An old journalism maxim says that the craft can be practiced anywhere because great stories are waiting to be told everywhere people live and work.
The same is true with art. As the world-renowned potter Maria Martinez proved decades ago at the obscure San Ildefonso Pueblo in New Mexico, compelling works can be created anywhere.
To recognize this reality, it just takes viewers who are willing to open their eyes and see beyond conventional notions of what art is, who must create it and how it must look. And to the art world’s credit, that is happening more and more.
Few places are more isolated than Gee’s Bend, Ala., an African-American community of about 700 people tucked into a bend of the Alabama River, yet from that remote hamlet have come recently discovered quilts that have created a sensation.
The Denver Art Museum is the seventh of eight stops for the second nationally traveling exhibition of the eye-catching textile creations. The tour began in 2006 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the organizer, and concludes later this year.
“Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt,” which contains 49 quilts from the 1920s through earlier in this decade, opens today in Denver and runs through July 6. By all indications, the show should be a smash hit.
Quiltmaking in Gee’s Bend dates to the 19th century. Around 1900, a Camden, Ala., photographer captured an intriguing image of an anonymous woman arranging on a clothesline four quilts much like those still created in the region today.
After surviving the Great Depression and the virtual end of tenant farming, Gee’s Bend was on the decline in the 1960s. But in 1966, with the help of an Episcopal priest, the Freedom Quilting Bee was founded in nearby Rehobeth, and it was soon producing standardized bedcovers for faraway department stores.
A pillow-sham contract with Sears in the 1970s kept the Bee going a little longer, but by the 1980s, the organization had ceased operation. As William Arnett writes in an essay in the show’s accompanying catalog, “Gee’s Bend, as place and idea, seemed to be on its last leg.”
Arnett and his sons are art collectors who have devoted themselves to promoting what they call the vernacular art of the South through an organization they founded, the Tinwood Alliance, which owns the quilts in the show and is a co-organizer.
In the late 1990s, Arnett made his initial trip to Gee’s Bend (a fascinating journey he chronicles in his essay) and purchased his first quilt from the town, a 1976 example by Annie Mae Young that he happened to have seen in a photograph.
That visit led to the first exhibition to document and showcase the Gee’s Bend quilt tradition. It debuted in September 2002 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston to mixed reactions at first.
But a week after the show opened later that year at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, art critic Michael Kimmelman extolled it in The New York Times, calling the quilts “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.”
Then, everything changed. Other museums began clamoring to present the exhibition, and it ultimately traveled to a dozen institutions and was seen by more than 1 million people.
All this attention has led to an extraordinary quilting renaissance in Gee’s Bend, with women who had given up the art form returning to it and others trying it for first time. In addition, long-overlooked quilts have been rediscovered and given new respect.
To its enormous credit, the exhibition and the accompanying catalog give proper respect to these artists. Their photos are shown prominently on a wall at the show’s entrance, and many of their stories are told in the catalog, some in the artists’ own words.
According to Arnett, more than 150 women of the Gee’s Bend area are now known to have produced quilts of artistic significance. There were no doubt many more, but their works are lost to history.
He estimates all the quilts made in the region during the 19th century and 95 percent of those from the 20th century no longer exist. Fortunately, some of the wonderful examples that do survive are included in this show.
While Gee’s Bend quilts do relate in many ways to those of other regions, with certain crossover in patterns, they possess a distinctive, unexpectedly contemporary look, with their bright colors, bold geometric patterns and often improvisatory feel.
Sometimes, the patterns relate to the architecture of the town, views of which are pictured in the catalog, and they can vary according to family lineage, much like pueblo pottery.
Unlike many quilters elsewhere, who adhere to strict patterns and practices, the women of Gee’s Bend have never been afraid to break the rules and experiment as they go along.
They easily adapt to whatever materials might come along, such as used denim or corduroy left over in some cases from the pieces made in the 1970s for Sears. An early example of the former is a rare 1920s quilt by Henrietta Pettway, a variation of the “housetop” pattern.
The overall result are brilliantly expressive quilts that are often not rigorously square or rectangular, and lines are not always straight. They have a looser, freer feel that is enormously appealing.
Each viewer will no doubt have his or her own favorites. Some of mine include a mimimalist 1975 example by Quinnie Pettway, a variation on the “bricklayer” variation, and the lively geometry of a 2005 creation by Mary Lee Bendolph, with its use of blocks, strips, strings and half-squares.
With this exhibition and the earlier one, Gee’s Bend is quickly taking its place alongside other towns off the beaten path that figure significantly in American art history from Cos Cob, Conn., to Taos to Stone City, Iowa.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt”
Art display. Denver Art Museum, West 13th Avenue between Broadway and Bannock Street. A traveling exhibition of 49 historical and contemporary quilts by a community of artists in Gee’s Bend, Ala. Today through July 6. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Free with regular museum admission. No timed and dated tickets required. 720-865-5000 or .
“Gee’s Bend”
Theatrical play. Presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company at the Space Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex. Directed by Kent Gash. 1 hour, 40 minutes with no intermission.Through Saturday. 6:30 p.m. Monday- Thursday; 7:30 p.m. Friday; 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday. $36-$46. 303-893-4100, all King Soopers or .
