Quilts of Soul, Strength and Scarcity
I saw the exhibition Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt at the Denver Art Museum yesterday. This is not the same exhibition of quilts that appeared in 2003 at the Whitney Museum, inspiring critic Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times to call them "some of the most miraculous works of modern art that America has produced." Those quilts have since appeared on postage stamps, among other things, and made the Gee's Bend quilting style famous. But the quilters, the spirit and the story are the same.
It's the story that makes these works astounding. From an artistic viewpoint, they are all visually arresting; some are more successful than others. A few quilts are incredibly dynamic, with colors and shapes making an inventive, harmonious whole enhanced by the raw stitching, exposed knots and uneven binding that reveal the maker's hand. Some are more jarring. Most quilt artists today would probably attempt to develop more refined techniques, unless they were self-consciously trying to imitate this style.
But these women, until recently, were not aiming to be quilt artists, selling in galleries and exhibiting in museums, and could hardly imagine that possibility. They were trying to inject some creative salvation into the task of keeping their families warm in lives of the most abject poverty in this great but sometimes unjust country.
The town of Gee's Bend is isolated on three sides by the Alabama River, with limited access on the fourth side. Its residents are African-American, descended from slaves, and historically subjected to every injustice thereof -- a ferry service was shut down in 1962 to prevent the townspeople from registering to vote, not resuming until two years ago, and education and opportunity was minimal at best. In Wilcox County today, almost half of children under 18 live below the poverty line.
The characteristic Gee's Bend quilting style emerged and evolved in this insulated community, passed down through the generations. The quilts are made from used clothes and fabrics, many using a simple Housetop or partial Log Cabin block, others with a more random structure. Fabric pieces tend to be large, or as large as repurposed used clothing (or corduroy scraps from Sears, Roebuck & Co.) would allow, and few of the quilts are squared off; some have binding on one or two sides only; the quilting stitches follow crooked, curved or bending lines and the stitches are big by quilting standards. They were made quickly to be used quickly, for warmth in unheated rooms. Yet the women took the time and had the spirit and imagination to make creative choices, often dramatic and unexpected and playful.
To see these quilts on the walls of an elegant museum gave me some cognitive dissonance, because they reverberate with this story of scarcity few of us could overcome, and strength that most of us would be hard-pressed to find; it's in every stitch. This story is in many patchwork quilts, but it is especially poignant here. It's also a story of joy and creativity and the deep relations that have held this community together.
Today, thankfully, many of the Gee's Bend quilters have benefited from the popularity of the quilts, though there have been some lawsuits regarding payments, intellectual property rights and licensing agreements. I was moved by the story of one woman who stopped quilting for 20 years because of illness and depression, overcome by a life harder than I can imagine. When the Gee's Bend quilts were "discovered" and began to sell and return some benefits to the women, her despondency also began to life, and she was able to stitch again.
A book on display at the exhibition said that she had prayed all her life that her last years would be her best years. She felt that her prayers had been answered.
