2005

Blocks, Strips, Strings, and Half Squares

Mary Lee Bendolph

American, born 1935

The women of Gee’s Bend, a small rural Black community in Alabama of about seven hundred residents, have been creating bold, visually distinctive quilts since at least the 1920s.

In early summer 2005, Mary Lee Bendolph and her daughter-in-law Louisiana P. Bendolph spent two weeks at Paulson Press in Berkeley, California, making fine-art prints. Mary Lee based her prints on quilts she had made, and after returning home she made quilts inspired by the prints. Her intaglio print Mama’s Song inspired this quilt with wedge-shaped "strings" rhythmically connecting strips, blocks, and half squares.