“All Over the News”
by Laura Petrovich-Cheney
CONVERSATIONS WITH GEE’S BEND
Artists Inspire Artists
“Conversations with Gee’s Bend” exhibits May 25th – Sept. 3, 2018 at San Juan Islands Museum of Art. Fifteen years ago an astounding exhibit of quilts made by women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama toured the country. Everywhere, people responded in awe to the quilts, their improvisational designs, bold colors and narrative they told. The rural Alabama community was left alone, geographically and from outside influences and judgement, to hand down their traditions, quilt by quilt, generation by generation. The women were not considered artists, by society’s standards, their materials were often nothing more than worn out clothes. The women of Gee’s Bend succeeded in creating masterpieces of art, telling their stories of great poverty, civil rights, their faith and pride in their African Heritage. Quilts made out of necessity, from nothing, became something enduring and beautiful.
Many of those in awe were working artists. Our exhibit poses questions, how are contemporary artists in conversation with the Gee’s Bend quilts? One artist is a hurricane survivor who uses salvaged building materials to create wooden textiles. Another artist uses clothes to create a textile full of grief and healing. Using electric filaments woven into fabric to create an electronic light animation into her work is another example of an artist’s expression. Our contemporary artists work across a variety of media, some traditional, some unconventional. What they all have in common is a particular aesthetic, a direct response to the quilts, where artists inspire artists. The women of Gee’s Bend have inspired artists across the country to speak through their work, a visual dialog, a Conversation with Gee’s Bend.
Recognition of CWGB sponsors:
Dave and Nancy Honeywell Charitable Trust, Town of Friday Harbor, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Maryanne Tagney Jones Family Fund, Peg Gerlock and Phil Johnson, Kim Miller
Additional sponsors:
Kenmore Air, Tom and Barbara Cable, Margaret Greene, David and Valerie Kelley F/V Arrow, Bill and Susan Potts, Funk and Junk Antiques, Greg Kucera Gallery, Printonyx, Harbor Rental, Café Demeter, Sharon Lannon, Christine Leiren Mower, Margaret and Scotty Green, Cindy Pigott, Deirdre Morris, Mike’s Wine Bar and Café
Serge Attukwei Clottey
Courtesy of the Jane Lombard Gallery of New York
Courtesy of the Jane Lombard Gallery of New York and the artist, Sege Attukwei Clottey, Ghana
From the Guardian
From Vogue:
Jylian Gustlin
Entropy
Jylian Gustlin is a native Californian and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. She has been shaped by the technology explosion of Silicon Valley and her art reflects her in-depth knowledge of technology.
“I knew that if I finished, I would never make art” is how Jylian Gustlin explains leaving college one semester short of a degree in computer science and mathematics to attend the Academy of Art College, San Francisco. After completing her BFA, Jylian fused her understanding of computers and her passion for art to became a graphics programmer for Apple Computer, Inc. Now, Jylian uniquely combines the effects of modern technology with traditional techniques. While painting in acrylic and oil paints, her artwork often conveys the same complex layered effects possible in computer programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Just as she challenged the creative limitations of the latest computer software, Gustlin experiments with a variety of materials to discover their effects. Working with two-part epoxy resin, oil and acrylic paints, charcoal, wax, gold leaf, pastel and graphite on board, Gustlin draws, paints, scratches on her surfaces.
For the last several years, Jylian has been working on a series of paintings, both abstract and representational, that are based on the Fibonacci mathematical theories. She continues to explore science and mathematics and how it intersects with the arts.
http://www.jyliangustlin.com/
Melissa Alverinos
My Brother’s Jeans
Modern Quilt Guild
The denim in this quilt is from my brother Michael’s work jeans, which I rescued from the dumpster after his suicide in 2009. I’m OK talking about it and it’s important to do so. There is still such a stigma around suicide and depression so I try to do my part to make it approachable and not scary. I didn’t intend for the quilt to be a statement. I am just open about stuff and it would have been weird to not say where the jeans were from. I don’t think all quilts, or all modern quilts, need to have a story to be beautiful or powerful, but when they do intrinsically have a story, why not tell it?
Instead of choosing the ‘good’ parts of the jeans, I was more drawn to the stained and the torn parts. I’m a lifelong artist and maker so I come to sewing with a different background from many quilters. I use fabric, thread and a sewing machine like I use any other medium. I work from my heart and see what happens. When I paint, I don’t draw it out first—I just dive in with my colors and brushes and see what comes up. I quilt the same way. I love improv piecing, it’s the only kind I do. Following a pattern is not fun for me. I’m in it for the process of figuring out how to make it as I go and seeing what happens naturally. We all quilt for different reasons and they are all valid. We should make the quilts we want to make, and respect other quilters for doing the same.
I improvisationally pieced the crosses, which resemble a variation on the traditional nine patch. Grid quilting creates echoes of the cross motif, as well as references my brother’s work as a tile installer. This quilt was a joy to work on, as I love worn materials and find beauty in forgotten and discarded things.
As with my paintings, I’m not concerned with perfection—which is why it never occurred to me that I would win any quilting awards
Melissa’s quilt, My Brother’s Jeans was honored as Best in Show at QuiltCon 2016.
http://www.melissaaverinos.com
Aquatints
(one of several exhibited)
Artist: Mary Lee Bendolph
“I can walk outside and look around in the yard and see ideas all around the front and back of my house. ” The seventh of sixteen children, Mary Lee Bendolph has spent her entire life in Gee’s Bend. She learned how to quilt from her mother, Aolar. Bendolph gave birth to her first child at age fourteen, which prevented her from attending school beyond sixth grade. She married Rubin Bendolph in 1955 and their family grew to include eight children. Over the years, she has worked in a variety of textile-related jobs, mostly making army uniforms. Since retiring in 1992, Bendolph has found more time to quilt. She gathers design ideas by looking at the world around her. Anything—from people’s clothes at church, to her barn, to quilts hanging on clotheslines in front yards, to how the land looks when she’s high above it in an airplane—can inspire her. For her materials, she prefers fabric cut from used clothing because it avoids wastefulness and because she appreciates the “love and spirit” in old cloth.
Artist: Loretta P. Bennett
“I came to realize that my mother, her mother, my aunts, and all the others from Gee’s Bend had sewn the foundation, and all I had to do now was thread my own needle and piece a quilt together. ” Loretta P. Bennett is the great-great-granddaughter of Dinah Miller, a woman who was brought to Alabama from Africa as a slave in 1859. As a child, Bennett picked cotton and other crops. She attended school in Gee’s Bend until seventh grade, when she was bused to high schools that were a two-hour drive away. Bennett was introduced to sewing around age five by her mother, Quinnie, who worked at the Freedom Quilting Bee, a sewing cooperative established in 1966 in the nearby neighborhood of Rehoboth.
Artist: Louisiana Bendolph
Until she was sixteen, Louisiana Bendolph worked in the fields from sunup to sundown every day of the week except Sunday, when she went to church with her family. She and her husband Albert (whose mother is Mary Lee Bendolph) moved from Gee’s Bend to Mobile, Alabama, in 1980, though she considers Gee’s Bend her home. She made quilts intermittently throughout her life, at times using patterns from books. However, she had not quilted for many years when she went to the 2002 opening of The Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibition inspired her to return to quilt-making. She said, “When I was coming back from Houston…I started having visions of quilts…So I got a pencil and a piece of paper and drew them out. Finally I decided that I would get some fabric and make a quilt…The images wouldn’t go away…And I’ve kept on doing it because those images won’t leave me alone.”
Laura Petrovich-Cheney
Chicks and Hens
“After Hurricane Sandy devastated the New Jersey coastline, I began collecting remains left behind in its wake, floorboards, window frames, cabinets, furniture, exterior siding, anything that I could find that evoked life before the storm.”
Laura’s art continues to be inspired by quilt designs, designs that are familiar and comforting. She creates new relationships between color, proportions and textures, and does not interfere with original surfaces. She says, “The faded colors and tattered wood are glimpses into the past.”
Laura’s webpage:
http://www.lauracheney.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=34613&Akey=R457VCH7&ajx=1
