Many thanks go out to Sahara (check out her excellent blog SistahCraft) for her followup posts about the evolving Gee's Bend controversy. Although the Gee's Bend quilts come with a movie-of-the-week backstory, feel-good message and shock of the new, it's good to remind ourselves that there is a vast ocean of African-American quilters who are equally talented and amazing. One main difference between the Gee's Bend quilters and everybody else is representation. Bill Arnett plugged Gee's Bend into his modus operandi of cornering the market for artists, then trickling their work into the art world to inflate value.
Fortunately, the rest of the African-American quilting world benefits from the genius of Roland Freeman. Freeman has been collecting quilts and documenting their makers for more than thirty years. Inspired by depression-era photographers, Freemen set out to record the lives of makers when he became a research associate for the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. He is an academic with multiple books under his belt, and is a fine artist in his own right. His magnum opus (so far) is A Communion of the Spirits: African American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories, which is an exhibition (and subsequent book) documenting the breadth and depth of African American quilting.
Freeman was just awarded the 2007 Beth Lomax Hawes award by the National Endowment for the Arts. This recognition is a long overdue acknowledgment of somebody who has worked tirelessly for the art of quilting and remains a well-loved and respected figure in the community (unlike certain people recently named in a lawsuit). Freeman's foundation, the Group for Cultural Documentation, seeks to expand his efforts by spearheading multiple exhibitions and books. You can become involved by hosting their traveling exhibitions and purchasing their books and prints.
Most of all, don't forget the artistic community that surrounds you. Don't assume that other artists or scenes are more valid than your own--roll up your sleeves and document the world around you before it slips away.
