The Quiltmakers of Gees Bend

[Music] production of the quilt makers of g's bend is made possible by alabama power the alabama power foundation [Applause] and by the alabama state council on the [Music] arts [Music] carry me this project is important to me personally as an african-american woman people are moved they cry they want to know the women he ain't thought about no artists for quilts but it came to be so and i know it so because i don't see them on the wall [Music] bring memories back [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it is going to change art history i fell in love with the art it's all leftover things that have been discarded by others the way they the artists have been discarded by society and they take these discarded pieces and give them new and transcendent life they would started singing that song by swaying low sweet cherry coming for the carry me home said she was red they were ready to go home they had such a hard time they were ready to go home they sang that song by swaying low sweet chariot coming forward to carry me home when they said well we gonna see our quilt i would expect to see the new quilt but when i walked in and saw all these old quilts it brought back the uh the memory of the hard time uh brought back the struggle um the pain uh the night that i was awake from being hungry uh it brought all that back and uh i was thankful that i had opportunity to go and see uh all this history from jesus being and knowing that uh i was part of it a part of it uh and i was walking with the peoples that had to quit hanging in the museum oh if it was awesome but awesome thank you jesus thank you thank you thank you father afs recording number 509-000 [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Applause] [Music] is [Music] my family came to jesus band by um grandma madonna came from africa in 1859 you know she was sold and bought with a dime but her mother and her brother went another direction they separate them they were not together and she never did get a chance to see her mama and her brother and dad anymore because she came this way and i guess the other went to north carolina somewhere and awake but she never did get a chance to see him anymore my daddy told me he was uh sold to the master and he was er early in the beginning but he had to go into this this main name what was over him and he was a pedigree and that the way he said he began in in jesus being it's a misconception though that all pet ways are related they're not at all the plantation owner at some point it was decided that all the black people here that worked here slaves ex-slaves had to take the name of the plantation owner pettway so that's how pet ways got started and and most of the community at that time was was named petway now about still about half the community's pet ways we're going to go over to the site of the old plantation house the pettway plantation house which was built in the 19th century it doesn't stand anymore it was torn down by the government in i think in the 40s it was the it was considered a symbol of of the old plantation life so they had it torn down the last inhabitant of the plantation house was a man named john miller who was he was the um the son of a slave named dinah who was the great great grandmother of arlonzia pettway so john miller john henry miller was alonzi alonzia's great uncle okay now we'll have to find a good entry into these woods it's grown up a great deal since i was here so the plantation was in this area right back in these woods and uh i really don't see let's let's go on along the road and see what we can find [Music] [Music] we can give this a shot you know if you get enough footage you might be able to do another blair witch project out of this help yourself you want me to go first or you want to go for huh okay [Music] today i think i see what we're looking for so this was not as bad as i thought there's the biggest of the remaining tombstones it's really more of a monument mark pettway is the man who bought this uh plantation in the 19th century from his cousin whose name was joseph g who's the one that founded the whole thing mark's the one that came down if you know the story he came down from north carolina with a hundred slaves who walked all the way legend had it that the only one he allowed to ride was the cook that's the original group of slaves that formed the large plantation here in g's bend because there's been very few people who've moved into here from other areas there are a few but for the most part the community is occupied today by descendants of the original slaves almost all of them so this is solomon son of mark pettway so this is the sister of the solomon pet way that we just saw in memory of marina uh daughter of mark and marina pettway born in halifax county north carolina married to john e jones okay this side says that it's a sacred to the memory of willie c daughter of mark h and marina c pettway so this is the younger sister of marina on the other side married john e jones i think that's the same man that married young marina so we've got two daughters and a son who are the children of the original plantation owner mark pettway who gave his name to every family down here which is why there are so many pet ways his three children all died at very young ages two of whom after being married for one year to john e jones it's very suspicious the land changed hands a few times over the next 100 years well up until the time of the roosevelt administration geez bend had a period of time in which it really did hit rock bottom in the 30s all the people here were heavily indebted to a family who loaned money they called it advancing and so everyone had been advanced money to buy seeds and to buy whatever they needed when the price of cotton down here dropped from down here and everywhere dropped from 40 cents a pound to a nickel a pound and people were making their entire income from cotton farming and a little bit of produce there was just no way to make it at that point the man who had advanced them all died and his wife and the creditors decided let's just call in the debts and they came over here with an army basically of horseback riders who were black and white who just swept through the community and took everything took everything that wasn't nailed down and after about eight o'clock here come this man with this buggy he coming on in there and he went in there and he got the little cone at the barn he got a few sweet potatoes and he had with one hog he got one hog and he got the hog and mama had three or four hands and hens and a rooster some of you caught in the hen house and she hadn't got to the place she couldn't take it no more and he just started to the hen house to get the hands and the roost out there when he started there she picked up this long crooked ham hole and told that man if you go in my head after getting my last hand say i'm gonna cut your neck off with this hoe and that time that man jumped in this book and down that road he went and that how brave she was the people didn't have anything cause they broke up the people that you and the red cross had to take over there and start defeating the people the community was reduced to abject poverty and like it had never had before and the quilts from that period reflect that if if you know the history then you can see it reflected in the art the roosevelt administration at that point had taken an interest in this area because it was determined to be the poorest area in the country wilcox county was the poorest county in this community was the poorest community there was there was no income the land was purchased by the government and parceled out and black people were allowed to actually buy and own land and the government built them houses for a cheap price and with long low interest mortgages one of the things that i've been most surprised that has been the international fame of this exhibition i mean i i've been in museums since 1968 and i've never seen a phenomenon like this if you'd ask these women these women are you artists until recently they would have said no we're just doing this because it comes naturally so our definitions of artists and outsider artists and so on all thrown into question these quilts are important as contemporary art for several reasons the first being that they represent a tradition that has been passed on for a number of generations in a very small area in america geez bend alabama the quilts reflect the history of that area and of this country in their making and it asks all of us about genius you know and where does it reside i can't cut straight get a table straightening in our cutting stray bmw he is telling us it was hard work i know nothing about the man that damn look don't you talk about uh he told me yeah i never thought i would get honor and praise by the quilt yeah 10 or 12 15 years ago i didn't think this would happen we were selling quilts but we didn't think this would happen until bill came along he told us that we had art work and i didn't know what i'd wait was he's y'all have all this beautiful odd way hidden on your mattress and thing he's just going to mattress and try to pull out the magical quilts we have up under there he said this is fine i'd work i said odd way he said yeah this is oddwood yeah before he came down he would get but five dollars a queer he told me to sell for two thousand dollars but i had never sold one for no two thousand dollar a year but i had had two seer one was 12 50 and the other one was 15 50. i was looking through a book on quilts and i saw a picture of a woman holding a quilt or draping it over a pile of wood and i had her name and it said i don't know what wilcox county alabama or something so was eager to find it and see if it still existed it was an old photograph so i came down here and located mrs young in the middle of the night and and she told me to come back the next day and she actually found the quilt under the bed she didn't even realize she had it and that was what got me started collecting down in this area and as i say it ended up on the cover of the book and and it married it being there it wasn't there for sentimental reasons it was a it was really a very major quilt a major piece of art so we're at her house now and i hope she'll be here hey miss young how are you all right glad to see you great to see you too i haven't seen you since canada when we first met on he came here to the house i didn't know him and he didn't know me she said he inquired till he find me he saw this picture on his book he said i got to find this woman here so he did find me i was scared i didn't i'm scared of this i'm a scary person no no no but he's the nicest person you know i i want to meet he didn't want to deny this but but i had to learn that i didn't know him he didn't know me and i really was you know shy you know i was shy too coming up here in the middle of the night and talking to some strange woman yeah not that you're that strange but if we had uh our election here and we was electing a mayor or a president or a senator be able to win that's how much the people love him yes he would win be able to win i call him a genius i tell you the reason why uh to take a quilt to be able to come into a community to see who i quit hanging out to be able to recognize art i believe you were led by god to come through the community we didn't know we were throwing away history we didn't know we were throwing away our art and bill came and brought all this to pass when i cut my tv on that mobile i can see quilt flash across the stream and most will make me feel good about it i see my home g's been and i could see my own people on tv i thought it would never happen via is another person in our life kophil started this whole thing for the g's being cooked now that his foundation he made did he's being quilted as many women have said and i'm sure they've said it to you they never realized that the world would respect them as human beings would respect what they did as being important and respect them would respect their culture respect their community and i'll tell you two i thought they were crazy behind all of my quips so what's wrong with this life you could say no good for nothing but when you don't know just stand back and lick and wait and see what it rained and i just shot him and waited at sea and see now what the lord undone for jesus being with so precious so blessed he was a healthy man when he first started i read he lose his head or was but thank god he's yet able to train he yet able to do god bless him keep him in his keeping key because he have open doors for the jesus being witness i became fascinated with bill arnett himself he's a mad genius he's he's an art historian who has discovered this art and become very intimately involved with the artists as do have especially his son matt we heard from milwaukee we have they have two buses we're leaving tuesday morning we're stopping for lunch in nashville there's a an exhibition of quilts from the collective in nashville we're stopping at the gallery for lunch and then we're going on to louisville and spending the night wednesday morning we leave louisville to arrive midday in milwaukee we've got the the list of women from g's bend it looks like there's 16 living quilt makers who are in the exhibit and an additional 32 quilt makers going this sweater here is for me the way when it get cool on the bus i would put this sweater here on and this one i wear when we be sitting out on the gear eating having fun laughing and talking and reading books and and i went away this outfit through tonight and these shoes go with it i don't know where we're gonna be going out to eat it you could tell me that so i could know i would put that on friday morning and this is my next dress i don't know what day it could be for me to wear this one my daughter choose this one for me to wet it down with the with the gold shoes go with them and so i picked this one here and go with jelly because i just love it it's cool and it's it's real big on me not tight or nothing he's just way good and i just love hitting for them i wouldn't i would love that for dinner but she going i got to try to dress the suit up mm-hmm it's a little too big but i'm gonna wear it anyway yeah this is my rag i'm gonna put this on my head because i'm gonna keep the rollers in because my house so easy to go back i just put this on my head when i get on the bus and i get that i just take my rollers down and then i'm set to go i gotta do something tomorrow night get my case up suitcase up and i'm ready for travel in the morning [Music] when i first was telling the women about the exhibitions that would be held and the fact that they would be able to go and they all first said well we're not going to fly because most of them don't want to fly or or haven't and so i said what about buses well yeah we'll go anywhere on a bus so they have gone on buses and i think they're going to be 70 or more going to milwaukee they be wanting me to go but i can't go that far i can't ride that for the doctor told me don't be around and cry when i go around and cry i can't sleep i can't eat loretta pettway is is one of the great quilt makers down here obviously i mean we put our quilt on the cover of the book and her picture on the back cover and we're all big fans of loretta pettway but i never liked it to queer but after i married and had a family i had no other choice because i asked people for quilts and they wouldn't give me none and so i said well i'm gonna make these the best i know how and quit them they gonna keep me my kids warm and that what i did things had really changed god had really awake miracles god wake miracles i have gas i have water i have lights i have washing machine i have frizzerate on deep freeze i used a can everything we add like peas greens okras tomato soup blackberry we had to do a lot of canning but it was rough but what lit we had we took it and made it back in the day i come up on some of it the rough time we had to pump water and i had to told at least i didn't have a pump i raised up all my children total water to cook with to wash with to take a bath in we had the hot water outside in the wash part for the take a bath and wash with it didn't have a wash boat didn't have a washing machine we had real fold i still have my root bowl my husband made that wash clean clothes too and it had been his real old i've been headed but it's still good if i happen to need it i have it when my washing machine break down i go on my real bow till i get able to get me another one i didn't have shoes to put on and around on one pair of shoes but she's had a really hard life i mean everyone's had a hard life she's had a harder life she's suffered from depression she's had some problems with her husband yeah my husband always downed me i mean him stay married for 30 years and i have a fear because i have a fear be told me and because my whole my husband treated me so bad and and i don't know how to describe it but i don't deal around me as too much there are about five or six of her quilts in the show i think she's represented with more quilts than anyone in the show and yet she won't even go and look at it [Music] we sure hope we can get her somewhere well she all the time she claims she doesn't feel right i'm good she don't feel good enough to go that's what she tell me because i actually my cousin me and her two sister children i asked about it sometimes i said well why why don't you go and be with us sometime she said well i'd be sick i ain't like you or i'm not well i don't be feeling good that's what she'll tell me and maybe with everybody chipping in to raise loretta's spirit she'll go to the show i hope so what about milwaukee would you consider going to milwaukee [Music] no [Music] here i go [Music] sugar [Music] good morning everybody and we bless the lord for being here this morning going right now lord bless them right now god that they will keep their minds stayed on jesus i think that religion is the most important part of this community [Music] i've been peace and quiet about 60-something years and then i don't know why i would continue to piece and make making quilts and peace in the quiz because god had a plan for it when i started peace and christ i just sit there and pray sometime i cry sometimes i sing and they give me joy to do that by sitting there peace in the crib to give me the joy just to sit there to sing and pray talk to the lord tell him cause he know he brought me from a long way oh jesus jesus jesus is my only [Music] friend [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh i am a minister at ye should know the truth baptist church in jesus then alabama the bible you know what he's says amen and if he curse you can't the body bless [Music] after child coming up didn't help much uh as you would say hard anything okay we was able to sing the song songs of zion that's why you may see me in my service now i'm always talking about how good god is to me where he brought us from we love you we love you this morning we love you a lot so we have 10 we can praise you enough we thank you thank you for being real thank you for being real prayer changed what's going on wrong you go to god he changed anything he trusted god for everything he believed in god he had faith that god would take care and he did you see the slaves the same that's what he get the joy from he did saying and did he sing the old slave gospel song and he was proud of their sins to be able to sing with one another that would be joy [Music] [Applause] that part of the way of living you saying you forget [Music] to make joy in the heart to bring peace to these cells and singing and praising god was the best way to get there through all of them here have enjoyed by saying and praying now we got joy up on the wall to look at it's a blessing it's a good feeling what my mother taught me to do look where he did all in texas all in new york all that movie every which way look where it ain't that's a good thing that's a blessed thing the pardon the pardon of religion here in jesus being is that every past when they when they have kids they teach their children that they should get religion so they can have religion and help them to live the true life of the law and depend on the lord to take them to help and after you have to live that life though you can't just get religion and do nothing weird you have to live a life for them [Music] me [Music] is [Music] you gotta think about the new generation coming up for the main quiz you gotta go dead cause they don't want it they don't care they don't want to work just one or two anime granddaughter they don't have time to stop and sit down and piece of green this takes time to sit down and put pieces together they just want to do what they want to do play game watch tv have all the money in the pocket get in the car boom boom boom like i said my little granddaughter she comes over she see me piecing up quilt and she'll stand up and look at me and say she wants the piece of quilt she want to learn how to piece up quilt some days i come from school but i'm gonna be back here sewing on the machine yeah i'll stay here and watch then i'll go back home now she's trying to learn you know you can't find me that won't they talk about they want to do but they ain't got time no no no we thank god that he's here and we thank god for carrying us to on this journey [Music] the the art is so full of love and patriotism and hope is very moving you know the rest of us can get cynical and angry these people of all people should be and they're not [Music] here comes the the sun i never dreamed that i would ever see the days [Music] oh thank you [Music] remember hi i'm noni hi i'm doc hey nice to meet you [Music] my name is david gordon and i'm the director of the milwaukee art museum and i wanted to and i wanted to welcome you to milwaukee is beautiful oh my god what's up beautiful here oh look at this style oh gracious face this big [Music] thanks for your coming up to milwaukee people are really excited that you're here we're going to get to the museum and let me just tell you what's going to happen tonight we'll walk in and there will be a table with name tags and you'll meet some people from the museum who will kind of be your personal host for the first hour there'll be music and you have a chance to walk into the exhibition and take a look around and just talk with people [Music] most art shows which are group shows don't have the feeling of any unity between the different artists and this show has got it which is extraordinary given that the quilts are made some are made as early as 1930s and some as late as as recent times the wonder of these isn't that they're poor or not as well educated uh that that is a a snobbish attitude i mean that more than snobbish it's a it's a closed attitude because what's what these quilts are is a level of sophistication that no art academy can teach the whole community here is the academy [Music] there's two reasons why this show is so important one is the art it's the quilts seeing the compositions the bold patterns the asymmetry these quilts are fantastic works of art what you're seeing is things that came out of the women's mind they had no influences a lot of people made connections with these works and works of modern contemporary art they didn't know barnett newman's work they didn't know joseph alper's work these designs came out of their heads and i want to make sure that we all know and give them that agency these are the artists who created this work they're not copying anybody else this came out of their soul and this came out of their heart and this is what they created second it's jesus ben the story of geez ben and the history of geez ben the stories behind these quilts are what make them talk to people the stories such as missouri petway's quilt in which she took all of the clothing that her husband owned after his death and she asked her daughter arlanzia to help her rip up the pieces of clothing and to make a quilt out of them she said i'm going to take every piece of clothing that he has and make a quilt out of it to wrap myself in when i miss him and it's such a poignant story and then you look at the quilt and realize that's everything he owned so you're really learning about the lives of these women the lives of these community well the only thing that people's head then was with dress tails and bridges like i told you you took a whole lot of pants and leg you know bridget leg and no dress tail you'll find all of that being used but that's cause that's what was available but when they took those and made things out of them it's the same as a a white artist carving marble a quilt is is like a rosetta stone there's a language to it that needs to be decoded to begin with most of the forms are abstracted from life which is what most abstract art in the world is abstraction is a is an ancient thing not a modern thing and in g's bend like in other places women's quilt patterns came from life the house top which is squares and forms within a square is actually what was first i imagine a woman lying in bed looking up at the ceiling at the rafters and the pattern they formed and making it and calling it a housetop you could lay down in your house and you had to go out those to see the stars and the clouds and this thing they express a a joy and a wonderment that makes you glad to be part of the human race and i think that's a role of art to be inspiring and these are just quilts i mean all it is is fabrics stitched together i mean think of that it's inanimate material that have that has a life force i can take you in hundreds and hundreds of old abandoned black shacks some of which predate the the 20th century and you'll see those newspapered walls that look just as good as any of cubist artists did i mean they they didn't just slap newspapers indiscriminately on the walls they made collages and then they sat down and made quilts that reflected that aesthetic mary lee bendoff is one of our exceptional women quilters here today she was born in 1935. tell me the story of the ferry because i i understand that the ferry service was cancelled because people in gene's van got a little uppity during the civil rights movement am i right yeah because of the civil right they moved the ferry that's what i said they did it because they didn't want us to become a registered voter we was going to camden every day to be become a registered voter so finally we made it and we got over there when we got over there we went to the church and when we got into church they throw tear gas on us we came out and stood there singing and praying love me you never can't jail us all oh love me you never can't jail us all okay um mary lee has her mother's prophetic dreaming tell us the story of dr martin luther king when you were you had it you had a dream that somebody important was coming it turned out to be king how did i get involved with marlon kane was a it was enough in a dream i had i had been dreaming that dream and dreaming the dream i didn't know what it was all about he helped got the people's you know ride it up that they can get something to do something on their own without depending on the white man for everything to be done the freedom quilting bee was a women's sewing co-op started by reverend walters in 1966. he had started it as a response to the criticism that the civil rights workers came but then left and didn't do anything that was lasting they just came and marched and were heard but they didn't really stay in and take the heat that they had to take when people left and had the problems of being kicked off their land or losing their jobs because they had marched or tried to register to vote first gift came from martin luther king for the building of this script yes he was footiest and that's why we named it because he was the flesh and gifts that's why we named it freedom quickly that's how he come out at night they couldn't be would be always a part of me because the first place i ever went to get a check i didn't know what checks was for myself until it could be come to and then when it couldn't become i wasn't getting paid by a chick we thought that was real money because we wasn't used to getting anything we thought it was real money and they gave us 12 a piece and waited and waited and waited four hours before i left i was getting 15 a week i think the freedom quilting be in its day was uh really noble effort to bring money to the community and to find a way of marketing their talents outside the community artistically it wasn't something that fortunately affected the creativity of the women i mean it was a cottage industry in which women came together from all the little surrounding communities and created patterns based on designs that were posted on the wall so everyone had to do the same and they had because places like bloomingdale's that were ordering these quilts and other kinds of catalog sale organization had to have a standardized product you had to make the stitches really a little in order to keep the business going because if you didn't make them stitches little in that quilt will come back and you have to keep it in a straight row the kind of quilts they made down here were not acceptable at the freedom quilting bee and the woman that you know who lives the closest to where the freedom quilt and bee was was annie mae young and they wouldn't let her work there because they said her stitches were too uneven and her work was too sloppy as it were why did they they didn't like my quilting because the stitching was too long i didn't quite need enough bomb so she stayed home made her own things and she's one of the great artists in america i loved the exhibit in new york i drove here from chicago to see it again and to and to meet the women oh it's fabulous i mean it's it's really interesting because it's like going to see a modern art show really i mean you have like abstract modernism but then you look at the people that did it and where it all came from i mean it's just fabulous it really reflects a true artist's heart and the spirit of an artist the real piece masterpieces of art you know they're amazing i'm really really amazed about this i never seen something like this thank you come on in there's a big crowd already in there this is such an honor i mean it really is to meet your family and whatnot my god [Music] we we wanted to know what the pages of jeez ben wanted themselves and what they wanted was the recognition now due to them as artists they wanted to be able to do some sightseeing and they wanted to be able to see and tonight we're able to let them sing so can i ask the white rose choir please to come to the stage [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] this is my last opportunity to say a goodbye to all of you as i said last night we we've so much enjoyed um having you and we sort of all fallen in love with each other so we have to keep this going we want you all to come back and we'll certainly be uh coming to g's bed and to see you there and um we wanted um you to have the opportunity to have a since it's sunday to for you to have a service if you wanted one before you got on the bus so if you'd like to do that i've got the opportunity thank you and you just look where he brought me from [Music] he brought me [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] from [Music] he broke me [Music] he brought me [Music] [Music] he brought [Music] [Music] and i'm so glad [Music] me [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] he [Applause] thank you i keep falling tall and through this home and race i've been stationary lord i'm coming home of this

Channel: Alabama Public Television

Views: 47,263

Rating: 4.9562244 out of 5

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Id: vQHTLn4mA7s

Length: 55min 47sec (3347 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 08 2021