The Denver Art Museum Celebrates the Quilts of Gee’s Bend
These aren’t your ordinary quilts. Nestled into a curve in the Alabama River, just south of Selma, Alabama, Gee’s Bend is a small rural community that is home to some of the U.S.’s most skilled artisans. For generations, the town’s women have developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. Their amazing work will be on display at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) April 13 through July 6, 2008 in a can’t-miss exhibit called Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt.
The show features 49 unique quilts created from the 1920s through 2005 by four generations of women from this small, isolated farming community. Viewing them, it’s clear that magnificent art can be created in any locale, not just in big cities. The New York Times praised the quilts as “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.”
Gee’s Bend’s history stretches back to antebellum times. After the Civil War, freed slaves founded an all-black community nearly isolated from the surrounding world. During the Great Depression, the federal government stepped in to purchase land and homes for the community, bringing renown — as an "Alabama Africa" — to this sleepy hamlet. Over the years, the town’s women were busy creating their astonishing quilts – quilts that served a practical purpose, but were also soon recognized as works of creative genius. Originally created for basic comfort and need, the quilts were hung on loose-board walls to keep the wind out and layered under thin mattresses. With limited resources, the women of Gee’s Bend recycled old clothing and fabric to piece together quilts in their own patterns like Housetop and Bricklayer. Boldly combining color, fabric, form and texture, these quilt makers turned utilitarian objects into contemporary artworks.
Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt will show viewers the role of materials and recycling in the quilting process, how family relationships and friendships contribute to the finished products, how the inventive “bending” of standard quilt patterns works and the development of individual styles amid a strong community tradition. The exhibition will also highlight the remarkable rebirth of quilting that has occurred in Gee’s Bend in the last four years. Older women who had ceased quilting are creating anew, and younger generations also have embraced the art. A number of the quilts selected for this show have been made in the past few years – heartening evidence that the Gee’s Bend quilting tradition, once thought to be fading, is alive and thriving.
Don’t miss these special Gee’s Bend Special Events at DAM
Colorful Quilts! A Gee’s Bend Family Day: A Target sponsored free Saturday with special activities focusing on the Gee’s Bend exhibition. Meet the quilters and listen as they raise their voice in spontaneous song. Kids are invited to design a colorful square to add to the clothesline of paper quilts. Book signing will take place throughout the day. Saturday, June 7, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Sunday Afternoon with the Quilters of Gee’s Bend: Join the women of Gee’s Bend as they discuss the history behind the quilts through colorful images, stories and songs. Stick around after the presentation for a book signing. Sponsored by the CookeDaniels Memorial Lectures Fund. Sunday, June 8, 1-2:30 p.m., Sharp Auditorium, $7 ($5 members/students).
Until April 19, at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ Space Theatre, catch the stirring Gee’s Bend, a play directed by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder that dramatizes the story of Gee’s Bend’s amazing quilters. For more information, visit www.denvercenter.org.
Above image: “Bricklayer” – sampler variation, 1958, by Loretta Pettway, American, born 1942. Cotton and corduroy; 82 x 72 in. Collection of Tinwood Alliance. Photo: Stephen Pitkin, Rockford, Il.