I imagine most textile lovers like myself know about the Gee’s Bend quilters, a remarkable group of Black women who developed their own strikingly modern quilting style in an isolated community in Alabama. They became so famous that their work eventually toured major American art museums and became part of their permanent collections.
One of the best known of these quilters is Mary Lee Bendolph, who creates unique geometric designs. She has exhibited with her fellow Gee’s Bend quilters and has also been featured on her own. In 2015, she received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Bendolph works from strips of used clothing, insisting they have a spirit in them. Her “Work Clothes” quilt contains not only pieces of old denim, but also scraps of what must be leftovers from old house dresses, the work clothes of women. She constructed the quilt “Ghost Pockets” entirely out of her husband’s clothing. “That way you’ll [her husband] always be with me, always covering me.”
In most of the photos I’ve seen of Bendolph, she is wearing what look to be simple cotton clothes. I’m wondering if she, or someone close to her, has saved the worn out pieces to make quilts.
For more on the quilts, see Bridget R. Cooks (2014) The Gee’s Bend Effect, Textile, 12:3, 346-363
I was fortunate to be able to attend a signing at the 2003 ALA Annual Conference when the exhibit catalog/book was first published. Two of the Gee’s Bend quilters were there and they signed my copy on pages where their quilts were shown. I later saw the exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum and a smaller subset at the St. Louis Art Museum. I’ve tried but failed to make quilts in that improv style — it takes a certain mindset!
I saw the traveling quilt show in San Francisco years ago–amazing!