Gee's Bend Quilters on Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series and Exhibition

Members of the famed Gee's Bend Quilters Collective from Gee's Bend, Alabama, will give a lecture Saturday, March 4, at 7 pm at the Oakland Marriott, accompanied by an exhibition of 30 quilts March 3-25 at the Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland. The events are organized by the Oakland-based Martin Luther King Jr Freedom Center in partnership with Peralta Community College District and Joyce Gordon Gallery. Quilters featured will be Ms. Mary Ann Pettway, Executive Director of the Gee's Bend Quilters Collective, and Ms. China Pettway and Ms. Julia Pettway. In addition to the lecture and exhibition, the Pettways will give in-school presentations at area high schools discussing the history of quilting and the central role culture plays in preserving and protecting democracy. Admission to the lecture, presented as part of the popular Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series, is free with registration by calling the Freedom Center at (510) 434-3988. 

Joyce Gordon Gallery is located at 406 14th Street in downtown Oakland and is open to the public Wednesday through Friday 11 am-6 pm and Saturday 1-4 pm. An exhibition catalog is available.

About The Quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama 

The quilters of Gee's Bend, a small town in rural Alabama, are internationally known as culture-bearers of a tradition that dates back to slavery and before. Their quilts—works of supreme and sublime craftsmanship, design, utility and art—are artifacts that stand witness to generations of challenge and triumph. They tell -- and prompt -- stories of the singular importance of community work in unifying and lifting up. They memorialize beloved community and the beloved, whose clothing is tenderly worked into captivating geometric patterns and artistry passed from Mother to Daughter to Granddaughter and Grandson and beyond. Because of the quilters' organizing and work, the stories of Black history and the power of collective and intergenerational collaboration have spread far beyond the town limits of Gee's Bend. The legacy of the quilters of Gee's Bend has a rightful place at the center of the rich traditions of African American visual art, literature, music, dance and craft that indelibly define and celebrate American culture. 
 

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