I visited IMMA on St Patrick’s Day to see the Kith and Kin Exhibition of the Quilts of Gees’s Bend. I’ve been impressed by the stories of these quilters since I joined the Cloth’s Tales stitching group last year.
A History of Gee’s Bend
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.
—The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois
Gee’s Bend takes its name from Joseph Gee, a North Carolina enslaver and planter who, in 1816, acquired 6,000 acres of land along a horseshoe bend in the Alabama River. He established a plantation with 17 enslaved people. The Gee family operated the plantation until 1845. Then, to settle significant debts, they relinquished ownership, including 98 enslaved people. The purchaser, Mark H. Pettway, was a relative, enslaver, and then sheriff of Halifax County, North Carolina. In 1846, Pettway decided to relocate to Gee’s Bend. His family and furnishings were transported in a wagon train while 100 enslaved men, women, and children were compelled to journey on foot to their new life in Alabama.
Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers
The Gee’s Bend quiltmakers are a group of women and their ancestors from the Gee’s Bend area of Alabama’s rural Black Belt. Their quilts are celebrated as some of the most significant artistic contributions to American art history. Earning international recognition and acclaim, exhibitions showcasing their work have been held in museums and galleries across the U.S. and beyond. Through Souls Grown Deep’s Collection Transfer Program, Gee’s Bend quilts are now part of the permanent collections of more than 40 museums across three continents. How wonderful to see them in IMMA!!!
The area’s rich quiltmaking tradition dates back to the nineteenth century. Born out of a need to keep warm in unheated homes during the winter months, and the scarcity of resources, the majority of quilts were made out of old work-clothes and other used materials such as fertilizer and flour sacks. Despite a wider variety of cheap fabric becoming available in the second half of the twentieth century, the recycling of old materials continues to be a central tenet of quilting in Gee’s Bend.
The practice of reusing old materials has resulted in a proclivity for improvisational approaches to quilt design. Many Gee’s Bend quilts can be called improvisational, or “my way” quilts as they are known locally, in which quiltmakers start with basic forms and then follow their own individual artistic paths (“their way”) to stitch unexpected patterns, shapes, and colors.
The transference of aesthetic knowledge and skills from generation to generation has been fundamental to the continuation of the Gee’s Bend quilting tradition to this day.
