emmaleap

“The women of Gee’s Bend—a small, remote, Black community in Alabama—have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces dating from the early twentieth century to the present. Resembling an inland island, Gee’s Bend is surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River. The some seven hundred or so inhabitants of this small, rural community are mostly descendants of slaves, and for generations they worked the fields belonging to the local Pettway plantation. Quiltmakers there have produced countless patchwork masterpieces beginning as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, with the oldest existing examples dating from the 1920s. Enlivened by a visual imagination that extends the expressive boundaries of the quilt genre, these astounding creations constitute a crucial chapter in the history of American art.”

https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers

1. Mary Elizabeth Kennedy.

2. Linda Pettway.

3. Vera Pettway.

4. Annette Pettway.

5. Sweet T. Pettway.

Two Heads, Peter Max, 1972, Brooklyn Museum: Contemporary Art

Size: 14 x 20 in. (35.6 x 50.8 cm) Medium: Pastel, crayon and ink on board

Untitled, from 'Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il volto' ('There Are No Hands To Caress My Face'), Senigallia, Italia, 1961-1963