In the Press
A Gee’s Bend quilter is among the recipients of $100,000 grants honoring artists “for their unique and visionary approach” to traditional crafts.
Loretta Pettway Bennett is among five people receiving the 2026 Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft. The grant program, which has awarded up to $500,000 annually since 2018, is conducted by the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation and administered by United States Artists.
The foundation says its Awards in Craft are intended “to celebrate artists and craftspeople for their unique and visionary approach to material-based practice, stewardship of cultural traditions, and craft’s potential to connect people, places
https://www.maxwell-hanrahan.org/award/loretta-pettway-bennett
May, 2026
This small Alabama community’s festival just landed a massive global sponsor, Alabama Life and Culture, June, 2025
The Quilting Women of Gee’s Bend, PBS, June, 2025
What to Know About the Famous Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers Birmingham Times, March, 2025
Making a Gee’s Bend Quilt, the Old Way, Souls Grown Deep - Pitkin Studio, February, 2025
Gee’s Bend Quilters share their work, history at exhibit, Andalusia Star News, March, 2025
Exhibition tour with Emma Dabiri / Royal Academy of Art, London, 2024
In Gee’s Bend, Alabama, Women Are Quilting for Change, AFAR, October, 2023
Pieced Together: Mary Lee Bendolph at Nicelle Beauchene, Art In America, September, 2023
A stitch in time: the enduring influence of the Gee’s Bend quilters, The Guardian, January, 2023
A conversation with Valerie Cassell Oliver, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2022
The Airing of the Quilts: Boykin quilters celebrate centuries of tradition, Montgomery Advertiser, October, 2022
Gee’s Bend Quilting Comes Into Fashion, but How Are These Brand Partnerships Working for the Artisan Community? WWD, JUNE, 2022
The Subversive Power of Quilts: Legacy Russell on ‘The New Bend’, ArtReview, February, 2022
How the Quilts of Gee’s Bend Became Seminal Works of Modern Art, House Beautiful, September, 2021
Quilters in Gee’s Bend Alabama make quilts like their ancestors, Good Morning, America, 2021
Somewhere Else Things Are Changing, The Modernist Review, February, 2021
A ‘milestone’ moment—US National Gallery of Art acquires 40 works by Black Southern artists, The Art Newspaper, December, 2020
The Gee’s Bend quilt-makers are absolute masters of their craft, Apollo, December, 2020
Quilting from the Deep South: a lesson in creativity your way, Royal Academy of ARTS, April, 2020
The Master Quilters of Gee’s Bend, Ala., New York Times, November, 2018
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend: A Slideshow, National Endowment for the ARTS, October, 2015
Emmy-winning PBS feature film, directed and produced by Celia Carey, May, 2004.
Beverly Buchanan, Thornton Dial, and the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers, ARTFORUM, September, 2004
ART REVIEW; Jazzy Geometry, Cool Quilters, New York Times, Michael Kimmelman, November, 2002.
“They also became declarations of style, flags of independence hung to dry on wire lines for the neighbors or anyone else to see. The results, not incidentally, turn out to be some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced. Imagine Matisse and Klee (if you think I’m wildly exaggerating, see the show) arising not from rarefied Europe, but from the caramel soil of the rural South in the form of women, descendants of slaves when Gee’s Bend was a plantation. These women, closely bound by family and custom (many Benders bear the slaveowner’s name, Pettway), spent their precious spare time -- while not rearing children, chopping wood, hauling water and plowing fields -- splicing scraps of old cloth to make robust objects of amazingly refined, eccentric abstract designs.”
From the Bottomlands, Soulful Stitches, New York Times, November, 2002
Crossing Over, Los Angeles TImes, August, 1999