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jaeleslie at 12:21pm on 01/11/2003
jaeleslie at 12:21pm on 01/11/2003Yesterday I drove to Milwaukee with my artists study group to see The Quilts of Gees Gend at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It is an extraordinary show. It will be there until January, if you have a chance to see it there or elsewhere. I am sorry not to be able to find anything about it online that I might link to except the books. Nothing about the show. I have in hand the review in the local Sunday paper from the end of the September, and saw a lengthy story about it on the NewsHour, so I know it has been reviewed.
There is a smaller catalog, the book with the blue denim and orange stripe corduroy center medallion by Annie Mae Young (1975) on the cover, which I purchased. This is in itself an oversize coffeetable book. Then there is a larger tome, the cover showing a striking black and white medallion pattern by Loretta Pettway (1960), and includes a great many pieces from the Gees Bend quilting tradition that are not included in the show. That black is synthetic knit, still deep unfaded black, while the uneven colored blocks show the effects of age and washing.
The colored illustrations are of course flat and without the expression of the actual pieces. In the gallery they are larger. The abstract qualities of their composition are best seen across the room. Up close they are quite eloquently the products of human hands, the piecing a puzzle assembled from sometimes unpromising materials; the quilting large and not always even stitches; each session beginning in a row of knots and rolling unevenly across the surface; the twisting of worn fabrics making the hanging tapestry surface sometimes rippled in high relief. You can see how they were made, work out the order they were assembled, watch the creative interaction, or struggle, each woman had with her materials.
The first section of the exhibit is the quilts made of Work Clothes. Washed gray workshirts and denim, stained and patched and pieced to turn to yet another function, to keep the cold away in barely heated shacks. The more exuberant colors of the other sections (corduroys and printed fabrics familiar in daily use during my lifetime and memory) were luxury, following that austerity. I can't tell you how moving, how shocking they were. We spent a couple of hours looking at them, pointing, analyzing, stunned, excited.
There is a smaller catalog, the book with the blue denim and orange stripe corduroy center medallion by Annie Mae Young (1975) on the cover, which I purchased. This is in itself an oversize coffeetable book. Then there is a larger tome, the cover showing a striking black and white medallion pattern by Loretta Pettway (1960), and includes a great many pieces from the Gees Bend quilting tradition that are not included in the show. That black is synthetic knit, still deep unfaded black, while the uneven colored blocks show the effects of age and washing.
The colored illustrations are of course flat and without the expression of the actual pieces. In the gallery they are larger. The abstract qualities of their composition are best seen across the room. Up close they are quite eloquently the products of human hands, the piecing a puzzle assembled from sometimes unpromising materials; the quilting large and not always even stitches; each session beginning in a row of knots and rolling unevenly across the surface; the twisting of worn fabrics making the hanging tapestry surface sometimes rippled in high relief. You can see how they were made, work out the order they were assembled, watch the creative interaction, or struggle, each woman had with her materials.
The first section of the exhibit is the quilts made of Work Clothes. Washed gray workshirts and denim, stained and patched and pieced to turn to yet another function, to keep the cold away in barely heated shacks. The more exuberant colors of the other sections (corduroys and printed fabrics familiar in daily use during my lifetime and memory) were luxury, following that austerity. I can't tell you how moving, how shocking they were. We spent a couple of hours looking at them, pointing, analyzing, stunned, excited.