Creation Story

Dial met the quilters of Gee’s Bend in 2001, just prior to the opening of their first exhibition and subsequent rise to fame. Over the next few years, he created a number of tributes to the women and their triumph over poverty and obscurity. Creation Story commemorates the quiltmaking community with three female figures peering out from atop a swirling sea of pants. The clothing parts in this piece—replete with belt loops, buttons, pockets, seams, zippers, and flies—are scraps considered unusable by even the quilters themselves. They were sent to Dial by Mary Lee Bendolph shortly after their first meeting as a way of acknowledging their mutual affection for discarded and devalued materials. —Joanne Cubbs