Monday, February 15, 2010

A Birthday Gift

I asked Tom for one particular gift this year and that was a book about the quilts of Gee's Bend. It's a large book and I have only looked at the photos so far and so can't comment much.

From what I understand, Gee's Bend is a very difficult place to get to keeping the people living there very isolated. I believe it is made up almost entirely of African Americans with maybe one or two white people and many of these people are descendants of slaves.

Anyway, the quilts are being dubbed as original American art. Yes, a lot of them are pretty cool and amazing but some of them I have to question about applying the term "art" to describe them.

However, one quilt in particular I found to be totally incredible. It was made in 1971 and is way modern. Below are photos of the book, a photo of the quilt I am referring to and a photo of the woman who made the quilt. She was born in 1917 and this photo of her was taken in 2000.







1 comment:

Sissie said...

Wow - I watched a PBS special on Gee's Bend a while back. It was totally fascinating. I agree with your comment - but what do I know?