Mary Lee Bendolph

Fourteen

2014

Although she is among the best known of Alabama’s famed Gee’s Bend quilters, influential textile artist Mary Lee Bendolph is also regarded as an icon of American folk art. Using bold-colored strips of discarded cloth in the richly kaleidoscopic and dazzling geometric patterns that define her work, Mary Lee Bendolph created extraordinary quilts that represent a tradition of Deep South quiltmaking that stretches back generations.

Bendolph was born in 1935, the seventh of 17 children, in Gee’s Bend (now Boykin), a geographically isolated community located in a remote bend of the Alabama River. In the early 19th century, Gee’s Bend was populated by enslaved laborers, tenant farmers and sharecroppers. It wasn’t until the Great Depression and the 1940s that the residents could be free landowners under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. 

Like many of the young girls living in Gee’s Bend, Bendolph learned quiltmaking from her mother at the age of 12. While she continued quilting throughout her adulthood, Bendolph was dedicated mainly to looking after her family and working as a professional seamstress. 

Bendolph participated in events related to the struggle for Civil Rights during the 1960s, marching to Camden in 1965 after Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to Gee’s Bend. In 1968, she also briefly worked for the Freedom Quilting Bee, a community-led cooperative that organized quilters and saw them forging commercial partnerships and earning museum exhibitions. Decades later, in 1999, Bendolph’s story of life in Gee’s Bend was featured in “Crossing Over,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning story in the Los Angeles Times. While she had stopped quilting by the 1990s, Bendolph’s passion was renewed in 2002 after seeing the critically acclaimed exhibition “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Bendolph’s quilts are characterized by her use of strong colors, abstract arrangements and rhythmic yet unpredictable patterns. In addition to quiltmaking, Bendolph has also experimented with printmaking, producing limited-edition, intaglio abstract prints such as Lonnie’s Flag, Fields and Snaggletooth.

During the 2000s, Bendolph’s quilts and prints were the subject of exhibitions throughout the United States such as “Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee’s Bend Quilts and Beyond” at the Austin Museum of Art from 2007 to 2010. More exhibitions have been staged at Turner Contemporary, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. 

Bendolph’s quilts are also found in numerous public collections including the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art and the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.

On 1stDibs, find a range of Mary Lee Bendolph prints and other art.