Arlonzia Pettway

How I Got Over

Arlonzia Pettway, now 84, is one of the quiltmakers from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend,” an exhibition of 70 quilts by 46 quiltmakers that has been touring major art museums of America – the Whitney Museum of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and others – was organized by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and with the Tinwood Alliance in 2002. The modern abstract aesthetic qualities of the quilts in the exhibit stunned art critics. Michael Kimmelman, art critic of The New York Times called the quilts “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.”

How is it possible for these descendants of slaves living in an isolated, poverty-stricken hamlet in southern Alabama to create, without artifice or formal art school, such beautiful works of art? What is their secret?

A day in the life of Arlonzia Pettway in Do Not Go Gently provides some of the answers. Quilting was born out of the necessity for warmth and was crafted with the remains of worn out, old work-clothes and scraps of fabrics. Arlonzia learned quilting from her mother Missouri, who learned from her grandmother, who learned from her great-grandmother, who was a slave girl and quilted to keep the wind and dust from blowing through cracks in the homes. Nothing is more natural to the elderly quilters in Gee’s Bend than to lie in bed and think about the next day’s quilts, then get up and make those quilts. Entire days in Gee’s Bend hum with the activity of thinking about, talking about, and making quilts. The Nutrition Center in Gee’s Bend, where seniors can reliably get a meal every day, has become a drop-in center for quilters, many of whom are eager to learn from the eldest quilters like Arlonzia.

For four generations quilting was a collective enterprise, often a social activity, undertaken only after long days of labor-intensive agricultural fieldwork. Quilting was often accompanied by the singing of hymns. While economic scarcity speaks to the formal designs and materials used for quilting, a deep spirituality and strong social and cultural bonds nurtured their artistic development. The limited material resources in the Gee’s Bend community provide a foundation for minimalism in design. Yet like their contemporaries, minimalist artists exhibiting in New York galleries, they create within the rules of their aesthetic vision, working out countless intensely personal variations of geometric, horizontal and vertical designs and colors so that no two quilts will be the same.

The segment about Arlonzia also has appearances from quilters Annie Mae Young, Mary Lee Bendolph, and Nettie Young, who will be 90 this June.

What she is doing now

In the summer of 2006, Arlonzia had a stroke and has lost the use of the right side of her body and her ability to communicate clearly. She is recovering slowly at an assisted living facility in Atlanta, Georgia. Messages can be sent to her via the Talkback section of this website. 

To see the current exhibit

Gee´s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt
originating at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, June 4 – September 4, 2006

• Indianapolis Museum of Art,
  October 8–December 31, 2006
• Orlando Museum of Art,
  January 28–May 13, 2007
• The Walters Art Museum,
  June 17–August 26, 2007
• Tacoma Museum of Art,
  September 22–December 9, 2007
• The Speed Art Museum,
  January 2–March 23, 2008
• Denver Museum of Art,
  April 13–July 6, 2008
• Philadelphia Museum of Art,
  August 2–October 2, 2008

To get the music

How We Got Over: Sacred Songs of Gee’s Bend produced by Tinwood Media
available online and at museums on the tour

“Sinner Don’t You Know” by Robert Peter Williams is from the Album When a Man Takes the Blues distributed by Arhoolie Records