1928–2006

Ruth Pettway Mosely

About

One of three quiltmaking daughters of Mary Ann Bendolph Pettway and Tom O. Pettway (the others being Lucy T. “Lunky” Pettway and Revil Mosely), Ruth grew up in the Sodom neighborhood of Gee's Bend, moving to the Pettway neighborhood when she married Wisdom Mosely Jr. Her work is in the permanent collections of the RISD Museum and the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.

My mother taught me how to quilt. I used to make my dolls’ clothes. People didn’t have too much material then. And so whatever you found to sew with, if it wasn’t nothing but a flour sack, you sew that together. The first quilt I ever made, Mama left some strips there, and some of the pieces were an inch wide, and I just took those little strings and watched her. I sewed one just like she was sewing hers. And that’s the way I learned how to quilt, from her scraps. Sometimes I cut the pattern I want and I built it just like a "Housetop." Just like folks put shingles on a house, that’s the way I have it lined up. I enjoyed it. My daddy used to go to Camden and he would get all the material he could and bring home for Mama to make quilts where we could keep warm in the winter.

My mama died kind of early, so I would go over to Aunt Arie’s [Arie Pettway] house sometimes. She would make all kinds of quilts. She would give me one block. She would say, "When you come back up here, you better have more than one block made." And so I did.

Publications

Creation Story: Gee's Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial

Creation Story explores parallels and intersections in the works of Dial and his fellow Alabamians, the remarkable quilters of Gee’s Bend. In the tradition of African American cemetery constructions and yard art, these artists harness the tactile properties and symbolic associations of cast-off materials in creating an art of profound beauty and evocative power.

Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt

This book and exhibition are part of a growing family of research projects about the African American community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, and its quilts. Surrounded on three sides by a river, Gee’s Bend developed a distinctive local culture and quilt design aesthetic. In 2002 the inaugural exhibition The Quilts of Gee’s Bend documented these quiltmaking achievements. Expanding upon that initial exhibition and its accompanying publications, Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt offers a deeper look into the women and their art, and a more focused investigation into the nature and inspirations—and future—of the Gee’s Bend quilt tradition.

Gee's Bend: The Women and Their Quilts

Gee’s Bend quilts carry forward an old and proud tradition of textiles made for home and family. They represent only a part of the rich body of African American quilts. But they are in a league by themselves. Few other places can boast the extent of Gee’s Bend’s artistic achievement, the result of both geographical isolation and an unusual degree of cultural continuity. In few places elsewhere have works been found by three and sometimes four generations of women in the same family, or works that bear witness to visual conversations among community quilting groups and lineages. Gee’s Bend’s art also stands out for its flair—quilts composed boldly and improvisationally, in geometries that transform recycled work clothes and dresses, feed sacks, and fabric remnants.

Exhibitions

Creation Story: Gee's Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial

Frist Center for the Visual Arts

May 25 - September 2, 2012

This exhibition explores parallels and intersections in the works of the world-famous Gee’s Bend quilters and the master of assemblage art, Thornton Dial. Quilts made by the women of Gee’s Bend feature a sophisticated orchestration of color and eccentric quasi-geometric shapes composing what the New York Times has said are “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.”

Media

The Quiltmakers of Gee's Bend

This uplifting, Emmy-winning PBS film tells the modern-day "Cinderalla" story of the quiltmakers of Gee's Bend, Alabama. Artists born into extreme poverty, they live to see their quilts hailed by a The New York Times art critic as "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced."