"Traditional and Modern: Quilts of Gee's Bend" presented by Allyson Allen

welcome there's a lot of excitement mass room it's really great we've been looking forward to this talk for some time and big thank you to all the staff here and to Alba and Holly who arranged all this lunch kept getting bigger and bigger more people calling me [Applause] [Music] and usually we do this luncheon in May and we had to switch them around because of college stuff this is in April usually this is when we do our little tiny bit of business meeting and I really just have one pretty small thing which is I will tell you me the next year's officers and board are going to be and will need to have a yay and hopefully no nays so the board who's going to continue again for next year I'll be President Beth Benjamin Marilee Howard who unfortunately was in Oregon but she manages to a great job as vice president and helps with publicity all of us Cisneros will be our secretary again although if anyone else would like to join the board it'd be secretary that the new fabulous David Shearer is our reporting treasurer and the other at-large board members Hollie Beckner Randall a Kathleen Fort Minor Kathy Garcia Marty Hartford Joyce Lamphere and Sally monastery and all in favor of having that board for another year say aye hey wait wait any knows any abstains thank you very much and we really could use a couple more board members we've lost several it's a very pleasant board we have nice meetings on the first Tuesday of the month at 10:30 here at Scripps it's fun to be at Scripps please if you're interested at all come to a meeting we have a couple more before the year is out you don't have to be voted for you could just serve with us the net is now out and if you haven't joined if you're not a member and you'd like to join fine arts foundation you can join today and your membership will go till June of 2020 so even though it's only April so yeah that's wait I think there was one more thing oh I just let you know one more thing because it's appropriate to this group next month on May 3rd the unveiling of the at mount sac the unveiling of four mosaic panels that all of us narrows has made that are paintings by my dad Carl Benjamin there's a grand unveiling at 12:30 a.m. on May 3rd in front of the art complex at may 3rd so there's some scripts tie-ins so now I'd like to bring up Holly Beckner who has really made all the arrangements for this presentation and she'll introduce Allison hello everybody my name is Holly Becker I'm new to the board and new to all of this and I have to say I just so excited it actually happened I wasn't sure last night it would you know you all mysteriously appeared it's a great thing it's my pleasure to introduce Allison Allen you know quilting is really an effective and evocative storytelling vehicle as well as a traditional woman's craft that often captures not only the unique history of a family because you're using those family's materials but also of the time in the period and historically what's going on and miss Allen who is a master african-american quilt artist and historian who focuses on the tradition of african-american quilting history and origins of movements that have followed slave era quilts and the Underground Railroad she uses her pieces as as informational art themselves so so some of her work is replicas of the historic pieces and so we get to enjoy them and learn something about the history from her artistic work as a quilter she's as I said she's a quilter she's an author a teacher an instructor a curator and she also received her BS from Oregon College of Education and received her master's and a teaching credential from USC and as a former high school English and special ed teacher currently based in Sun City her work has been exhibited all over California all over the country and in different countries as well San Jose Museum of quilted textiles Temecula Valley Museum Kellogg gallery here at Cal Poly the Ontario Museum of Art this is all locally it's been exhibited in her works been exhibited in Golden Colorado Pennsylvania Virginia New Jersey Albuquerque she has had both pieces in other exhibits and solo exhibits including one entitled Maya Angelou a phenomenal woman who exhibited throughout New England and some of her pieces move with what you folks may be familiar with our quilters the OL Mancuso quilt show which displays at different places throughout the country and she is often showed with them and has had solo exhibits including the Gee's Bend revisited she currently has an especial exhibit and stand still we rise race culture and visual conversations which is traveling and it premiered at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati Ohio and she also has an exhibit currently with called conscience conscience of the human spirit the life of Nelson Mandela it's an international traveling exhibit which is going to be premiering which is has it already premiered premiered in in South Africa she's received grants and awards and residency's from a lot of different from the LA Department of Cultural Affairs California Arts Council more than I can I first became aware of Allison's work when I went to the Ontario Art Museum art history and art museum or she was doing a program on her own quilts and historic quilts of the Underground Railroad which was just fascinating so I am just really excited and honored to introduce you to allison allen if you please welcome her thank you and it's a pleasure to be here and i'm always trying to remind myself don't say thank you ladies say thank you quilters because there may be several gentlemen in the audience who can appreciate what we're doing today too I just want to expound on what Holly started with for almost 30 years I've been teaching my quilting and handmade doll making through grants state and local grants I pretty much Emma's the typical starving artist because I apply for grants at least six times a year because the grants allow me to create my work or develop an exhibit or a project and I still own the work so with that I'm accumulating an unreasonable amount of quilts because I don't have to like other quilters may make their quilts to be able to sell them I make mine to be able to have new pieces for lectures and exhibits she mentioned mancuso a lot of you in the room who are quilters are they're quilters in the room yes so you're familiar with the Houston show which is considered the largest show in the country Houston is considered the largest show because it's two weeks long one week is called market where they have all of the vendors from all over the country that do the fabric the cutting tools the thread the scissors any of that and then the second week is a and so those vendors before they take down and leave your work in the coach show is exposed to those vendors and that's how you get a sponsor so they may see your special quilt in the show and then contact you and ask you okay I represent aurifil thread we'd like you to use our new line of thread and your quilt and that's why it's a big deal to get something in the Houston show but Mancuso national show management is the largest quilt show entity in the country Mancuso does eight national quilt shows every year for the past thirty something years I had a piece precious cargo in road to Cal in 2010 and it was at Cal Poly Pomona in 2007 after it was in a three woman show at the Korean cultural center on museum row in Los Angeles and when it was in Road to Cal Time Warner Cable sent a reporter there and asked are there any pieces in road this year that speak to black history because road to Cal is in January and Black History Month is in February and Matt and Carolyn Reese who organized wrote to Cal their mother and son at that point they had probably done wrote to Cal maybe 25 or 30 years because at least eighteen or twenty years because I think next year is their 25th year they gave Time Warner Cable my name so they're probably eight or nine hundred quilts hanging just that year in that one show but they weren't talking about quilts of zebras or people in huts or anything about something that spoke to black history so they were talking about this quilt the person from Time Warner contacted me and the interview that she did showed about ten or twelve pieces of my work so when Mancuso saw it then they contacted me and they asked me if all ten of those were available to share as a special exhibit so from 2010 every year including this year the pieces that I'm about to send mancuso has reserved special exhibit space for me and it is such a blessing in such an honor they don't ask me to send them pictures of the quilts upfront they want to know the name of the exhibit next year and how many pieces and when you get to that hey I'm still trying to get to that okay and it in 15 and 16 I was part of their faculty I did teach at oasis when they had it in Palm Springs they only had it in Palm Springs 15 and 16 and I did teach at piq F in San Jose for them they are out of Pennsylvania but piq F is their biggest show this past year my special exhibit for them was comic book icons of color the reason Mancuso reserves my space is because as Holly mentioned the Maya Angelou exhibit the comic book icons of color one year I did she rose influential women in history that was right after the London Olympics since we had so many gold medalists from countries that were women that was the most women that had gotten gold of any Olympics so each year my special exhibit is not just okay these are flowers these are butterflies these are tea cups mine is always information art I try to make each piece a teaching moment and I believe any piece of art can be a teaching moment whichever way you want to use it whether your teeth talking about your technique or you're actually talking about the subject matter this year once I got comic book icons of color back in the mail then Huston is doing quilted comics so they asked me if I would pull one of my pieces from comic book icons so they want the storm the quilt that represents the superhero storm from x-men so like I said when your work is out there then sometimes you don't even have to send it to be juried or judged into a show you have it out there and the right people are seeing it and I do about 15 different lectures and one of the lectures is get your work out there and I talk about over a dozen different ways to expose your work locally nationally and internationally and most of those ways do not even involve fees I had a piece that was travelling for three and a half years with the organization quilt for change and the exhibit was water is life clean water and the impact on women and girls and the piece that I had in that exhibit was called seven months ago and it premiered at the UN headquarters in Geneva Switzerland then it went to Rome Italy went to four different embassies in Europe before it travelled in the States and then it went to Houston as a special exhibit and it traveled with all of the mancuso shows so one show led to another just because you have a piece in one exhibit and that happened to have been an internationally traveling show that did not have an entry fee because once you're entering your work in things where they're getting not just hundreds but thousands of entries then the entity knows they don't have to charge you an entry fee because that many people are trying to send work and that was an international call for entry and they accepted 41 quilts from around the world the Nelson Mandela tribute that she spoke of once I had exhibited my quilted pages exhibit at piq F in 2012 then the woman who organized the other exhibits after that dr. Carolyn Maslow me she was in touch with someone from Oakland who saw the exhibit at piq F and I drove up to piq F and then drove back and by the time I drove back there were all these messages from California Arts Council dr. Maslow being is trying to get in touch with you Carolyn mez Lumi was the neh national heritage fellow two years ago she was recognized by the Smithsonian for organizing the most influential quilt exhibits over a 10-year period of African American quilts so she did the end still we rise exhibit that was in October when I came back from piq F she was inviting me to put a piece in and still we rise it was an American history timeline it ended up with 64 quilts and it started with the first quote me exhibit as you enter was a slave ship and it had quilts from Katrina it had quilts Trayvon Martin the Tuskegee Airmen Emmett Till it was it had a just a comprehensive timeline in quilting so the only two spaces she didn't have depicted had to do with Civil War or sooner Antebellum so I told her that I had already researched Kathie Williams and I would probably do that quilt now this is in October you know when piq f is she said well only downside I need the peace by Thanksgiving and all the quilts had to be 50 by 50 so so I'm used to working under a serious deadline because I am doing the Dozen pieces for Mancuso every year and that's above and beyond any quilt show I want to submit a piece for and that's besides okay can you put something in locally and that's even after it's so-and-so's anniversary the end of this year are you making them a quilt sound so I did two quilts one was called the runaway and it was the back of a woman and it was showing her back was lashed from being whipped as a slave and the other piece was Kathie Williams Buffalo girl and when I sent her the two images of just the two tops by Thanksgiving she picked the Kathie Williams and she said you were able to put that together I need the actual quilt by New Year's Eve but needless to say she got the quilt and it did travel with that exhibit Kathy Williams was the only documented woman in the 19th century who enlisted in the regular US Army disguised as a man women served with the US Army as cooks and laundresses but they were not enlisted in the Regular Army as soldiers only one cousin and one other individual in her same unit knew that she was a woman she served for almost three years and then it was because of the weight of the pack and camping outside she contracted pneumonia and trench foot and then at that point she had to see a doctor and that's how she was discovered and when they asked her why did she enlist in the first place she said because she wanted to be able to collect her own pension the regiment that she served out of the longest amount of time was stationed in New Mexico and she was assigned to the Buffalo Soldiers the Buffalo Soldiers many of you may know were the black units at the end of the Civil War period and they were most active actually after the Civil War because the government assigned them to fight the Indian Wars and the Indians and the African Americans had a relationship that the rest of the country did not fully understand so there is a lot of mystery behind how the Indian Wars were claimed to have been fought and settled but the Buffalo Soldiers became famous because they were the all-black regiments now any dissent of the original buffalo soldiers are the US Park Rangers all across the country in Yellowstone and Grand Canyon and whatnot the part of the first Park Rangers after the Indian Wars were the Buffalo Soldiers all over the country and their descendants are still the Rangers Kathy Williams has a mile marker in New Mexico she's a hero in New Mexico she never was able to collect her full regular pension and that's part of our real US history there were black soldiers who never were able to collect their regular full pension she was given what was called a compensation which most of the black soldiers were given and it was significantly less than what their white counterparts were paid so people have been fighting for civil rights long before the civil rights movement in this country in the 50s and 60s the other exhibit that Holly mentioned after I did and still we rise when we went to the premiere of that exhibit at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati then at that time dr. Mayes Lumi announced to us that her next exhibit was going to be the tribute to Nelson Mandela because he had just passed away earlier that year so all of the quilters that had participated in and still we rise were hearing her pretty much open call before anyone else and they had a national or international open call because they invited quilters from around the world to put something in the Nelson Mandela exhibit they accepted 33 quilts from the u.s. 33 from the u.s. 30 from South Africa and 30 from other countries I did too for that also and this is the one that I just got back two months ago it had traveled would be Nelson Mandela exhibit it premiered at Africa quilt international in Johannesburg in 2014 so I just got that back two months ago so it travelled for three and a half years something like that and the Michigan State University is the entity that does the National quilt index the National quilt index is the documentation the International documentation of historic and modern quills so all of the exhibits that Michigan State curates then they automatically are on the National quilt index but if you have a quilt that you know has already been identified as an heirloom or if you have a piece that you you know you've had appraised and it's a valuable quote that you made yourself you can apply to the National quilt index they'll send you the paperwork there's a fee for your quote to be listed but at that point it's permanently archived through Michigan State University so when I was in Cincinnati at the end still we rise premiere I was handing out cards after I went up for show-and-tell with cargo and I handed a lady a card and she gave me one back and it said she was from the Atlanta underground railroad quilt museum and I said Oh while I was making this quilt many years ago a friend of mine had a layover and she went to the Atlantic quilt museum and she met with the owners and they sent me a package and a sweet note two weeks after she was there with African fabrics and they were asking me if I could still incorporate these in the quilt in any way and while I was talking she said and Alison I addressed that envelope to you so that's the world and we've been having a lot of small world moments because just ten days ago I was chosen as the 2019 recipient of the seven degrees of inspiration grant award through the Laguna Beach Arts Alliance and the guest speaker was the actress Marcia Gay Harden and as she was coming in I was going into the dinner and I told her I was glad to meet her before the crowd came and I'm a fan of her work and whatnot and she asked me was I on the Arts Council board and I said no I'm one of the award recipients tonight for quilting and she said oh that sounds wonderful quilting can be very exciting and I didn't realize that until many many years ago when I was at a beautiful Museum in Cincinnati I said I wonder if it was the Underground Railroad Freedom Center she said yes it was what a gorgeous Museum and it really is if you've never been it is fabulous to the Getty I've been to the Louvre the Cincinnati National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is one of the most beautiful museums I have ever been to it is five stories and the front that faces the Ohio River is floor-to-ceiling glass the Cincinnati Bengals Stadium is on one side the Cincinnati Reds stadium is on the other side they're facing the Ohio River and through the windows any place you are you can see the bridge that connects Ohio to Kentucky and that part of the river is where slaves actually try to cross it is just standing in the museum you have a moment they have a fully reconstructed slave cabin inside the museum and for the quilters they have one of three of the largest pieces of quilted art in any museum and it hangs from the third story down to the second story in the open center part of the museum so the woman who created it worked on it for over 22 years she made it in like twin and queen-size sections and hooked them together to create this huge piece and then the image of the slave ship that I have on cargo that is life-size 60 feet long along one wall behind the entrance I wouldn't any place you stand in the museum you're feeling the history you're seeing the history it's it's a beautiful destination within the United States if you ever get to go so when she said this quilt exhibit made an impression on her because it was timeline in quilts and I said I wonder if it was the black quilting exhibit and still we rise she said that was it I said then you saw one of my pieces she said then I liked your work as well so so that was a small world moment - I mean that what are the odds okay I usually present the Gee's Bend lecture with more information specific to the geez ven quilters and I will give you their information but because we wanted to also tie it in where it falls in the time line of the civil rights movement in the United States then I will start with that civil rights movement timeline and as I said between apartheid in South Africa I mean quilts have been used as protest art and to bring attention to certain circumstances from slavery and before abolitionists stitched anti-slavery messages into their quilts and use the quotes as fundraisers so that they could buy supplies medical supplies and food and things to give to the slaves on the Underground Railroad the largest piece of quilted information and protest art is the names quilt for the AIDS Project and to date in the guinness book that is still considered the single largest piece of textile art ever created in the world and it's still growing in the civil rights movement that we are familiar with between the 1950s and 60s some of the most significant incidences began in the late 1940s peaked in the 50s and then to the 60s with the most recent civil unrest in 1946 the Supreme Court banned segregation on inner continental bus travels so basically Greyhound type bus travel a lot of people don't understand that that was what sparked the Freedom Riders the Freedom Riders were decades later in 1961 but the reason they were riding the buses across country was because a civil rights decision from the Supreme Court said that it was illegal to deny a person of color a ticket on a Greyhound bus and so many states were still doing it in 1948 Harry Truman issued an executive order that ended segregation in the Armed Services so even though there were black regiments like the Buffalo Soldiers during the Civil War which was a hundred years before this the Supreme Court still had to pass a law saying the armed services had to be open to people of color before the Navy the Marines the Air Force would allow black individuals to enlist that's what the movies Men of Honor and things like that are about about people in our lifetime who were still struggling to have those Supreme Court decisions upheld they were trying to enlist because it was a law that they could but no one before them was able to in 1954 the Brown versus Board of Education decision was five court cases consolidated into one that made it to the Supreme Court before it ended segregation in public schools and that determination basically stated that prior to that it was considered separate but equal' schooling but separate equal was not equal because the schools that had the predominantly students of color did not have the same facilities they did not have the same books supplies or pay for the teachers so they had larger classroom sizes and fewer graduations so these decisions in the timeline were all leading up to today and of course none of those conditions exist anywhere in the United States today right okay in 1955 the most memorable of these civil rights actions occurred and that was the Montgomery bus boycott and that was supposedly sparked by the woman they call the mother of the civil rights movement Rosa Parks but and just as an aside my mom is from Jamaica my mom of 91 is here with me today and mom came over from Jamaica to Cuba and then from Cuba to Miami and in Miami she rode the bus from Miami to Minnesota she came over at the request of an US ambassador to be a nanny for his children and for three days on the bus the Greyhound bus sitting behind the driver with a thick accent every white person there boarded the bus was complaining tell her to move to the back and mom would let in to him and they couldn't understand what she was saying even though she was speaking English and the driver had already had an encounter and decided he gave up and as long as nobody bothered her they'd make the trip this was 1951 Rosa Parks was a 1955 okay [Applause] now in the Rosa Parks incident their buses for inner city public transportation had designated I mean literally a tape line on the floor of the bus the first five rows of seats were for white passengers only then the back part of the bus it was force rose back at that time the length of the bus were for any people of color Rosa Parks had had an encounter with the same driver you know if you ride city transportation there's one set of drivers that had that regular route just like your mailman is a regular so they had had encounters before where he would rough her up and try to tell her she's supposed to move back she never sat in the white section she always sat in the first row of the colored colored section that particular day the bus was full four or five white passengers got on the drivers stood up he told the four individuals Rosa and three men sitting in the first row of the black section to move back and her quote in her biography says she was not refusing to move because she was tired she was refusing to move because she was tired of it and the three men got up they didn't want to get into it with the driver because they felt a man driver would have a tendency to really physically want to fight them as men but she refused so they call the police she wouldn't get off the bus had to pull over she wouldn't get up she stood her ground she was in the colored section when the officers came of course she was arrested there was an attorney named edy Nixon and for about two or three years prior to that with all of the other civil unrest with voting and everything else that was going on around the country he was looking for a face to be the civil rights movement and he came across several male individuals but he felt that would be too hard to sell so when this happened with a woman who was petite and soft-spoken and she was a seamstress and so he felt okay she's the face of the civil rights movement he had gotten together with several ministers and they founded the Montgomery Improvement Association it was called the MIAA and at that time dr. King was new to Alabama but he was gaining popularity so quickly because he was such an eloquent speaker you could listen to him for hours and when we use the phrase especially black people when we say oh now is church it's because the black church is dating all the way back to time of slavery that's how black people disseminated information so when you say oh now it's church or preach that means give me the news and in what everyone else thought okay they're just you know they're praying they're singing and they're just praising the Lord they were actually having meetings afterward and sharing the information that they needed to share to survive as a race in America so the churches were the places after actual church business to disseminate information especially during the civil rights movement and dr. King was asked to be the first president of the Montgomery Improvement Association so Nixon the attorney and dr. King decided why don't we print up flyers so that the day of Rosa's trial it was back then you really did get speedy trial it was five days after she was arrested they said let's print up flyers send them home with all of the school kids all of the black school kids saying that if she's found guilty we're gonna boycott the buses they did not know the success that they would have at the time and this was within five days of the news all over the papers and everything about what had happened by the day of the trial five days after she was arrested and found guilty of violating segregation laws she was instantly fired from her job as a seamstress but the following day 35,000 935,000 of the Flyers had been passed out and the Montgomery bus boycott to this date was still the single largest most successful boycott of any public system so whether you boycott the prison system or buses or the post office or whatever the Montgomery bus boycott lasted about a year and in 1956 a year later the attorneys House and dr. King's home they were both bombed they were both fire bombed parks and her family eventually moved to Detroit she died at age 92 in 2005 but Rosa Parks was the first woman to lie in state in the US Capitol when they like how they did with Senator McCain where they had them public display for everyone to be able to pay their respects who can get to that site and she was the first woman that they did that with in 2005 in 1957 ministers and civil rights leaders began to organize more protests and marches because each incident escalated the tension and the disparities and something had to be done the grant that I received from Laguna Beach it's to create an exhibit of my protest art and it will have protests quilts and journals because just like we all experienced when we were having lunch people want to touch the quilts the signs will say thank you for not touching the quilts but please write your comments in the journals so every quilt will have a journal for you to be able to write your reaction to the piece so if I have a piece about women's rights you can actually write in hey I was at the women's March in Chicago in 2017 you could whatever your reaction or response is to any of the pieces you'll be able to write them in the journal in 57 when they began to organize these different groups then that was also the same year as the incident of the Little Rock Nine where students were blocked from entering the Arkansas high school and the President had to Eisenhower at the time had to call out National Guard troops to escort the black students into the high school because it was the law that the high school was to be integrated but each state each city still had their own Sheriff or their own mayor that was running things the way they wanted to so people were still fighting for their civil rights now I'm mentioning things that are getting into the 1960s that's our lifetime this is not ancient US history this is while we were kids that that was going on in this America but nothing like that is happening now right okay in 1960 in Greensboro North Carolina that's the famous Woolworth lunch counters sit in where the students for black students from a college went into the North Carolina Woolworths the store that's Walmart now and they sat at the lunch counter and only white customers could sit at the lunch counter blacks would have to come in through the back order their food and then leave through the back they weren't sitting in to eat and it was already passed by the Supreme Court that any person entering and public eating establish was to be served if they were paying money so the reason these protests occurred were not because these black people were just trying to be aggravating and agitating and hard-headed it's because these were already laws but no one was making these cities and states abide by and enforce these laws and if these brave individuals each one before us had never stepped up and knew someone was gonna spit on them and throw a glass of water on them and try to trip them when they're walking out the door then this stuff still would not have changed the rapper jay-z a lot of people don't know that's Beyonce's husband and between the two of them they are multi-billion dollar moguls and no one handed them their first million they were self-made through the music industry jay-z has some lyrics in a song that says Martin marched so Rosa could sit so Obama could run it see people don't understand just because you don't know what the rap is saying doesn't mean it's saying something negative that song is teaching the young people listening to that song something okay in 1961 we're back to the Freedom Riders that law was enacted by the Supreme Court in 1946 but at 20 years later 25 years later black people were still not able to buy a Greyhound bus ticket in so many states so the first Freedom Riders a group of 13 college students decided if someone doesn't step up and change it it won't change so they were determined to make their first ride from Washington DC to New Orleans they were gonna ride the Greyhound bus cross country north to south just it was just so every city they would bring national attention to the fact that okay this city let us ride through peacefully this city still is not abiding by the Supreme Court decision that's a law that was the point of it the point of it was not to cause riots and caused civil unrest that was the result but the point of it was so other black people would be able to finally bribed the Greyhound bus and these young people stepped up and they knew they would encounter challenges they didn't anticipate the amount of violence and four of the original 13 were eventually killed for trying to ride the bus and riding so any of us could ride the bus that's why they did it so the Freedom Riders challenged the non enforced public bus law and it was Mother's Day 1961 when they got to Arkansas and Klan members and Aryans were waiting for the bus and they broke out the windows as the bus came through town and they threw bombs inside the bus and that's when four of them were killed 1963 Governor George Wallace was an elected governor of the state stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block the black students from coming in to register because that was going to be the first semester that black students tried to register at the University of Alabama and now okay what kind of football team would they have now okay I I just I don't understand how okay you're we're okay with you you know you could play golf with us Tiger Woods is amazing but I don't really want you to you know sit at my table and we are all human beings it's it's Wow but okay so students form a resistance and after that happens then by then President John F Kennedy they had just sinned National Guard because governor Wallace was breaking the law so Kennedy sent the National Guard to allow those students to be able to register in 63 is also the year that 25,000 people of all colors march on Washington and that was for Jobs and Freedom and that was when Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. gave his famous I have a dream speech now I will start to weave in gee spin geez man Alabama is just a little bit south of Selma and it's an isolated rural community to date in 2019 there probably fewer than 1500 permanent residents in jeez ven geez Ben was named after Joseph geez he was the major landowner he came from North Carolina and established a cotton plantation in 1816 he had 17 slaves in 1845 he sold to a distant cousin named Mark Pettway and Pettway had a hundred and two slaves Pettway marched his hundred and two slaves across five states over several weeks to get to geez bend to assume the property after the Emancipation had freed the slaves many of them they had to stay on their sharecroppers is by now as the 1930s they stayed on in the area that they knew they didn't have money to go anyplace else you're a freed slave you know gets two weeks severance or something like that and then start out someplace else so they all the community was so old within itself and isolated that it was like one big family now when you go to geez Ben today the three predominant surnames because the slaves were given the names of the white the three predominant surnames are young G's and Pettway Oh at least 75% of the people that you might meet from the G's Venn area have one of those surnames and they are not all related it's because they all got that name from two three four hundred years ago their ancestors got that surname and so that's the name that was put on every birth certificate since then within those families but what makes the community of G's been so unique so outstanding and so phenomenal around the world now is that you may have a community of very well-known quilt group or you may have a community of artists or this may be a surfing town or the community of G's been almost every single woman in the community in some way or another is affiliated with their quilting so it is even larger than a Mennonite community or an Amish community and in those communities they're doing the quilting along with the other things that are part of their necessary communal way of life in geez Ben the women are all quilters for hundreds of years and it's all of the women in the community participate in the quilting in some way it was considered an African Hamlet because it was still so out of time they didn't have running water and electricity and things like that when the geez men quilters came to national attention it was after a black man who was also an NEA national heritage fellow a man named Roland Freeman wrote a book called communion of spirits and the book was about black antiquities and black art across the country and he's a he got it for photography he's a phenomenal incredible photographer and he organized a quilt exhibit and part of the book some of the quilts from his exhibit when rolling Freeman put the book together in like 1996 or something 97 a white antiquer named a white antiquer who wrote the geez banned books oh come on it was William and Bill Arnett father and jr. he has two sons and when Arnett saw a picture in Roland Freeman's book of a woman and her granddaughter standing in front of a wood pile with two quilts over the woodpile behind them this was the quilt on the woodpile her original not mine when Arnett saw that photograph enroll in Freeman's book then our net told his sons we need to find the person who made this quilt what if there are other beautiful pieces like this in that community so no one had really heard of jees Bend outside of the people who lived around the Gees van community in Selma Alabama Gee's Bend is at the bend of the river and so that's why that's that isolated little pocket and they had a ferry that would take them from geez been cut across the river to Selma so they could shop once a month or whatever and otherwise if they had to take the road they would rideshare and the road would be more than a two-hour trip when our net saw the quilts and traveled to Gee's Bend he said I'd like to meet he took the book so I'd like to meet the lady who made this quilt and everybody in the community is very close-knit and closed off and they're saying well we don't know well you know we'll give her the message well they wouldn't tell him how to get in touch with her and she was a pet way so after two days of him asking around then finally she agreed to see him and he went to her house and he said I saw your quilt in the book and I want to buy it and she started laughing she said that old thing Zoe said what do you mean she said I don't know if I even still have it I might have burned it and he said what she said well when Moss given him we burn them to keep the moths down from out of the other ones so she reaches under a bed and pulls out a blue tarp and the quilts are all stacked on the tarp and they're under the bed in the summer months when it's too hot for a quilt they only pull out the ones are going to use and put them on the bed in the winter so she found the quilt he's looking through the whole stack that she had pulled out while she was trying to find this one he didn't know just under the bed there would be a treasure trove and this is just one person's house he said I'll give you $1,000 for that quilt she said if you're gonna give me $1,000 you can pick two more she took the check to the bank laughing and in the bank she said there's a crazy white man paying perfectly good money for all quilts so she had a meeting at her house the next day with some of her other Colton friends at least a dozen ladies came and they each brought two or three of theirs and the man I mean he had a light bulb moment him and his son said this is an exhibit of fine art and the ladies were laughing and they you know they were thing and this is just tickling us to death but he knew what he was looking at this man was a world famous antique er and historian and he and his sons traveled around the world collecting antiquities he knew what he was looking at so the first couple of G's vend exhibits were not in quilt shows cultures were turning their noses up at those quilts those crooked edges oh my goodness can't they cut a straight line but the ladies were taking apart literally taking apart clothing and when you take apart a pant leg or sleeve this is the shape so that was the shape of that edge of the quilt when they sewed that piece down the first places those quilts were shown or international galleries and museums because those people knew what they were looking at and when the quilt community is turning their noses up because they're not encrusted with Swarovski crystals and they're never supposed to land on a bed for your cat to walk on these ladies were making real utilitarian quilts they were making real quilts and they were doing them completely intuitively these were their own original designs or designs that were passed down through the women in their family and the first set of books interviewed the quilters and showed different quilts from each one the second set of books starting with the architecture of the quilt interviewed the quilters and asked them their inspirations and they would say things like well when my chores are done and I'm sitting on the porch and the Sun hits those steps a certain way and I see that shadow and I'm thinking that looks like a quilt designed to me I mean they were explaining how they literally design from their head their heart their soul they had never seen a quilt magazine never been to a quilt shop never saw a quilt show on TV and it took places like Houston and other big Paducah and whatnot big quilt show entities took there more than 10 years to catch up with the art community with these G's van quilts and since then since Arnett and Roland Freeman's book there have been three different PBS specials over three dozen books about the quilters of G's been a series of US postage stamps with the coats of Gee's Bend were issued in 2002 do you think these ladies care if we're looking at their crooked edge and this is a community that until they became world-renowned literally they did not have indoor plumbing and running water in Gee's Bend Alabama that's why they were considered such an isolated hamlet now back to our timeline in 1963 when Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. had just seen that President Kennedy had to say in national guard saw what Wallace was trying to do to block the university students by then 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama had been bombed killing four little girls and injuring over 22 people that were in a Sunday School class but that doesn't still go on in America today right I mean how what is it going to take and how long does it have to go on and this is not fake news history is something you can't make this stuff up and we should be so appalled while we are so hopeful but do we know what these people had to sacrifice for me to be your guest speaker today the President Kennedy outlines a civil rights legislation and he is killed before he can sign it into law and he's killed for going on TV saying that he's outlining civil rights legislation so the person who actually got credit for it was President Lyndon Johnson because he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act when he had to assume the presidency but he and Kennedy were on the same page with it's about time so by 1965 versus King the first its King and then Kennedy and then Malcolm X is assassinated and each of these assassinations to this day people they call it conspiracy theories but people think that the government knew there were like hits out on these individuals there were groups that were so radical that did not want this kind of change so they made sure nothing was in place yet to prevent it in Selma the march from Selma to Montgomery was to protest black voter suppression that doesn't still go on now anymore either okay the local police brutality was it was phenomenal it was historic it's still shown in museums in other countries them using the fire hoses on the protesters and whatnot that it that imagery is in other countries after the court battles then King held two more marches and finally reached Montgomery two weeks after that first Selma March was attempted he visited Gee's Bend Alabama in 1965 to invite the black community to the march in Selma when the sheriff in jeez been heard that the black people were going to try to attend that March the sheriff discontinued the ferry service so they would not be able to get to Selma this is 1965 the quilters of jeez been now this is how just like the names quilt brought attention to the world of the mistreatment of victims of AIDS victims of AIDS were being turned away from hospitals that's why the names quo project was started it was protest protest art in the quilts these individuals in G's been through quilting were becoming nationally and internationally known now in 2001 2002 2003 in 2006 the ferry was finally reinstated because the community of surrounding Alabama was so embarrassed that it was so difficult for tourists and visitors to see the area of Gee's Bend when they came to this is from 1965 to 2006 but that doesn't still happen today right that kind of Joe Arpaio sheriff punishment Oh that just wouldn't just that wouldn't go on today can you believe it we're not even just talking about in our lifetime we're talking about yesterday can't make this stuff up you can fact check me on your phone while I'm talking okay so after the Selma March like I said they were turned away the first time they tried to March that was the first week in that month two weeks later he held the March and they did reach their destination Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act to prevent literacy tests from being given before you can vote so their justification and when I say they I mean any individual who's trying to break the law that's already been established by the Supreme Court they're trying to enact voter suppression and not have people of color vote in certain parts of the country so in certain polling places you could walk in cast your vote they're polling places where they're trying to control the vote they would give you a literacy test first a reading test I can imagine it was probably Shakespeare they give you a reading test before you can cast your vote and their justification was to make sure you could understand which box you were checking when the vote was held in 1994 in South Africa that was the first free and open election of the president of South Africa in that country's history when they elected Mandela the ballot is a piece of art the ballot is about two and a half it's about two and a half feet long all in color and it had every candidates picture and then the little flag that represented their party and then their name and then a description of the community that they are from so that whatever you're looking at you could check the right box and I the ballot was like a beautiful piece of art they were selling them on infomercials after the election and people were buying the surplus ballots there's an MS small image of one on my my brother-in-law is an entertainer he's an Emmy award-winning actor and he and Roger Moore the guy who played the saint and played James Bond they were the two that were asked to do the infomercials to sell the surplus ballots after the election my sister and my brother-in-law traveled to Ghana when the bones were unearthed at a building site in New York back in like 1999 and it was all over the news they were about to put up high-rise and they unearthed a set of bones and when the bones were carbon dated they were found to be the bones of slaves of two slaves so there was a big deal in this country and in West Africa about returning the bones because of museum in New York wanted to claim them and West Africa and Ghana they said no you're returning the bones so there was a big ceremony and several celebrities were involved and they went over they did a PBS special of the returning of the bones too because in Alima castle in Ghana it's a Portuguese slave castle that still exists for tourism now it looks like a fort all concrete and whatnot a Lima castle has a concrete archway and chiseled into the archway from the 1600s it says the doorway of no return and that's the last place that the slaves were marched out of onto the ships and when my sister and brother-in-law visited because now it's a tourist destination if for history there is an there are several rules in the castle where the slaves were kept and there no taller than four feet tall so everybody in there and hunched over or be sitting and there was a concrete slide from the second-story courtyard area if you did not mark our chain then they pushed you down the concrete slide to you land on the beach but you were getting on that slave ship and my sister's walking through taking the tour crying my brother-in-law said I can't do it I just can't do it so there are parts of our history and it's our common it's our this is our American history this happened in another country but that was because of what was going on with colonial American slavery that's how we got them and there are things that we did not learn in school and I'm hoping that as adults we can use this information to let our kids and our grandkids know sacrifices have been made for you not to squander but for you to move forward with this information with your behavior and your frame of mind and the way you interact with other people in the world because one of my protest quotes for the next year's exhibit has the outline of what we would think is a Native American and it says show me your papers okay because all of us or all of our ancestors would have been considered immigrants if we're not Native Americans after the Selma March then the Voting Rights Act to ban the literacy tests then in 1968 on April 4th Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. was assassinated on the balcony of the Memphis Tennessee Lorraine Motel and all that he had accomplished he was only 39 years old when he was killed he did not make aged 40 the man who shot him James Earl Ray was convicted in 1969 he was caught and captured at Heathrow Airport in London he had already fled the country and then President Kennedy killed two months after dr. King the March before that April when he was killed the month of March he had returned to participate in the sanitation workers strike in Memphis and the reason he was in Memphis on April 4th is because on April 3rd he was giving a speech at the Mason temple church and that was the famous speech where it was like he had a prophetic Epiphany that was a speech when he said I'm not fearing any man I am happy I will get to the promised land we may not get there together but we will get there as a people he said I'm not fearing any man mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord he was giving a speech the night before he was killed I'm telling you for young people now we feel like when Michael Jackson had that interview a week before he died and he said the name of this lasts at a concerts is this is it cuz I'm in my fifties I'm not performing like this because when he performs it's all or nothing and he said the concert is called this is it and it as soon as he was killed as soon as he died we felt the same way as king after his speech saying it was like he was saying he knew that was the last time he was addressing any of his followers it's kind of prophetic Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act after dr. King's killed and then Reagan signs the King holiday bill making dr. King's birthday a national holiday in 1983 and the singer Stevie Wonder is the one who championed that legislation Stevie Wonder is the one who kept appealing to the government and sending petition after petition with thousands of signatures from each city until they made King Day a holiday and groups like the Black Panthers that organized in the 60s were considered radicals because they were so adamant about protecting the black communities but the Black Panthers were not established to be a radical organization they were established to be bodyguards and escorts for black leaders going to speak at different events because so many of the black leaders were being killed that's why the Black Panthers were started and there's so much propaganda that was put out about all the bad things the Black Panthers did and why they organized the purpose of that group was to protect black leaders in the community that would be in cut down trying to get civil rights passed after dr. King was killed his casket travelled different parts of the South especially any venue where he had spoken and two mules from Gee's Bend pulled his casket okay I'd like to share some of the Gee's Bend quilts with you some of these are as you see on the covers of some of the books and as I read off the names of the different quilters you will hear the names Pettway young over and over over and over and all of these quilts all of mine the replicas these are all smaller than any of the originals almost all the original geez ven quilts our queen and king sized quilts they were created to be utilitarian bed quilts to cover the whole bed and hang off the side that's why they were made so all of mine are to scale as far as the design and all of mine the colors like you can see from the cover of the book and then this quilt I tried to replicate if it was a light blue a dark blue light brown or orange I pick a fabric for the color not the fabric but I have the artistic liberty of using different fabrics I'll have velvet and satin and silk and linen but any of the parts of the quilt that were actually work clothes jeans or a shirt I've used real jeans or a shirt so when you walk up close and you're so careful not to touch the quilt after we're finished and we show all of them then you'll be able to see that they really are out of work clothes so I'll just walk around and read the labels off of the ones that are hanging and then if the ladies want to come up and help us with the ones we're showing and now I'll just use my outside voice oops like these how many of you have been to book on book on is the modern guild quilt show so it's almost all modern cooks and every other year it's in Pasadena and then the other years it's in Austin these this is what you'll see the images like this at cook on the quilts of G's been inspired the modern quilt movement this is called blocks big blocks and bars and the original was from about 1979 the modern quilt movement took off in about 2000 after Roland Freeman's book after our Nets first national touring Museum and gallery exhibits of the quilts of Gee's Bend those quilts were seen and young quilters 20 and 30 something were saying I can't get all those triangles those points to match like granny did but I could do this and modern quilts have been equated with a combination of Amish and mid-century modern and then traditional african-american quilting and that combination of those three things is what sparked the modern quilt movement a this one is attribute it's called lazy gal variation and it's by Arcola pet way and the original quote was from 1972 it was from 1976 and it was her interpretation of what does it look like for the Bison to you for the Bicentennial this is part of the one that you see on one of the books this one is bars and stripes and it was on the cover of Gees band the architecture of the quilt and this one was by China pet way and when I use different shades of white it's because the original coil had different shades of white they used whatever pieces they had and let me tell you it's really really easy to accidentally sew a curb line it's really hard to do it on purpose this one is called blocks and it's by China Pettway and the original quote was from 1975 every single one of these will remind you of a piece of mid-century modern art yeah yeah that's what the modern movement is face it on the quilts of Gee's Bend and the first set of modern quilters going on Douglas Stewart and writing books and doing lectures they're not giving the geez ban quilters their due and those quote modern quit movement didn't start till after the quilts of Jesus man were national this one is I have F seat fabric on the back this is house top eight block variation and this one originally was designed in 1975 by Linda Pettway and again any of these pet waves and our Young's that I name are not related that's just the common surname and mine are small to the originals the originals were all Queen and King sides okay this one is called Roman stripes a variation of the crazy quilt this is by Plummer pet Wayne and the original was from 1960 these are modern quilt there are two quilters now today they would call this rail fence like a variation of Ralph these are the replicas of the quilts of junior in hmm so when our net the white antiquer when he saw piles of quilts like this in that community he knew what he was looking at and he knew this deserved national attention and chain Fonda was one of the first people that did one of the PBS specials on the cause of Jesus death people that collect art he knew what they were looking at this one this was a sewer to that type of rail fence three in one direction three in the next direction when I was putting together the exhibit for Mancuso house when I was putting together the exhibit for Mancuso and I had several that I wanted to be able to send Mancuso contacts me they say when will it be ready Allison were sent in Phoenix and what is the dimension of the box this was still laid out on the floor the way it's supposed to go when vinick's came and I said I'm not making this a UFO so I sewed it together and cut it apart and sewed it together and cut it apart too cuz it's a the basis of a modern quilt and I call this urban scape because it looks like alleyways and apartment windows and power lines and this quilt is going to be auctioned by the Mervyn dime elite jazz and Arts Festival on April 27th to raise money for inner-city youth in the south-central community through the diamond that's the ones that Polly put in the brochure and then another one of just my modern pieces that's inspired by the coats of geez been this one has a sleeve on the top and the bottom because they can hang either way this hung in the Ontario Museum for their exhibit year before last that was called traditional goals modern and we had to take a traditional block and make it a modern quilt and explain what the inspiration was so I called this one how to get away with modern but my little brother said this Hot Wheels tracks this quilt was one of 30 quilts across the country and was invited for an exhibit last year that was a it was called G's been inspired and it was at swathmore college in Pennsylvania and they put out a national call across the country but they only accepted 30 quilts they have a book for it but I don't have the book yet I just got the quilt back but I call this mixed greens with what I lecture or I teach a workshop for the different quilt guilds or at the quilt shows people know that when they send fabric to me so many other people will get a chance to enjoy whatever I'm making so one of the Poli asked me where do I usually shop for the fabric if you see me shopping for fabric please steal my purse I cannot walk through my sewing room like this people mail me boxes of fabric and I mean it's such a blessing it's incredible this hand dyed fabric the woman who lives in Chicago was a student of mine and one of the mancuso workshops I taught in 2015 and then right after she started mailing me fabric from two quilt shops that were selling out she sent me about six different hand dyed colorways that still had the tags stapled to it twenty-five dollars a yard you don't even want to cut this but this is what you get when you do cut it so this one I call mixed greens and this is in the book that was a tribute to Gees been another one of the pieces of hand dyed that she sent me this one just got a blue ribbon in one of the shows earlier this year for innovative quilting because it features my tangle doodle quilting this one I call every now and Zen and it's another piece of the hand I'd all of my quilts people ask me do I send stuff out let's know that hang some friends like a handle to you just around the corner all of my quilts from the time I sketch on the back of a piece of junk mail until I put the label on and put it in the box I do not send anything out to be cool to them everything is on a tabletop machine now this one it's another G's been quilt this is blocks and stripes and this is by Missouri Pettway the original quilt was from 1942 when that lady designed this quilt and this quilt is like any of the modern quilts that you will see in a culture and again they used regular Cotton's they mix it a lot of polyester fabrics do I use a fabric to match the color exact when I'm creating a replica so I'm trying to match the color I'm not trying to match the fabric but it's fun to use sentence and silks because I don't care how polished a cotton is it's not going to give you the sheen of the satin or a silk and that's what makes the quilt look so completely different from the original but it is exactly the same color and everybody and these designs are the designs these ladies work just creating on their own they weren't even sketch and stuff out they just start sewing until it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then they stop okay this one you can actually see that it's a pair of black jeans in this quilt this is called stripes and this was on the cover of the book geez been quilts and beyond and this is one my one of the famous geez men quilters marylee bend off and Mary Lee bend off was one of the guests at the swathmore university exhibit where this quote was displayed so they had some jeans been quilters there to see the tribute to them this quilt you can see was from the cover of the book this one is called work clothes with a center medallion and this quilt was by Annie Young remember said the common names our pet way young and geez so Annie Mae young and it was on the cover of the book oh this is the one that was in Roland Friedman's book communion of spirits and this is the book the quilt that pretty much brought national attention to the quotes of geez Ben this is the one that was just thrown over a pile of wood behind a picture of her and her granddaughter this was on the cover of another one of the books and both of these were part of the postage stamp collection this is framed bars and stripes and the original to this one was from 1974 and again like I said it's easy to accidentally saw something crooked but it's hard when you're trying to do that so I don't know though the last one my precious cargo I brought precious cargo just to be able to share with you because this is one of my master works I only have two that I consider my master work is this one and one that I did with nine roosters on it it has over thirty five the rooster quill has over thirty five hundred needle turn appliquéd people it took about nine years and it was a commission it's not my quilt but the lady has left it to me in her will so we are lifelong friends every birthday every Christmas we all they give each other chicken leave the chicken lady when I sign her card she's the chicken lady when she signs my cards but cargo this is from an actual two different pages of a u.s. history book and from high school though this was on one page this is on another page and this page was an image from what they call a broadside or a pay bill which is like a flyer from 1769 advertising kidnapped Africans for sale and they were referred to as a cargo 2d personalized the fact that it was human beings that were being sold and while I was making this by pouring lava so cute when I see this posted over and over online and the people say I wonder where she got those little dolls yeah right so each of my little worries I have them dressed in the clothing that I cut out of the center like there's over a hundred and something links every single one is a different African fabric and the quilt was designed to be looked at from the front and the back so when you get to come up you'll see the back of the quilt is a patchwork of African fabrics and the continent of Africa and the piece on the back that's the continent it's an embossed piece of silk and it has white people on it and as a that's like Africa when I saw the fabric so it took several years to finish it but it was as I found the right fabric then I'm working on it so the links of chain there's over a hundred of those there's over a hundred in total there's more than a hundred of my why worry dolls the worry dolls originated in Guatemala and it was embroidery floss or thread wrapped around matchsticks and you're supposed to put the little doll on your pillow and tell it your troubles and you're dreaming of a solution so they recalled worried dolls I call mine why worries and they are I wrapped around wire so that they can be posed and I use jewelry lengths to create the chains and some of my worries are even pregnant so when you walk up you to see that one of my niece's she's 18 now while I'm still working on this she was about seven and she said al they took pregnant ladies I said two for the price of one baby if you couldn't run fast enough and so while I'm creating this work I am even within my own family trying to explain to them why I'm making this and that particular nice I received two grants from the state of California with her for quilting and two grants from the state of California with her older sister for quilting and whatever projects we worked on with the grant we would to their schools then we'd have a Black History Month assembly they would be able to show their work and they were telling the stories in the quotes that we created through the grants when they were sharing that with their friends at school and her older sister when we got the first grant from California in 2001 her older sister was eight at the time but she was the youngest apprentice artists at the state of California had ever funded so we've been trying to pass it off and at this point yes I wouldn't the cowboy shells are shells from Africa okay there's some glass beads on hearing some bone beads but the cowboy shells are from Africa and that was mentioning a funny story I had an exhibit in the African American Performing Arts Center in Albuquerque in 2016 it was the largest solo artist quotes exhibit for the entire year I had 64 pieces and I have over 200 quilts that's why they keep trying they can't believe I'm gonna let Diamond Lee auction one because I just won't get rid of them but I every truck show I can take two dozen quilts and even if you see my trunk show before you're seeing new quotes if it's a different lecture so the let you saw the Underground Railroad lecture these are different quotes from what she saw while I was at the African or American Performing Arts Center hey I only had two quilts roped off and one was this one just you know with the little rope yeah it's kind of emphasizing the fight is right here the sense thanks for not touching the quilt and I had the sister quilt to this fence called jumped the broom and it shows a plantation wedding scene with some more of my little worried dolls and a lady was reaching across the Rope anyway and I was fighting my limp and my sister said please don't touch it and she snatched your hand back she said I'm sorry I didn't have my glasses on and I had to take a breath because I was about to say it so were you going to frisk it like it's in Braille but I was supposed to be the gracious so my sister said al I can't believe you still have five slaves and so that was funny to me because it was like she was saying I still have five slaves but she meant she can't believe anything is still attached but this was us traveled across the country in the past ten or twelve years over and over and over so I know people that touched it I know they have but I have them on there pretty good so if you get a chance laughter and you walk up you remember to look at the back as well are there any questions yeah did you have to ask permission from the original quilters of G's faz be when you replicate Ibiza quilts no I did not for two reasons because I've not tried to sell them and because I'm giving the name of each culture as I present each one the shackled hands is that parishioners again this is supposed to represent the slaves in the Hall of the slave ships so they would have been shackled hand foot and neck cockles on the neck and hand and foot so I only have on some risks and some ankles but it would have been all three places yeah that was just because I was stitching in the number 11 million this is dished in under here and so I wanted you to kind of look so you would be able to see that and then the stitching the quilting is supposed to mimic much loss from Africa but the straight lines and the diamonds and whatnot that is my cloth yes do you know what is going on in G spend today with the joiner generation are they carrying enough any of them that are still residents of G's Ben yes they are continuing in the tradition of quilting if they remain in the community because they see that it's an important part of the area's tourist industry now - but if they're moving out of G's Ben may move out and they're living their own lives or doing whatever they're interested in or whatever they go to school for but if they remain in the community they are trying to really be a part of that and the Welcome Arnett started a foundation called the ten Willett Alliance where they have a regular sewing area space you know in a building and afford tourists to come in and watch while they're creating their work and there's a gift shop for things for sale and stuff like that yeah I'm sorry yes what the filmmaker the son of God the younger woman in her fifties to study printmaking okay what she's that's when they replicate some of the quilt designs onto postcards of t-shirts and tote bags and things like that yeah so that's why they have the equipment and everything to actually print the design and a couple of times they actually you know do an original like you would carve in the linoleum or so nice to make them from they do just real quick an original geometric that's their own design and then they use that in the printing but they're printing those things on other items that can be sold besides just quilt they're pretty much like plates to be framed or for tote bags and postcards and t-shirts and stuff like that I think we only have time for one we're actually gonna have to give up the room so we only have our one okay okay I have two questions one is you alluded to the fact that you made dolls and quills are those the dolls that you're talking I made dolls of every size you make dolls of every size okay you don't have any of your other dolls here all right the second question is our in regards to the book that was out in front and it's called the quotes of gi's bend by Rubin and I wondered if it is out of print or unavailable or that's my book and I can't tell you you don't know okay thank you oh well so whom you can find online that they even used copy [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Scripps Fine Arts Foundation

Views: 6,174

Keywords: Scripps College, Fine Arts Foundation, Claremont Colleges, Claremont, California, civil rights movement, quilting, Gee’s Bend, African-American history, quilt art, arts & culture, history, Allyson Allen

Id: -7sLiZL-lT4

Length: 96min 29sec (5789 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019