Category: Gee’s Bend pilgrimage

In reading about Gee’s Bend Alabama, where all those women make all those beautiful quilts, I came to see the rich history of the place. Isolated as it has always been, (its isolation a big part of what  kept the quilting tradition alive) it also seems to draw the outside world into it, making history, at different points in time.

The quilting history in Gee’s Bend goes back to around 1816 or so when Joseph Gee bought the land and started a Plantation.   In 1845 his heirs sold the Plantation and 101 slaves to Mark Pettway.      After the Civil War ended in 1865 many of the freed slaves stayed on the Plantation as tenant farmers keeping the name Pettway.   Quilter, Arlonzia Pettway tells how her great-grandmother Dinah was brought to Gee’s Bend as a slave from Africa.  And about how a piece of cloth that Dinah brought with her influenced at least one of the Gee’s Bend quilt patterns  known as ZigZag.

With the Depression the Federal Government came to Gee’s Bend.   They bought  7, 425 acres from the current owner and  gave the tenant farmers low interest loans to buy land and houses.  The government built schools and a mill and a clinic and started the Gee’s Bend Cooperative.  Photographers were sent to document life there.   Two quilters, Minder Coleman and Lucy Mooney, wove cloth that was used to make curtains for the White House and the suit that President Roosevelt was buried in.

In 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Gee’s Bend inspiring many of the residents to join the march form Selma to Montgomery.  Quilter Lucy Mingo said “No white man gonna tell me not to march. Only make me march harder”.  Not long after this, the ferry service, which would take the residents of Gee’s Bend to  the town of Camden where they could register to vote, was closed down to prevent them from voting.  And in 1968 Gee’s Bend mules pulled the wagon with Martin Luther King Jr.’s casket in it at his funeral in Atlanta.

In 1966 Francis X Walter an Episcopal Minister  bought  a bunch of Gee’s Bend Quilts and sold them at auction in New York City.  They became popular and he worked with  quilter Minder Coleman to create the Freedom Quilting Bee.  The quilts were sold in department stores in New York city.   It provided lots of jobs for the women of Gee’s Bend,  but many of them didn’t like the work because they had to keep making the same quilts over and over and they had a certain standard that had to be met.  Quilter Nettie Young said “In the quilting bee time I started using patterns, but I shouldn’t have done it.  It broke the ideas I had in my head.  I should have stayed with my own ideas”

And in the early 1970’s  they had a contract with  Sears to make Corduroy pillowcases.  A whole collection of Corduroy Quilts came from using the scarps from those pillow cases.

Then in the late 1990’s Art Collector  William Arnett rediscovered the quilts of Gee’s Bend and put together an exhibit that traveled around the United States and brought  fame to the quilters recognition to Gee’s Bend again.

Though out this history, the women of Gee’s Bend, out of necessity,  first to keep their families warm then to make money, continue to make quilts and pass down their traditions.  I don’t know how many quilters there still are in Gee’s Bend.  And I’ve read that the outside world is beginning to encroach on the town in a way it never has before.  But now, at least, their quilts are being preserved in museums and photographs.  They are being seen by thousands of people, appreciated as the art and  influencing artists like me.

Next week at this time I’ll be in Gee’s Bend, Alabama.  I’ve been reading my Gee’s Bend Book and just found that on May 2nd there’s going to be a PBS show with Gee’s Bend Quilters Mary Ann Pettway and Lucy Mingo.  I’m going to be taking lessons from and staying with Mary Ann Pettway.

The weather looks good for my trip, about 84 degrees and sunny.  I found a bunch of videos on You Tube about the Gee’s Bend quilters.  Below is a short one of  Quilter Mary Lee Bendolph.

Well, I did it.  I just booked a flight to Montgomery Alabama.  From there I rent a car and drive to the Gee’s Bend Ferry, then onto Mary Ann Pettway’s  house where I’ll be staying for 4 days in May.

For those of you who don’t know, the Gee’s Bend Quilts are the thing that got me making art again.  I quit for a while after getting my MFA in sculpture.  I was confused about what I wanted to do  and disillusioned with the art world I knew.  But a few years later, I saw a book with the Gee’s Bend Quilts and the women who made them.  A small community,  in an isolated part of Alabama, the women of Gee’s Bend have been making quilts for generations. Their unique style was made famous when  art collector William Arnett saw them and put together an exhibit that traveled around the country.  Seeing  just the photos of the quilts  (I have still never seen them in person) inspired me to make my own quilts.  And that’s how I began doing what I do.

Last week,  Bridgett (who bought my Zombie Hens wall hanging)  sent me an email that there was a Gee’s Bend exhibit in Bridgeport Connecticut.  Jon and I were driving home from New York City when I got another email from Bridgett saying that it was worth seeing, but there were only four quilts in the exhibit.   I had been thinking about making a trip down to Gee’s Bend for a while, and as we talked about it, Jon got on his phone and found out that there was a quilting workshop in Gee’s Bend in April. Without a moment’s hesitation (that’s how Jon is, if it was me I’d still be thinking about it) he called the number and spoke to Mary Ann Pettway, one of the quilters and teachers.
It turns out that Mary Ann gives private lessons and I could stay at her house (there are no motels in Gee’s Bend) while I was taking lessons.  Now this is even better than I imagined because it puts me right in the middle of things.  Because I’m not just interested in learning about quilting I’m also interested in the woman who do the quilting and all the stories that go along with it.

I’ve never done anything like this before and it feels like an important thing for me to do.  Like a pilgrimage to the people and place that inspired me to begin creating again.  When I think of spending four days with someone I don’t know, I get a little jittery.  But then I think of it as a journey to find a piece of myself.  Because I know I share something with Mary Ann Pettway and the other quilters of Gee’s Bend.  I can see it in their quilts.

Click here to see more about Gee’s Bend.