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These amazing quilts by a community of African American women in Alabama have captured the art world’s admiration and acclaim, with recent exhibitions at major museums across the nation praising their strikingly innovative and boldly colored, abstract designs. The New York Times hailed them as “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.” The quilts are also currently featured on a set of U.S. postage stamps. The Paine’s exhibition highlights one of Gee’s Bend’s most original artists, Mary Lee Bendolph.
This is the first exhibition to highlight one of Gee’s Bend’s most original artists, Mary Lee Bendolph, her predecessors and progeny, and the artistic dialogue they share with artists beyond their quilting community. Twelve dramatically designed, richly colored quilts created by Mary Lee Bendolph, Louisiana P. Bendolph, Aolar Mosely, and Essie B. Pettway, are presented alongside complex and evocative found-object sculptures by Alabama artists Thornton Dial and Lonnie Holley, who have both been influenced by the quilts and the quiltmakers. Several fine art prints by two of the quiltmakers and documentary films about the artists provide a further context for their creative exchange.
Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee’s Bend Quilts, and Beyond is co-organized by the Austin Museum of Art and Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta.
The exhibition is presented by Fidelity Investments.
The exhibition catalogue is sponsored by Anderson Rogers Foundation.
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Image Credits
Lonnie Holley, Louisiana P. Bendolph, Thornton Dial, and Mary Lee Bendolph photographed at Dial Metal Patterns, Bessemer, Alabama, July 18, 2006. Photo: Matt Arnett
Aolar Mosely
Blocks, Circa 1955
Cotton (even weave, twill, dotted swiss)
75 x 83 inches
Collection of the Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta
Essie Bendolph Pettway
Back of two-sided quilt: Blocks and One Patch. 1973.
Cotton, polyester knit, denim
88 x 80 inches
Collection of the Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta
Louisiana Bendolph
Bricklayers variation, 2003
Cotton
90 x 81 inches
Collection of the Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta
Mary Lee Bendolph
Blocks and Strips, 2005
Corduroy
84 x 81 inches
Collection of Tinwood Alliance, Altanta
Mary Lee Bendolph
Work-clothes Quilt, 2002
Denim and cotton
97 x 88 inches
Collection of the Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta
Mary Lee Bendolph
Strips and strings, 2003
Cotton and cotton blends
74 x 49 inches
Collection of the Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta
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