Jaimeo Brown SPOTLIGHT

Quiltmaking Gee’s Bend. William Arnett. Underground Railroad. Spirituals. Words Andy Thomas Portrait Janette Beckman Photographs courtesy of Souls Grown Deep Foundation soulsgrowndeep.org

In the spring of 2013 drummer Jaimeo so many other functions,” says Brown. about art – but in the mid-19th century, Brown took a journey from his home in “Going back to the roots down at Gee’s became creative. A variety of New York to a small corner of the deep Bend and seeing how these spiritual techniques and styles were developed: south. There in Gee’s Bend, where the songs were interwoven into their daily the medallion quilt consists of a central Alabama River curls through Wilcox activities and the craft of quilting that motif with multiple borders; the log County, a rural collective of women have really inspired me.” In Mario Tahi cabin is made of arrangements of a been creating brilliantly improvisational Lathan’s documentary that follows repeated single block pattern. Quilting quilts for, perhaps, 200 years. They follow Jaimeo Brown to Gee’s Bend, we meet also became a communal activity: women in a tradition of African-American some of those women whose craft has came together in what became known quilting that reaches back to slavery. only recently gained recognition. as quilting bees. Artistically and socially The quilts of Gee’s Bend transcend The term quilt comes from the Latin important, it spread quickly. As early as folk art. Following an exhibition at the for a stuffed sack, an incongruous name the 1850s, in Amish society remarkable Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, New when you consider the beautiful art to quilts were created using modernist style York magazine art critic Mark Stevens emerge from Gee’s Bend. The stitching abstractions as advanced as they were proclaimed: “The strikingly beautiful together of layers of padding and fabric prescient. Native Americans fused their quilts just might deserve a place among known as quilting has been traced back own artistic and spiritual traditions with the great works of 20th-century abstract to ancient Egypt where it was used in the European to create designs like the art.” But it’s not just their beautiful quilts various garments. The quilt as we know star quilt, using symbolic patterns for that inspire, because as these women sew, it today is purely utilitarian, a means to ceremonies and other cultural activities. they sing. And it is these spirituals that keep families warm. Arriving in the New As well as sewing and stitching for were used to such stunning effect on World with very little, early European plantation owners, slave women made Brown’s Transcendence LP. “At that time, settlers in America pieced together old quilts for their own use, recycling old for my own spiritual fulfi lment, I needed blankets and clothes to make bedding. clothing, fl our, tobacco and sugar sacks. music to be something other than just In their desperate efforts to survive the One of the best resources on art from the for the purpose of performance. It has harsh winters, they weren’t thinking African-American South is the Souls >

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“What contributed [to the depletion of this culture] was the breakdown of the whole small farmer system in the South,” says William Arnett. “It had changed significantly as agribusiness set in and small farmers had to go elsewhere for employment. So these little communities broke up in the migrations to the cities.” Quilting in Gee’s Bend began at the Pettway cotton plantation, and following abolition, the small, poor community of tenant farmers became geographically isolated. “This river has acted more like an ocean, separating Gee’s Bend from the rest of the world,” explains Arnett in The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. This might have complicated travel and modernisation but it created a strong cultural identity and continuation of ancestral arts. This Quilt by Lola Pettway, 1970s Photograph Matt Arnett is reflected in the unique quilting styles. “The compositions contrast dramatically with the ordered regularity associated Quilts by members of Moultree Kennedy’s family, 1970s Photograph Matt Arnett with Euro-American quiltmaking,” wrote African-American art historian Alvia “When I first heard those spirituals “Most of my ideas come from looking at Wardlaw. “It’s a brilliant, improvisational it became extremely important music to things,” explained. range of approaches that is more often me,” he explains. “But it was very hard to “I can walk outside in the yard and see Grown Deep Foundation, which has co- says Arnett. It took improvisation from passing through two worlds, the quest for associated with the inventiveness and track them down. I had made 40 or 50 ideas all around the front and back of published a number of books on Gee’s African culture, as interpretations of the superior insights and power of the power of leading 20th-century abstract phone calls. I remember when I finally my house.” The patterns and shapes Bend with art collector William Arnett. traditional American styles created a ancestors.” Other African traditions were painters than it is with textile-making.” heard China [Pettway] on the other end of their environment are reflected in In Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt constantly evolving design aesthetic. used as quilting developed as an art form, Like other African-American quilters, of the phone it really was a dream come their abstract geometric designs. Steps, art historian Joanne Cubbs points to the Writer and art historian Robert Farris such as: the use of strips known as “men’s the women of Gee’s Bend were known true. She was up there with Coltrane windows, roofs and doorways become practical roots of African-American Thompson points to the juxtaposition of weaving” but taken on by women in the for their improvisations, resulting in a on the impact on my life.” He met the sources for their art. Quilt names like quilting: “The tradition was born of plantations; large shapes and bold colours variety of hybrid patterns. “A Gee’s Bend collective at a crucial time. “It was very housetop, chicken coop, bricklayer and scarcity and resourcefulness, arising in to distinguish tribes; complex multiple star quilt, for example, is completely refreshing and inspiring to watch them rail fence confirm those architectural times where shortages of cloth called for patterning often used to stop copying; different from traditional star pattern, sing and work,” he says. “I’ve rarely seen connections. William Arnett sees a the inventive salvaging of fabric scraps ‘THE QUILTS and appliqué techniques to tell stories. instead yielding an offbeat, pulsating such close connections between the visual precursor to the abstractions of the great and remnants.” The practice of recycling It is even debated whether quilting was rhythm,” says Wardlaw. Robert Farris and sonic side. There are so many things modernists. “We tend to base our art shares similarities with the use of found DESERVE A used to send codes for the Underground Thompson has compared these I discovered from how the quilters work. history on the first white person to do objects in African-American art through PLACE AMONG Railroad. One thing is for sure: in the art movements and multiple patterns of There are different rules in how a quilt something with paint on a canvas. That’s the 20th century. It also has echoes of the of quilting, there resides a strong visual African-American textiles with the is designed and the purpose of the quilt. not always where that style or aesthetic ancient Japanese textile tradition of boro. THE GREAT language passed down from slavery. rhythms of African music and jazz. Some of those rules that I saw visually, I started. Mondrian looked out and saw In black US communities, the use of old Probably the most famous quilter to Spiritual song is central to Gee’s also heard in the music.” What he saw in the line between the horizon, water and clothing to make quilts also had a deeper WORKS OF emerge from slavery was . Bend quilters’ creativity. The spirituals, Gee’s Bend related directly to his own sky and reduced it to primary colour – symbolic meaning. “Old clothes carry Born a slave in Athens, Georgia in 1837, hummed vocalisations and moans are capacity as a bandleader. “Improvisation but the women of Gee’s Bend had been something with them. You can feel the 20TH-CENTURY Powers used appliqué to record historical used both for praise and meditation, as that happens when you are working with doing that long before. I went around presence of the person who used to wear legends, Bible stories and astronomical well as to energise and give rhythm to someone else and creating something taking photographs of what the women them. It has a spirit,” Gee’s Bend woman ABSTRACT ART’ events. She was the first former slave to their craft. “Quilting is mostly singing,” collectively with cohesion for a singular see when they walk out the front door: Mary Lee Bendolph told Cubbs. gain recognition beyond her community quilter told Arnett. “So it purpose: they really are masters of that. roads, buildings, the lines between the Slave women learned techniques when white artist Jennie Smith bought sound like it ought to be music in that The way they sing and sew together and roof and the doorway – that’s what they from owners, but quickly established strong colours as something other than one of her quilts and entered it into the quilt, because that sure the way we make the language that was unsaid in how they extracted onto these quilts. These women their own syncretic traditions. “It’s a decorative: “The Bakongo (a tribal group 1895 Cotton States and International them. Sewing, singing, sewing, singing. would interact with each other; that was got their ideas from what they saw, not culture that grew out of white European, of Congo and Angola) believe breaks in Exposition in Atlanta. At one time, there It’s in that quilt because that’s what I something that inspired me greatly.” from art books. Why would they need Native American and African culture pattern – terraced shifts from white to were hundreds of little communities like do when I quilt.” It was these songs The women of Gee’s Bend also take to? They have prototypes in their own and produced something totally unique,” red to black, for instance – can symbolise Gee’s Bend with deep quilting traditions. that brought Jaimeo Brown to town. inspiration from what’s around them. community that predate modernism.” >

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he helped form acted as a co-operative for local black women. The publicity that followed in the New York Times led to the group making quilts for department stores like Bloomingdales and Saks Fifth Avenue. But these assembly-line pieces were a long way from the beautiful art Gee’s Bend became known for. While the women may have been unique as a late 20th-century collective, they are not the only African-Americans to make a name with their quilts. Born Effie Mae Howard in Arkansas in 1936, Rosie Lee Tompkins created designs that were perhaps even more abstract. Her Sewing a quilt, Gee’s Bend, Alabama, 1937 Photograph Arthur Rothstein work was discovered in the 1980s when quilt scholar Eli Leon met her by chance at a flea market in California; “completely and utterly flabbergasted” by the display of quilts at her home, he introduced her The Gee’s Bend women also make community isolated further. “As Neil pieces to museums and galleries. Always comparisons between quilting and the Armstrong was walking on the moon, a secretive figure, she would not give Jorena Pettway and her daughter making chair covers out of bleached flour sacks and flower decorations from paper, Gee’s Bend, Alabama, 1939 construction of homes. “You can start in 1969, Gee’s Benders were walking interviews or let people photograph her. Photograph Marion Post Wolcott with a bedroom over there, or a den over 15 miles to the nearest telephone,” She believed God directed her quilting here, and you add on until you get what wrote Arnett. “If they needed a hospital hand, and was troubled by paranoia until you want,” Mensie Lee Pettway said in or medical treatment they had to drive her death in 2006. But she left behind Gee’s Bend: The Women and their Quilts. at least 50 miles.” One of the most work that deserves its place at New The family lineage of quilting is also poignant works from that period is York’s Whitney Museum of American a significant part of the craft, as skills and ’s beautifully intricate Art alongside the modern masters. As styles are passed down from generation curator Lawrence Rinder said when her to generation. “I recall I was about five pieces were displayed at Berkeley Art had become interested in the work we art. A number of books and exhibitions interact visuals into the live show,” says or six years old when I was introduced Museum: “Tompkins’s quilts make an were doing. And she had been trying to followed, including one of over 70 Gee’s Brown. “They have really opened my to sewing,” Loretta P Bennett said. “We ‘THIS WAS eloquent case for a more inclusive view convince me to go into the investigation Bend quilts at the Museum of Fine Arts, mind to working with as many mediums were only allowed to thread needles for of contemporary art [that] transcends of the black southern quilts. I assumed it Houston, in partnership with Arnett. as I can. I would say the visual aspect and the quilters in my grandmother and AN ISOLATED the boundaries between art and craft and had already been done as thoroughly as it “When these things were finally shown, the vibrancy of the colour within the mother’s quilting group. The leftover European and African traditions.” There needed to be. She was telling me “no, it people all over the world were like, ‘Oh quilts has really inspired what I want to scraps are what we got to sew and piece LITTLE PLACE, are many more such quilters scattered hasn’t” so I looked into where quilts were my God, where did this come from?’ project on stage. And we are planning together, practicing on how to make a ALMOST across America but most of the small made and stumbled across Gee’s Bend. I They assumed there was just a little a tour with them – a real collaboration real quilt.” Connecting past to present communities they were part of are gone. realised I’d found a place that, while not one-off community making these things with music, but also a way of presenting quilting in Gee’s Bend has also been part LIKE A TIME By the 1990s, quilting in Gee’s Bend unique in black culture, was unique in that looked like Mondrian or whatever. their stories that reflect a bigger story of the ongoing struggle throughout the had also declined somewhat, as younger today’s history, because communities like The truth was that, at one time, there of American history. It will also include turbulent history of the South. CAPSULE’ residents moved to find work and left an this had died out and disappeared in were thousands of little communities – an exhibition of their beautiful quilts. At the height of the civil-rights aging population to uphold the tradition. the most part. But this was an isolated they just died out. I have no doubt that So, I am really excited about that.” movement and inspired by Martin Enter William Arnett, who had been little place, almost like a time capsule.” it will be recognised as one of the great Luther King’s visit in March 1965, the variation on the housetop style with the collecting southern African-American He bought many quilts in Gee’s Bend art traditions in world history. It already Mario Tahi Lathan’s documentary Gee’s Bend women took the ferry to word “vote” running through it. A year art for years. “I had spent a number of and in 1996 held an exhibition and is by people who bother to look at it.” Transcendence is touring film festivals nearby Camden to demand voting rights. after the march on Camden, episcopal decades researching and documenting launched the two-volume Souls Grown Thanks to people like Arnett and Jaimeo Brown’s LP Transcendence The response from the authorities was priest Father Francis Walter came across the black culture of the South, which Deep: African-American Vernacular Art of Jaimeo Brown, this collective is finally is out on Motéma/Proper Note calculated and vindictive. Some women some quilts on a line while driving had been totally unrecognised,” he says. the South. The Gee’s Bend quilt collective getting the recognition they deserve. jaimeobrown.com were thrown in jail and the ferry service through Rehoboth, a small town north of “A woman working with me had written became an important part of this story of And they are leaving a lasting impact on soulsgrowndeep.org was immediately cancelled, leaving the Gee’s Bend. The a book on African-American quilts and forgotten southern African-American those they touch. “Now I am starting to propernote.co.uk

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