PROJECTS ARCHIVE

GEE'S BEND QUILT PROJECT
Collaborating Service Organization: Kentwood Communities in Schools
Instructor: Emily Soldin Howard

Gee’s Bend is a small rural community in Alabama. Founded in antebellum times, it was the site of cotton plantations, primarily the lands of Joseph Gee and his relative Mark Pettway, who bought the Gee estate in 1850. After the Civil War, the freed slaves took the name Pettway, became tenant farmers for the Pettway family, and founded an all-black community nearly isolated from the surrounding world.

The town’s women developed a distinctive and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. The women of Gee’s Bend have passed down this quilting tradition for more than six generations. Major exhibitions have been organized bringing the Gee’s Bend quilts and the quilters themselves international acclaim.

Using found materials and fabric scraps, Emily Soldin Howard lead youths through a quilting project based on the Gee’s Bend tradition. The students learned about the Gee’s Bend community and quilting tradition, and compared the quilt designs to American abstract expressionism. The students learned about patterns, cutting and stitching fabric, quilting, and installation of the final work.

The students collaborated to design and create one large work of art. In addition, each participant had the opportunity to create their own mini quilt which they then made into a pillow or purse. The final collaboration will be exhibited at Artspace and around the community (including at the Municipal Building) before finding a permanent home at the service organization.

Emily Soldin Howard enjoys mixed media surface design techniques, incorporating printing, stamping, and various transfer methods in her batik work. She graduated from Meredith College in 2001 with a degree in Studio Art, concentrating in Surface Design and she is currently working on her teaching licensure. Emily spent a summer studying printmaking in Florence, Italy, and acquired an internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy. Most recently Emily has worked as a studio assistant at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and has taught art in the after school program at the Boys and Girls Club.