Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt

Expanding upon The Quilts of Gee's Bend exhibition and its accompanying publications, Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt offers a deeper look into the women and their art, and a more focused investigation into the nature, inspirations, and future of the Gee's Bend quilt tradition. Featuring essays by scholars and by the artists themselves, this volume considers the ways that materials influence the creative process and have played a central role in the evolution of Gee's Bend quiltmaking; the significance of family and community in forging and sustaining quiltmaking practices; and the bold, improvisational aesthetic at the heart of the area's patchwork tradition, with its stunning abstract designs and highly inventive "bending" of conventional quilt geometries. Throughout the book, the underlying theme remains the "architecture of the quilt," the ways Gee's Bend quilts are conceived and built, and how they ultimately become structures that organize identity and affirm human relationships. An extraordinary yet previously unrecognized aspect of art history, the quilts of Gee's Bend epitomize the continuing need to identify and preserve neglected areas of cultural accomplishment. They open the door to new cultural understandings.