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 quilting 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 > 128 SPOTLIGHT | Quiltmaking “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,” Mary Lee Bendolph 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 Harriet Powers. 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 Nettie Young 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.