Status Updates From Gee's Bend: The Architectur...

Quilts made from old work clothes- field-worn, sun-faded, torn, stained- provided physical and emotional warmth. With such materials and the artistic brilliance of Gee’s Bend quilters, these works are powerful visual stories of “black lives and labor, endurance and survival.” As quilter Lucy Mingo, aka Toot, said, “You could tell stories about this piece… that piece… They have songs to them.”

Annie Mae Young, aka Nig, ball player, rode mules, plowed “like a man”, worked the crops so fast she helped others when she finished, also quilted. Rejected by the local quilting group that produced standardized bedding products for major department stores because her technical skills were deemed inadequate, she’s the maker of one of the most famous and beloved work-clothes quilts of Gee’s Bend.

When exhibited in a major museum, initial reviews were dismissive, even mocking; then- "the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced"- NYT chief art critic. Black Americans "lauded for what they have achieved for themselves, not [for how they] conformed to what is expected of them. [Times of London]". The gulf between mainstream art world and vernacular southern black artists became clear.

A photo circa 1900 shows a black woman in Gee's Bend spreading quilts on a fence. If it wasn't for her dress, the quilts could be the work of Gee's Bends' living quiltmakers... "[They] illustrate a wide spectrum of quilt design explorations, but more importantly, they foretell generations of artistic continuity, without parallel in the US among a community of African American women."