningl'ul chunk of historical space to make room for a new body of work. "The QUillS of Gee's Bend," organized by the Museum of Pine Arts, Houston, and shown last winter at the Whitney Museum, does just that. The 60 quilts in the exhibition were made by a group of women in a small, isolated fa rming community in central Alabama, southwest of Selma. Gee's Bend was and is an almost exclusively Mrica n-American hamlet. Surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River, i~ is virtually an island; after the residents began to assert their civil rights in the 1960s, its feny sen'ice was terminated (Ilrobably not coincidentally), and its one access road, some 15 miles from the nearest highway, remained unpaved until 1967. Today the area is starting to become more connected with the outside world, and is at the same time losing its quilting tradition. The town's isolation during the '50s, '60s and '70s-the period when most of the quilts in the exhibition were donemade it nearly imllOssible for the quilters to have been eXllOsed in any conlextualized or coherent way to modern art, although images of abstract art or design may ha\'c crossed their paths via magazines and neWSllapers,' And yet these works seem io resonate harmonically wit h many strands of geomet ri all~ ased and materially innovative postwar American abstraction, as well as with that abstraction's European antecedents. Although the Gee's Bend quilters were not part of the mai nstream art world, it is important to understand that they formed an art world of their own, that is, a coherent social groulling dedicated to the con· strucUon of a visual language. They shared a sense of esthetic lincage (patterns and ways of worki ng were handed down through extended fam il ies and known to the rest. of the community), a recognized means of display (the quilts were hung out on clotheslines not just Lo dry, bUl to be seen), a concern wilh the interplay of individual and collahorative work and, importantly, a set of common limi ts. The women knew each other and were onen related-of the 41 artists in the show, 18 belong to the Pellway family, which Look its name from wtUha I't ttlCQlI' J1" Il!6 rl.: tlitl quill, en. 1950, dtlliM, cottOIl, 8(J b,lBf illcllt •. All plioltn tAU arlicle Piti/" Studio, Rodiford, l/I. the area's principal sla\'e·owner, Religion also played a vit..'ll, unifyi ng role in the Jives of Gee's Benders. The Baptist. church was the place where people not only Ilfayed but organized their community and exchanged information, including ideas about sewing and qUilting.2 lt is clear that Gee's Bend quilters were neither insular Yisionaries pursuing idiosyncratic personal paths, nor were they simply the skilled passers-on of traditional forms, Instead, they were like other artists of their time, adept, committed practitioners engaged ill a measured and ongoi ng esthetic give-and-take. Arlill Amen'Go , The quillS of Gee's Bend are quite unlike the quilts .... 'e are 1.JSCd to seeing--eilhcr the traditional or contempomry high-end ones, or the homey items readily a\'ailabJe in stores or yant sales. Bold and decIar.uh.'C in design, material and ronnat, they looked perfectly at ease on the Whitney's InU, .... 'hite \mlls. While it is possible 10 wlderst:tnd the Gee's Bend quillS in the context of vernacular an., outsider IU1 or craft, they are more than that. n "IC ir UUlO\'atr.-e power, combined .... iUl the restraints imposed by n4'l1crial, time and a compressed Iocal lradilion, argue for their examination as cullUrally infonnt'(l ruld emolionally tl\'OCIttivuJOI"mal objects. To do so mighl seem like treading on dangerous ground. The histOlY of 2Oth-cenlury art. is rife with attempts to rev "ll the contempordl'}' and cosmopolit .. m with the raw power of the art of Africa, Oceania or the Amenclls, to infuse sophisticated studio products .... ith the artlessness of children or the skewed sensibilities of the insane. In this way, "high art" can be bolstered by the art of the Other I and the transacUon rendered morally frictionless by decontexlualization In the ostensibly neutral space of a museum or gallery. TIle classic example of this was the 1984 exhibition '''PrimitMsm' in1\\'enlieth·CentUlY Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern" at New York's Museum of Modem Art. The l)(llemics 106 (klober 2003 Rathtl Cartll G«Jrgt': On, 6id, 010 two-Md«1lWrk.cli:lthtt quill, NI. 1935, dtnim, ItOOl tnlUJIUfl, matlnu tickilli, tOIIOII, 'l2 111182 /J,,:ht •. occasioned by that show, most notably Thomas McEvilley's article Docto , Lawyer, Indian Chief" (Arifonml, November 1084), made the art. .... -o rld considerably more aware of iLs ethnocentrism. It seems, as if to compensate for past errors, that we mo\'ed in the Olher directionlowards an o\'er-contcxtualization (marked by the proliferation of W'.ul text and SUJllllcmenlmy material) that serves to cocoon Ihe Objl.'Cts in (Iucstion and can, in its own W8,)', be erery bi!. as condescending. I am scarcely ad\'OCating cultural inse ilh , but mther noting that too much stage-setting and explanation can reinforce the dichotomy of cen· trality and marginality. Things, however, may have changed again, and this exhibition can be seen as one clement of an expanded frame of reference for both the mak· ing and viewing of art. The art. we look at now comes from far more places physically, conceptually and emotionally than it did before. This decentralization, evident in the diversity of image-based art, 81>]llies to abstraction as well; ror abstraction, by virtue of its looser mimetic anchoring to the world around it, is particularly able to cliSL itselr in a Used clothing is scarcely a neutral art material. Not only does it embrace a range of social signs, but it can also carry the physical imprint of the wearer. variety of Comls, to entertain mulUple readings. The Gee's Bend quillS are exemplars of that broadened approach to abstraction. Their allusive complexlty-their scale, their reference to the body, to physical work, to social structures and to the land-greaUy enriches our perception of them. But there is something else. The quillS are remarkably powerful and compelling visual statements.. They declare themsehoes viscerally, directly. I beJie\'e that they are entitled, e\'ery bit as much as a Frank Stella or a Kenneth Noland painting of that period, to lay claim to an unfettered optical reading as well, in other words. to participate fully in the esthetics of modernism. One of the things that makes ordinruy quilts so likable is the way that they (:yJlicaJly frame a wealth of detail in smallish, repealing patterns. You can look at a part of U1CIll and easily deduce the whole. There may be some framing devices. but essentially the pattern could repeat endlessly. The Gee's Bend Quilts don't do thaL They are bounded, unique and rareJy symmetrical. Even when symmetry is there, it is given a sawy, destabHi7.ing push. In Gloria lIoppins's "Housetop" pattern quill (ca. 1975), for example, she inserts one thin \llrtical red stripe on the lelt-hand side or the orange center portion or a set or off-kilter nestled AllnffJ MOfJ Young: emln' "'Mollion IIlrl/Ullrlfh mullJp~ bordUff, rn. /965, rollOIl, r.orrturoll, IIl1fJeling, pol~.,u, II!OOI, 91 bll 81 fn . LorttlD PtttlU/r. "Log lAbitf~SU~/JrldIoJln',· "",WIock mriadoll, rn.. 1970, de"u.., Sf bIl66Int~. squares. I That stripe Sl1.111S the quilt into place, as does the dark \-ertlcal denim band balan~ by three smaller, similarly colored edge piCCi!S in Lorraine Pettway's light gray medallion pallerned quilt or 1974. Identified by three alternate pattern names, Lorella Pettway's "Log Cabin-Courthouse tcps-8ri kl~'e " (ca. 1970) juxtaposes a stepped series or vertical dark blue pieces edged in white .... ith similarly sized light blue pieces on the horizontal. The pieces get smaller as they approach the center, creating the look or one-point perspective. The ~ however, warp, and their thickness is ne'l'e.r unifonn. So instead of being locked-in and static, the composition opens up and mO\'e:S. It displ~ the wit and whimsical \'3.riation or a Paul Klee architectural rantasy, with logic used, paradoxically, to subvert order. It is almost as if symmetry in the Gee's Bend quHts is a condition established precisely so that it may be creatively violated. If symmetry is import.nnl in traditional quilts, a more or less evenly weighted display or detail seems equally asential. Detail in {he Goo's Bend quilts functions differently. Rather than being the substance or the quilt, it ~ more often than noL, an accent, a fillip or a fonnal destabilizer. Slmllie \ocrtical and horiwnlal forms tend to predominate, and since quilting Is an addith'e process, a reasonably srrd.ightfrnward design can be gi\'en piquan· cy and personality by sewing in something small and unexpected. In Arlorula Pettway's ~ Gal (Bars)t" ca 1975, a motif or bold green and while \'ertical stripes is bomered at the top and bottom by just a hint of a delicate floral pnUern. The change in ronnal and emotional scale is finely calibrnted and tremendously satisfying. Irene Williams's "Bars" (ca lOGS) Art in America I Site Jfil/le&lIzer: "/lousefop" nine-block, "fla{fLog Cabln ~ I.Mation, co. /955, roUt"., ' IIII/helle blend. , 8() bll 76 inrhe •. features a composition of four thick vertical hars in solid cream and black, topped with a similarly sized horizontal in deep blue-green This archil.ectonic structure is of'fsct by a flower-IJ.1ttemed border on both sides and the bottom. It ~ however, the narrow top border that gP.'eS the quilt its kick. The right-hand half of the border is the same blue·green as the horizontal bar directly below it, while the left-hand half is divided into three sections-gray and cream, a small light-blue grid and a slice of vibrant red completely out of chromatic character witillhe rest of lhe quilt. That foot or so of crimson makes the quilL It's a formal mO\'(l that incorpcr rates a sure sense of scale with a usc of olJ-complementaries worthy of Josef Albers. Simple, forceful design, unencumbered by uss ~ is a hallmark of the Gee's Bend qu ilts. The quilts speak of a work ethic, not a "make-..... rk~ one. Quilting was often a social activity, particularly during lhe labor-intensive stage of sewing (he designed front onto the backing and fuLLS sandwiching in the cotton filler. But it was not a hobby, a way of whiling away Lhe hours. The women quiltel'S were vital parts of a barely self-sustaining agricultural society, and their labor was needed in the fields during the day. The field work \\ J.S tiring, and there were household duties on lOp of thatchores not assisted by the time- and labor-saving devices so common in the rest of American society. One reason for lhe quills' relative simplicity is purely Ilractical: the quitters 108 Oclober 200S Annie Mae }'oung: Strip', 00_ 19'15, rordufOlI, 95 bll l 05 (nc,,"" Ordinary quilts tend to frame details in regularly repeating patterns. Gee's Bend quilts don't do that. They are bounded, unique and rarely symmetrical. \\-'allted to fmish them reasona.bly quickly so that they could be used for their intended purpose-to keep warm_ Gee's Bend \\"3.5 a vel)' poor community that could ill alford luxuries like swre-bought blankets and bed coverings. Even if, like Loretta Pettway, one or the most talented of the Gee's Bend quilters, you didn't like to sew, there wasn't much choice in lhe matter. As she said, WI had a lot of work to do. Feed ~ work in the fi eld, take care of my handicaPIKld brother. Had to go 1.0 the fi eld. Had to walk about fifty miles in the field evel)' day. Get home too tired to do no sewing. My grandmama, Prissy Pen-way, told me, 'You better make quillS. You goil18 to need them.' I said, 'I ain't going to need no quilts.' but when I got me a house, a raggiy old house, then I needed them to keepwarm_"· The Gee's Bend quilts embody a moral as well as a formal eronolllY. In contrdSl to lhe larger culture of obsolescence, waste and disposability, in Gee's Bend nothing usable was thrown away (although not evel)'thing was won1i some polyester leisure suits sent dO\\71 from the north were so out of style that they could only be recycled into bedding). Scraps of cloth were saved up ror quilting-any sort. of cotton, corduroy, knit or synthetic fabric was fine. Clothing was wom until it was worn out, and then ripped up into quilt material rather than being discarded. Used clothing is scarcely a neutral art material. Not only does it embrace a range of social signs, but it can also carry the physical imprint of the wearer, the trace of his or her hody. We CtUl see the pressure of elbows and knees, feel the stretch of fabric under the neatly applied patches_ Denim clothing shows this Lo particular advantage, and some of lhe most emotionally affecting quilts were made from sun- and washfaded work clothes. Missouri Pettway's daughter, Arlonzia, spoke of her late mother's quilt, a blue, white, reddish-brown and gray block-and-strip design made in 1942. Wit was when Daddy died. I was about se\'Cnteen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight momhs and passed on. Mama say, 'I going to take his work clothes, shallC them into a quilt to remember him, and OO\'er up under it for love."" In these .... ,ork-clothes quilts the quietness of the colors--blues, g:rays, creams, browns-allows fo:r an extremely subtle interplay or hue and value, and also ro:r the counterpoint of darker passages: se .... 'Hln patches, the unfaded area unde:r removed pants pockets, o:r seams that had, prior to ripping, been unexposed. The c\omes, by virtue of their hard use, were sometimes stained with earth, rust and sweat That discoloration, rather than diminishing Ole power of the quilts, gh'es them a p~'SicaJ and emt>- tional 1)''1lina. This can be clearly seen In R.'1chel Carey George's quilt from around \035, made of denim, wool trousers, mattress ticking and colton. III It, a large horizontal rectangle of stained blue-and-white tickI~M HiflUuru: Btll"· rnri6tJQf'J nJ. 1965, rrool bit, Until, pof~t6 IIDullk kIIlt, t:OIloII drGptrf ",uttriDl, St Of i9 illo" .... ing is contrasted with wide strips of oval-patched pants legs and another large :rectangle of white-stitched gray wool. The staining of the mattress ticking is echoed by similar brown areas in other parts of the quilt, particularly In the pants le~ The sense of lime's passage, of difficulties endured and O\-ercome, is palpable. Something similar can be felt in Lorella Pettwats ~Lazy Gal (Bars)," ca. 1005. One of the seemingly simplest ..... urks on \1ew, it consists solely coldim/Cd on page 148 Art jll America t( Gee's Bend continued/rom page 109 of vertical bars. There is a bortler on the left and right of dark navy (edged with a hint of pattem), a field of quiet blue-violet, and left of cen· ter, two equal·si1.ed white bands. Measuring a bit under 7 by 6 feet, this quilt cannot help recalling, for today's viewer, Bamet!, Newman's paint, ings. As wilh Newman, it carries with it the air of the spiritual. Indeed, the current of faith runs deep in Gee's Bend, ~md while the quilts are not part of a specific spiritual practice in their making or their iconography, it is not unreruiOnable to assume that, the clJe<:ts of such a religiously innected life are to be seen in the community's art. Probably the most viscerally powerful .... ork-clOlhes quilt in the show is Lutisha Petv.va.v's "BarsM (ca. 1050). Composed entirely of faded and patched denim pants legs, laid out in vertical bands, the heavy quilt sat$, bends and buckles. Edging it on the right are a pair of pants legs, wide at the waist and narrow at the ankles. They are sewn together at the small ends, and their symmetrical mirroring gi\"CS the right edge a sharp bow inwards, in clear contrast to the retatively straight bottom, top, and left sides. While other quilts use CUleUp clothing in small enough pieces so thnt we are Oftell forced 1.0 infer its originlll use, this quilL uses pants legs in virtually their entirety, and as such, the sense of the body undemealh the clothing remains parlicularly strong. Color, too, makes a mf\jor contribution- Its monochrome quality adding purposefulness, consistent'Y and intensity. Denim, while hem)' ruld hard to work with, brings with it a coloristic bonus. lis fading creates a wide variety tlf blues, from dt'C]l indigo to the I)''llest pinked IiZtlre, a color mngc IUltumlly suggestive of sky and atmosphere, That property is used to mar'l'elous effcct in a 1076 work by Annie Mac Young, an artist whose originality and conwositionaJ bmvum stand out in thi~ remarkably talented group. The quill floats a centml vertically striped portion against a field of variously faded denim bars. TIle sl.rijM!<i area is di\ided in Imlf horir.ont.'llly. The top portion alternates red and ellQ\\' stripes, the botwm red and brown. The two sections don't quite match uj>-the striJles are of different widths and are drawn (there is no other word for it) with a loose, expressive line. The center stril>ed secLion has an emblematic, flaglike qulllity th31 seems both w embed the stripes in the atmosJlheric blue field and suspend them above it. One gcL~ the sense of a fL'Ig or a heraldic banner in YOlUlg'S 1975 cor· duroy quilL as .... 'ell. This large hori7.ontalty dispia,}' ld piece, a bit under 8 by o feet, is one of the high points of the exhibition. A series orthin horizontal stripes-allcrnating red and brown on the wp half, reds, browns, greens, blues and oranges on the bottom half- marks otrtlle right·h:Uld quarter of the quill On the left edge is a tlIin column of vcrtical multicolored stripes divided roughly into thirds horizontally. The remainder, approximately tv."{)-thirds of the area of the entire quill, is an astonishingly rich ccrule:UI. Composed of horizontal strips of closely \'alued fabric, this section allows for a complex visual interplay between its subtlety and Ule boldness of the stripes flanking it, and also for an interchnnge between the horizontalily lUld vcrticality of the two striped secLions. Words can hardly do justice to tile sophisticated and satisfying play ofvisu.'lI elements--the way the same blue as the center sneaks into the stripes 011 the sides, or how the heft or the horizontally striped area perfectly balances the narrower 'e rt ~ or why lhe Illtematin.g of red lUld brown stripes on the upper portion of the righl hand section putsjust the right. anlountofweighl alld pressure on the slightly thinner multicolored stripes below them. The LL'IC of corduroy by Young and a number of other Gee's Benders is a study in fortuity. In 1972, Sears, Roebuck and Company contracted with the local (Iuilting cooperati\·c to produce low·priced corduroy pillow shams. They sent down bolts of the material, lUld while the shams \\'ete mechanical Jliecework, the corduroy wa..'! soon incoll)Qntted inlo the 148 October2fJ03 Sally /H"M.t/ Jonf!t: em/n- mmafUolI rlfVIgl~. u/th nlllltipk bomf!nI, 1966, RltlOll, 86 by 77 1nthl!l/. area's quiltmaking style. Corduroy has real limitations-it works best. when cut al. right lUlgles; it tends to pull, distort and fmy when cut on the diagonal. These constraints are offset by the cloth's rich color, sensual light-reflecting qualities and softness. In practical temls, the materia) was virtually free, and it was very Wllnll. The fabric posed challenges, but art often lhrives when Ule \'atiables are reduced. In any case, boldness of design and reclilinearity are chamcteris· tics of the Gee's Bend quilts; and for some qu ilters, corduroy called forth their best efforts. China Pettway's block quilt, (ca. 1!)75), for example, is Bauhausian in ils a..~ymm ri l Simplicity and elegance. There are only six color areas, each in a rich but muted earth tone. Small and large, \'ertical and horizontal, dark and light are blended in a composition, classical in its form and balance. Arcola Pettway's Lazy Gal (Bars)" variation from 1976, the year of the Bicentennial, has the rough composition of an American nag, with 13 more or less equal horizontal stripes and a small square area in the UPllcr left where the stars go----excepl in this case the Qstars" are three addi· tional vertical stripes, and the colors, inslead of red, white and blue, are apple green, tan, corn yellow, rusty brown, slate blue, crimson and orange· red. Color and form work togelher to artfully undermine expectat.ions, and the quilt is bolh delightful and moving. The Gee's Bend quilts are so evocatk-e, so emotionally and esthelical· Iy fulfilling, as .... 'ell as so individulll, ,h:lt it feels unfair not 10 men· tion more artists and describe more quilts. Fortunately, many more pe0- ple around the country will now get the chance to see them. The exhibition was to have sWPI>ed with the Whitney, but it has generated such a grounds ..... ell of inlerest thlll eight other museums hm'e signed on to take the show, and it wiU travel for three year.!. This seems like the perfect, moment fo r this exhibition, even though Gee's Bend has been known to the wider art world (or decades. Int.erest In the quilts over the years has been sporadic--there was a spike in New York in the late '60s, and in 1967 an appreciative Lee Krasner visited Gee's Bend with her dealer and bought a number of them. This was the time,lOO, when artists were entranced by Navajo blankets. These enthusiasms faded, quite p0ssibly because quilts and blankets, although resembling the art being made then, shared few of its stated premises. Now, however, the Gee's Bend quilts have a deeper a mnectlon to CUfrent concerns. They speak to the widening base of art production, as well as to an int.erest in ethnicity and identity. This interest seems to thri\'e in the exploration of the territory which lies between cultural sign and indio viduality, that is, between the more easily chartable products of a bounded group Identity and the open-ended activities of the indMduaJ. The quilts are \'ery much of a time, place, gender and ethnic grouPi but they are also intensely personal and lm'entn'e. Patterns are often not used at all, or when they are, they are freely adapted to the artist's own interests and history. There is also an interest, these days, in the use of nontraditional materials in abstraction. This often leads LO an Investigation of the Inherent three-dimensionality of "Oath work. A Gee's Bend quilt is not, as is a stretched rectangular canvas, a historically given depictn'e arena that also happens to be made of cloth and whose materiaJily might be tacitly acknowledged by, for example, staining the canvas. A quilt is both an image and a constructed, pliable physical object The shape of the quilt-the irregularity of its edge and the waviness of its surface-is a natural product of its makin& and its use creates an inherent ambiguity of orientation. Its two-dimensionality is also conditional since it canjust as easily be nat or draped. Another artistic concern today is layering. Multiplicity of purpose and rorm is a given in these quilts. Not only are they, at heart, assemblages (with all the complexity of facture and reference that implies), but the rhythmic, patterned stilChing or the g:ridded yam ties that hold the front to the back are aspects of the quill that function semi-independently. Frequently done by more than one person, the stitching sets up a quiet but complex counterpoint to the larger design. Finally, the growing interest in craftlike methodologies among artist.s also speaks to the lessened aulhority of the brush. No longer valorized as an extension of the artist's persona, a guarantor of painterly, gest.ural (and often male) authenticity, it has become another tool, an option in a wide menu of artmaking procedures. Piecing and stilChing has pf'(l\'en to be as sensitive, energetic and direct a means of expression as the most adept brushwork. Painting in general, and abstract painting in partic:uJar, seems to have kl;t its centrality. That does not mean that the two-dimensionaI abstract object has surrendered ilS power or allure. Imbued with art-historical reference, inherently metaphorical and capable of great ~ it sti1l exerts a strong pull on our imaginations. U great art can be found in this arena today, the question becomes, why shouldn't it be in the fonn of a quilt and, more specifically, why not these quilts? I round myself unexpectedly mO't-OO and excited by this exhibition, and that feeling has been shared by many others. "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" has turned out., rather surprisingly, to be one of the most talked·about shows in recent years.. I expect and hope that its influence will be deep and long-lasting. 0 l. In terms of Influences, It has boon noted lhal th;!re are certaln simiiarities between the Gee'~ Bend quilts and West alld Centnll Mrkan textiles, bul given the lack or IIIsWrica1 ~idenoo, this COfU'II.'dJon tan only be speculath~. 2. A double CD 01", music rtcOnIed h1 Gee's Hend h1 I!HI arwI2002,HottJ Hi GoI tMr: 17M 50crfd &nI!P ~ Gftiol lkrtd, is available in oonJuncUon with the allow. A number of the quilten In the exhibition &ing on these CDs. 3. It should be IIOI.6d that IndlcaUoos oh 'ertlcal or horbontal refer W the orienl.l· lion or the quillS as dl5played. Since they were ln~nOed IS bed ~rlnp, nol ~'lI1 Iwlglnp, d!stlnctIons between left. and ri&hl arwI up and btl are aomewIW. ubi· ""Y. If great abstract art can be found today, the question becomes, why shouldn't it be in the form of a quilt and, more specifically, why not these quilts? 4. f'rom the 6IUbltlon cataIop, 7lt Quills~~i ikrtd, Allan" and Houston, 1lIMlOd Boob: in .saoclation th the MU5eUm of nne Alta. Houson, 2002, p. 72. 0. ibid., p. 67. ~ Quilts O/(M', &N/- 1tW Of1NJ"ind/or 1M M~", 0/ fi ArU, HOII.IlotI., b¥ MUM'" AmtU, .loll" &onWey, JaN Ur:i!lf$l(Jlt alfd AltoWl UoilnUolI\ IL'iIA a.sN4I!fQIllI 1M 1Hu1"'l1 MIIMIIIN ~ AII\triQJII Art frcnn DtOro SirIfP. E:rItibitioM dDJ# M!Ut!Um r.I FiN..tru, JIoustJJrt fStpl. 8Noo 10, t«JtJ; I"I!~ MIIl/eWIN rI A~ 1411, NaD tOrt INoon, m-MQT. ~ IIJ03J; Mobik ,41_", "Art /.Inf I+-Alig. 31/; M~ A,., MUMII'IIt fSept.17../Q1t. of, ItXJtJ; ComwaJt GoJkrJJ r.I 1411, Itlullillg(oll. D.C /ftO. J+-Mo, 17, I1mJ; CIMItmd ~nI rt A'" /.hIM It&pt. I., I1mJ,. OtfJlSkr MIlMtlIIt rt Arl, Notjoa IOct IS, MQt.JaIL ~ !OO5J; Mmp/li6 BrooItJ MUIftI'IIt ~ A,., /ffA. 3-M~ a. NXJ5/,. MIIIftI'" rt f'iM ArtI, Bo4Un Depth THE QUILTERS OF GEE'S BEND Arthur Rothstein, photographer. Sewing a quilt. Gees Bend, Alabama 1939, Library of Congress There have been hundreds of quilts created in Gee’s Bend, Alabama since the early 20th century, and these masterpieces have become some of the most iconic textiles of the American South. To create them, the quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend draw upon creative vision, patterns from the world around them, and African American quilting traditions, which have been passed down by generations of Gee’s Bend women. These traditions emerged from the necessity of keeping families warm in unheated quarters and homes, so the quilts were seen as functional objects rather than works of art. However, functional though they are, they are also imbued with meaning and full of bold compositions and skillful improvisations. These quilting traditions also showcase resourcefulness in materials with the use of recycled fabric remnants, feed sacks, and well-worn clothes. The visible stains, discoloration, and fading of these reclaimed materials all serve as reminders of the life the fabrics lived before they became quilts. Art historians, curators, and collectors now recognize the work of Gee’s Bend quilters as essential to the history of American art. The permanent collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts houses the work of thirteen Gee’s Bend quilters: Jennie Pettway, Nettie Young, Louella Pettway, Lucy T. Pettway, Ruth Kennedy, Creola Bennett Pettway, Linda Pettway, Nell Hall Williams, Mary Lee Bendolph, Rita Mae Pettway, Loretta Pettway, Linda Diane Bennett, and Louisiana Bendolph. GEE'S BEND, ALABAMA Gee’s Bend, later named Boykin, is located about forty-four miles southwest of Selma. Bounded on three sides by the Alabama River, it is both isolated and rural with a population of roughly 700 people. This geographical isolation has provided the area with a rare degree of cultural continuity. This is visually evident in the community’s extraordinary quilts which are renowned for their artistry and quality. In the early 1800s, Gee’s Bend was the site of a cotton plantation owned by Joseph Gee from whom the area got its name. In 1845, Gee’s plantation was acquired by Mark Pettway who expanded the enslaved labor force in Gee’s Bend to over 100 people. With the conclusion of the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the end of slavery, many of the emancipated people remained in the Gee’s Bend area and became tenant farmers. Today, the residents of Gee’s Bend are primarily descendants of enslaved workers and many still bear the Pettway name. A TIMELINE OF GEE’S BEND IMPROVISATION Gee’s Bend quilting artists are renowned for their use of improvisation, a way of working in which the creator is open to artistic ideas as they come rather than depending fully on a set pattern or plan. Gee’s Bend quilters play upon color and form to create a sense of movement and visual rhythm in their quilts. VMFA curator Valerie Cassel Oliver has noted “Like jazz, blues, and gospel music, and the spirituals from which they were born, the dizzying use of improvisation in the quilts spoke to the deep aesthetic visual tradition of the African American South.” HOUSETOP AND LOG CABIN VARIATIONS Visually, a “Housetop” quilt resembles what a roof looks like from an aerial perspective and is a type of quilt often seen in the Gee’s Bend tradition. It is a concept that the women of Gee’s Bend mastered and have made their own by experimenting with compositional structure. A “Housetop” quilt is constructed typically by joining rectangular strips of cloth to form frames. Each frame is bordered by a larger frame until the quilt reaches the desired size. Quilts are often made of a series of individually patterned sections called blocks. “Log Cabin” is a quilting block pattern in which strips of fabric are sewn around a central square. Each strip is arranged perpendicular to the ones immediately adjacent to its shortest ends. In this way, the strips appear to rotate around the center. Often the colors of the strips are arranged to create a contrast of light and dark along a diagonal. The blocks can appear as many together on a quilt, or the entire quilt may be designed as a single large “Log Cabin” block. Sometimes, Gee’s Bend quilters incorporate traditional “Log Cabin” patterns into their “Housetop” compositions. In the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ collection, there are eight variations of the “Housetop” and “Log Cabin” patterns made by Jennie Pettway, Linda Diane Bennett, Rita Mae Pettway, Louisiana Bendolph, Mary Lee Bendolph, Creola Bennett Pettway, Linda Pettway, and Loretta Pettway. These quilts present individual interpretations of these traditional compositions and embody the improvisational dynamic of Gee’s Bend quilts. Click through the slides below to examine the individual hand of each maker, and consider the artistic decisions she made as she worked.  evertheless, the stitchers of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, were rediscovered by a canny collector, praised to the skies by Jane Fonda, embraced by museum curators, and described in the New York Times as “the equals of Klee and Matisse.” “Their creative urge to dream up designs while working in the fields and then go home and make something beautiful to take their minds off their hardship was amazing,” says writer Susan Goldman Rubin, who felt “haunted” by the quilts after seeing them at the Whitney Museum of American Art in a show that drew shining accolades from across the nation. “Their unusual and innovative colors and patterns were thrilling, full of freedom,” says the writer, whose book The Quilts of Gee’s Bend vividly tells the story of these women and their art. Now the work that has put the remote hamlet also known as Boykin on the map and secured a place in America’s most prestigious museums has reached London, where their first show in Europe was a near sell-out. Most of the thirteen quilts on display were acquired by European institutions keen to emulate MoMA, the Met, and other prestigious museums throughout the US that already have Gee’s Bend hangings in their collections. They pieced together their quilts from scraps to keep their families warm and sold a few to put food on the table when cotton prices tumbled and left them destitute. Although they held “airing out” days when they hung up and admired each other’s work, they never thought of themselves as artists. T H E G E E ’ S B E N D QUILT MAKERS “ By ANTHEA GERRIE Photography courtesy of SOULS GROWN DEEP FOUNDATION AND ALISON JACQUES GALLERY, LONDON Mary Lee Bendolph Photo © Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio his is a literal rags-to-riches story—the quilts were made by dirt-poor women, nearly all named Pettway for the owner of the plantation home of their slave ancestors; yet their works now command five-figure sums. The trickle-down effect has stopped short of making them rich, but fame has transformed the lives of many with basic necessities like indoor bathrooms and appliances. “Things have changed. I have gas; I have water; I have lights, a washing machine, a refrigerator, and a deep freezer,” says seventy-eightyear-old Loretta Pettway, one of the most legendary quilters, even though she admits, “I didn’t like to sew.” Only the need to keep her children warm changed the mind of the mother of seven who trudged so many miles a day in the cotton fields. As a child laborer, she came home too tired to join the family quilting effort. The women of Gee’s Bend first attracted attention in the 1960s, when a Civil Rights–funded outfit, the Freedom Quilting Bee, was set up to supply Sears and Bloomingdale’s with Southern folk art. But the stitchers of Gee’s Bend, whose creativity attracted early collectors like Lee Krasner, the artist wife of Jackson Pollock, were ill suited to the task of neatly copying quilts designed by others from pattern books. Annie Mae Young, whose work first attracted the attention of the collector who put Gee’s Bend on the twenty-first-century world art map, was rejected for the unevenness of her stitches, and the women gradually returned to expressing their original visions. One man who had heard of the Gee’s Bend women was Martin Luther King, Jr., who stopped there on his way to Selma in 1965 and told them, “I came over here to tell you, you are somebody.” But as ninety-year-old Nettie Young reflected forty years later, “Martin Luther King got us out of the cotton patch; the Arnetts got us out from under the bedsprings and onto the museum walls.” She was referring to Bill Arnett, who brought the quilters to national prominence with the help of his son Matt, Jane Fonda’s one-time son-in-law. Arnett Sr. was an aficionado of African American art who went to Alabama in search of Annie Mae, inspired by a quilt he had seen in an art book. Surprised—she was unaware her work had been publicized—she dug it out, sold it to him, and sent him on to other Gee’s Bend stitchers. Arnett would meet 150 quilters by the time he brought their work to the attention of the Houston curator who predicted they would find a permanent place in American art history. Sure enough, the 2002 show mounted by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, went on to be a sensation in twelve American cities, including Milwaukee, where the artists were greeted at the museum by Jane Fonda. The actress pronounced their work “full of love and patriotism and hope” in her speech introducing the stitchers to the city’s culture crowd. Unlike traditional slave quilts, which often told a story or contained secret maps to indicate escape routes to freedom, the Gee’s Bend work reflects the modern lives of their makers. “Housetop” squares are inspired by the rafters they look up to from their beds. Other squares come from “work clothes,” a genre poignantly espoused by Missouri Pettway, who ripped shreds from her late husband’s clothes to make a quilt “to remember him and cover up under it for love.” Some of the women would sit under a tree and wait for inspiration; others said designs, which include dazzling displays of starbursts and diamonds, came to them in dreams. The London show runs through February 6, 2021, at the Alison Jacques Gallery. It spans ninety years of craft, with highlights including a two-sided quilt made by fourth-generation quilter Essie Bendolph Pettway when she was twelve; Loretta Pettway’s Log Cabin, whose brightly colored strips recall the Ocean Park abstracts of Richard Diebenkorn; and the dazzling Pig in the Pen, an array of colorful squares stitched by Rita Mae Pettway in 2019. This dazzlingly modern work belies the fact the artist was seventy-eight when she made it. It is shown alongside the quilt made by her grandmother, Annie E. Pettway, in 1930, the oldest work in the show. At sixty years old, Loretta Pettway Bennett is the youngest of the exhibited artists. She confesses that her first quilt, started when she was thirteen or fourteen, was “lopsided and my mom finished it.” Removed from the community when she moved to Germany with her soldier husband, she was reintroduced to the pleasures of stitching alongside her mother, aunt, and grandmother when she moved back to Gee’s Bend while her husband was in officer candidate school. She had no aspirations to fame when she applied for a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 2001 WITH BABY STEPS, SHE STARTED COLLECTING SCRAPS OF HER FAMILY’S WORN-OUT CLOTHES TO MAKE STRIKING ABSTRACTS LIKE HER DENIM WORK CLOTHES QUILT, REPLETE WITH PATCH POCKETS, NOW HANGING IN LONDON. “ Loretta Pettway Photo © Matt Arnett to study the art of quilting from her mother; she merely had a desire to keep the tradition going when she saw it becoming a dying art. But the Houston art show one year later made her wonder, “Can I make a quilt that someday might hang on the wall of a museum?” With baby steps, she started collecting scraps of her family’s worn-out clothes to make striking abstracts, like her denim work clothes quilt, replete with patch pockets, now hanging in London. Despite the fact that prices of up to $65,000 per quilt have been achieved in the new show, the Gee’s Bend community as a whole remains impoverished, according to Mary Margaret Pettway of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. The organization was founded by Bill Arnett to research, preserve, and exhibit African American art. Mary Margaret, who once slept under quilts made by her mother, Lucy—which now hang in the Met and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—reflects sadly, “The traditions that have earned my community such acclaim have not resulted in economic advance - ment for the majority of quilters and their families. The average annual income here is under $10,000, and well over half the residents live in poverty.” The foundation has mounted a fund-raising drive to train Gee’s Bend quilters how to market, brand, and sell their products and provide internet access for online trading. Some have already acquired the confidence to deal with galleries. “For our show, we worked directly with some of the artists as well as the foundation to source the quilts we exhibited,” says Hannah Robinson of the Alison Jacques Gallery in London. Only in later life have the youngest artists, like Rita Mae’s daughter Louisiana Pettway Bendolph—who expanded into fine art prints exhibited alongside Andy Warhol’s at MOCA Jacksonville—come to recognize work born in hard times as a means of joyful creative expression. Hating stitching at age twelve, the fourth-generation quilter was called back to the art in middle age by the critical acclaim that made her realize she had inherited a very special talent. Now sixty, she says, “To me, I’m still just plain and simple Lou. I need to get used to ‘Louisiana Bendolph, the artist.’ But I’m proud of that. I really am.” Visit AlisonJacquesGallery.com to learn more about the exhibition. The Quilts of Gee’s Bend by Susan Goldman Rubin is published by Abrams. Readers can also support Souls Grown Deep’s fund-raising drive at DonorBox.org/support-gee-s-bend-quilters. Anthea Gerrie is based in the UK but travels the world in search of stories. Her special interests are architecture and design, culture, food, and drink, as well as the best places to visit in the world’s great playgrounds. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, the Independent, and Blueprint
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