The Gee’s Bend community is located on a peninsula of land formed by a bend in the Alabama River. This historically and culturally significant landscape holds deep within its roots Alabama’s greatest quilting tradition, recognized nationally and internationally for the innovative use of geometric shapes, the formation of complex patterns and the combination of diverse colors and textures.

Once owned by the planter class, the original slave population made quilts as a necessity to stay warm. Over time and through many periods of hardships and oppression, their descendants carried on the tradition. Today, several generations of people from Gee’s Bend continue making quilts that are now recognized as spectacular works of art.

This exhibition was made possible by the Alabama Folklife Association.

The Alabama Folklife Association (AFA) is a statewide nonprofit dedicated to the documentation, preservation and promotion of traditional culture and an official partner program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts (ASCA). The AFA works with artists whose art, knowledge and skills represent traditions passed down from one generation to the next through family, community, culture and region.

Gee's Bend Quilters:

Marlene Bennett Jones

Caster Pettway

Minnie Pettway

and

That’s Sew Gee’s Bend – Claudia Pettway Charley, Tinnie Pettway and Minnie Pettway

Friends Art Gallery / Dec 1 - Dec 31, 2017
Plaza Art Gallery / Jan 1 – Jan 31, 2017