Gee's Bend: Take a trip to quilt-making country
Published on 10 April 2023
In a small pocket of Alabama, women have been making extraordinary textile art for generations. With those works now in galleries around the world, including in our own ‘Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers’ exhibition, here’s where they all begin.
Gee’s Bend is a small community formed around what was once a colonial cotton plantation in rural Alabama. Its residents are the direct descendants of the enslaved people who worked the plantation.
ERROR - UnsupportedModule: BigTextModule
Home to around 700 people, it’s nestled in a tight bend in the Alabama River and surrounded by water on three sides. It’s historically been isolated and difficult to reach – or leave.
Quilt-making has been a tradition among the women of Gee’s Bend for generations, born from the necessity of keeping the community warm.
ERROR - UnsupportedModule: BigTextModule
Improvising with what’s readily available, they usually work with found materials such as worn-out work clothes, offcuts from nearby textile factories, and cast-offs from friends and family.
The artists hand-stitch cuts of fabric into lively geometric designs that are often inspired by the rich history of each other’s work.
ERROR - UnsupportedModule: BigTextModule
Traditionally a collaborative process, women would gather at someone’s house to make a quilt or two for its residents, often singing or praying while they stitch.
Every autumn when quilts are hung out to air on porches, fences and clotheslines in preparation for their use over winter, artists (and admirers) go from yard to yard to see each other’s work.
ERROR - UnsupportedModule: BigTextModule
In recent years the textile works by Gee’s Bend artists have been recognised as an important chapter of North America’s modern art story. They are now found in the permanent collections of galleries and museums, including the USA’s National Gallery of Art, and Tate here in the UK.
The artists have also collaborated with fellow makers and creative organisations across the world, including a partnership with the Royal Academy and British fashion brand Marfa Stance.
ERROR - UnsupportedModule: BigTextModule
The collection has been made with leftover luxury cashmeres, wools and nylons from Marfa Stance’s production site in Italy.
They’ve been transformed into large and small quilts, and incorporated into a selection of Marfa Stance's garments to create one-off pieces of wearable art.
With the final stitches now sewn, you can view the new collection online, and find some pieces in the Burlington Gardens shop at the RA.
All photographs © Stacy K. Allen, 2023.
ERROR - UnsupportedModule: BigTextModule
Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers
Discover the Black artists from the Southeastern United States who created some of the most spectacular and ingenious works of the last century.
Related articles
The great art quiz of 2023
20 December 2023
Double Edged
23 May 2023