The Life and Art of Mary Lee Bendolph

The Life and Art of Mary Lee Bendolph joanne cubbs Published in Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee’s Bend Quilts, and Beyond Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2006 [text-only version] There is only one road leading into Gee’s Bend, a small, historically black community in the lush green backcountry of southwest Alabama. Surrounded on three sides by a sharp, capricious curve in the Alabama River, it is a place that has always remained tucked away from much of the outside world. No one really knows the precise popula- tion of the Bend, but some say it is seven hundred or so. Appearing amidst a landscape of overgrown fields and patches of scrub forest, the town itself is a scattering of one- story houses connected by red dirt trails and joined by a tiny post office, two conve- nience stores, and four churches. Like many old agricultural communities where farming has become practically ob- solete, Gee’s Bend seems to belong to another time. In fact, there is a highly palpable sense of the past that hangs in the air like the thick humid atmosphere of an Alabama summer day. Everywhere are markers of eras gone by: rusted cars, decaying barns, and the metal corpses of defunct farm machinery. On a late afternoon, an elderly man sits quietly on the front porch of his weathered home and gazes past the muddy clay road into a cornfield that has long ago turned into an empty vista. It is an everyday scene from the Bend that also serves as its elegy, a melancholy ode to the inevitable passing of an age and a place. A fading community of mostly older, rural black folk living well below the poverty line, Gee’s Bend is not where one would expect to encounter, among its inhabitants, some of the culture industry’s latest celebrities. But that is who you will find there. For not too long ago, a number of quiltmakers from the Bend were suddenly pronounced accomplished artists and propelled to national acclaim. Heirs to a rich and long-stand- ing quiltmaking tradition, women from the area had been creating patchwork mas- terpieces since the nineteenth century. Still, this was the first time that anyone had celebrated their imaginative vision and called their bedcovers art. In 2002 the first touring exhibition of quilts by more than forty women from Gee’s Bend landed in New York at the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art. And it was there that these once-humble patchworks began to garner praise from major art critics, including Michael Kimmelman at the New York Times, who christened the quilts, “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.”1 In an abrupt and dizzying inversion of the cultural status quo, a group of rural women from the Deep South, some of whom had never before left Alabama, were traveling around the country, speaking at museum roundtables, and signing autographs. Soon, the quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend also captured the fascination and esteem of America at large, becoming the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Newsweek and O, The Oprah Magazine, and even spots on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Martha Stewart Living. They dined with Laura Bush and toured the South with Jane Fonda. They had their creations reproduced on rugs, stationary, pillows, and neck- ties. And ten of their quilts were even chosen to appear in a series of commemorative stamps issued by the United States Postal Service. “I never make a quilt altogether like anybody” One of the best-known and most revered quiltmakers among this group of recently rec- ognized artists is Mary Lee Bendolph. Just about to turn seventy-one years old, she has spent many decades transforming scraps of old cloth into aesthetic marvels. To create her quilts, she tears worn and discarded clothing into simple strips and blocks of fabric, then assembles them into highly refined geometric abstractions. Her genius resides in her ability to invent a seemingly endless variety of complex compositions and astound- ing visual effects from a rudimentary vocabulary of shapes. In one of her works, Bendolph fashioned an eccentric maze of aqua blue corduroy that suddenly dissolves at center into a mysterious hieroglyph of hot red, pink, and orange fabric (page 10). Within another patchwork, somber rectangles of brown wool and blue denim engage in a cubist struggle to subdue a rowdy assortment of brightly col- ored strips and squares (page 11). Still another quilt gives shape to tapered bands of red, gold, and lavender, a dazzling field of shifting, zebra-stripe angularity (page 67). In the most basic sense, Bendolph’s geometric imagery is an ingenious elaboration on the common practice of strip quilting, a fundamental technique of piecing together bands of cloth that is widespread throughout the South and in many other patchwork traditions. Her grid-like forms also seem to play off the structural framework of the “Housetop” pattern, a conventional quilt design of concentric squares that is particularly popular among the quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend. But according to Bendolph herself, the majority of her works simply draw inspiration from the colors, shapes, and patterns of the world around her, resulting in quilts that are really abstract remappings of the surrounding visual environment. As she recently explained, “Most of my ideas come from looking at things. Quilts is in everything. Sometimes I see a big truck passing by. I look at the truck and say, I could make a quilt look like that. I see the barn, and I get an idea to make a quilt. I can walk outside and look around in the yard and see ideas all around the front and the back of my house. As soon as I leave the house I get ideas.”2 Within most other quiltmaking traditions, the choice of a quilt pattern virtually ends the creative process; all that remains is its faithful execution in cloth and thread. In Bendolph’s case, the idea for a quilt is only the beginning. For like many of the best quiltmakers in Gee’s Bend, she is a master of improvisation who courts surprise, un- predictability, and spur-of-the-moment aesthetic inspiration. While many conventional quiltmakers strive to replicate a pattern with great precision, prefer only gentle harmonies of color, and pursue a delicate perfectionism of form and technique, the goal among women in the Bend is to break the pattern, to heighten visual drama through strong contrasts in colors and values, and to enjoy the expressive possibilities of rakish lines and irregular shapes. Describing her free-form inventiveness, Bendolph confided, “I say I’m going to cut out a quilt like something I see. I start it, but when I end up, I always got it going another way.”3 This philosophy of improvisation is at the core of Bendolph’s art and the principle behind her unusually adventurous sense of aesthetics. In her creative world, patterns suddenly fracture into small pieces, positive forms turn into negative shapes, and entire designs unexpectedly shift in direction. And then there are the countless smaller sur- prises, the little incongruities in color or shape that tweak the imagination and astound the eye—a startling patch of red that pops up out of nowhere, a blue strip that abruptly turns into orange, and one sliver of purple cloth that somehow enlivens a whole quilt. Within her work, Bendolph both makes and breaks her own visual rules. Still, amidst her universe of crooked squares, bent lines, asymmetrical forms, and dissonant hues, there is always the sense that every shape and color, however improbable or surprising, has miraculously found just the right spot. Within the tradition of southern improvisational quiltmaking, most artists estab- lish their own repertoire of patterns, stitches, and approaches, finding a balance be- tween the cultural codes and aesthetic conventions of the group and their own creative vision. Many of the women of Gee’s Bend are especially outspoken regarding their expressive individuality. Talking about quiltmaking influences in her life, Bendolph says, “I never make a quilt altogether like anybody. It’s better if you do what you are sup- posed to do than to try and copy somebody else.”4 Flora Moore agrees, “I didn’t put it the way the pattern went. I put it my way.”5 In a poem, quiltmaker Arlonzia Pettway writes, “Never make a path somebody else made.”6 Another widely held conviction among Gee’s Bend quiltmakers is the related belief that no two quilts should ever be alike. As Mensie Lee Pettway advises, “Ought not two quilts ever be the same. You might use exactly the same material, but you would do it different.”7 When discussing how other quiltmakers use the same pattern over and over again, Bendolph recently asserted, “You know, I can’t duplicate my own work.” “Why not?” she was asked. With a chuckle she replied, “Because I don’t want to.”8 In an effort to describe the unique nature of Bendolph’s works and the other Gee’s Bend quilts, many have likened them to jazz music, with its colorful offbeat phrasing, independent rhythms, and spontaneous riffs off the central melody. But perhaps even greater aesthetic similarities may be found with gospel music, particularly in regard to its adventurous harmonies, rhythmic inventions, and freestyle note-bending. As Alvia Wardlaw wrote, “Gee’s Bend women were surrounded by the soaring free-form notes of the blues and gospel as well as of master soloists, and this music became imbedded in their personas.

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