Sampler

Gee's Bend Quilt Collection
The women of Gee’s Bend—a small, remote, Black community in Alabama—have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces dating from the early twentieth century to the present. Resembling an inland island, Gee’s Bend is surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River. Some seven hundred or so inhabitants of this small, rural community are mostly descendants of slaves, and for generations, they worked the fields belonging to the local Pettway plantation. Enlivened by a visual imagination that extends the expressive boundaries of the quilt genre, these astounding creations constitute a crucial chapter in the history of American art.

Nancy Pettway is still an active Gee’s Bend Quilter. She is shown in the photo with Arlonzia Pettway, who passed away in 2008. Barbara Barran has been working with the Gee’s Bend Quilters since 2003. She has shown and sold their work at over 25 US museums, paying the quilters a royalty for the use of their designs. She has visited Gee’s Bend, AL, several times and stayed at the home of Ruth Kennedy and Lucy Mingo. Working with the quilters has been the highlight of her design career.

Size: 6' x 9'

This rug was featured in Patti Carpenter’s room at the Cornell Inn, a project in which Black designers redid the Inn as part of The Kaleidoscope Project.