Quilts
Loretta Pettway Bennet
Qunnie Pettway
Prints
Prices subject to change as editions sell out
Louisiana Bendolph
Mary Lee Bendolph
Loretta Pettway Bennett
Essie Bendolph Pettway
Loretta Pettway
About
Gee’s Bend is a small rural community nestled into a curve in the Alabama River southwest of Selma, Alabama. The women of Gee’s Bend developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style. Descendants of slaves and share croppers, the women passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present. Gee’s Bend first became known for its quilts during the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1960s when the Freedom Quilting Bee was organized. Their distinct style is now well known throughout the country as a result of traveling exhibitions, including The Quilts of Gee’s Bend from 2003 - 2006 and Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt from 2006-2007, which included a comprehensive book by the same name.
The African American quilters coming from rural hamlets such as Gee’s Bend rely on recognizable traditions of patterning but create their own unique riffs as well. These African-American quilts relate to the ongoing tradition of American patchwork quilts in ways similar to how American jazz and rural music forms relate to European classical music. The notes are the same but the rules are altered or loosened. A comparison to music is apt because the quilt makers often refer to church music as a major source of their inspiration, “quilting and singing, singing and quilting.”
Exhibitions
Quilted fabric
82 x 73 inches
$14,000