Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee’s Bend Quilts, and Beyond

January 20 – April 15, 2007

View amazing quilts by a community of African American women in Alabama that have captured the art world’s admiration and acclaim, with praise for their strikingly innovative and boldly colored, abstract designs.

About the Exhibition

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.