Mary Lee Bendolph (b. 1935), "Housetop variation" (detail), 1998
Cotton corduroy, twill, assorted polyesters, 72 x 76 in.; The Phillips Collection, Museum purchase and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
In the early 1990s, a former Bend resident living in Bridgeport, Connecticut, sent some garments—double-knit leisure suits—to Gee's Bend. Mary Lee Bendolph remembers: "My sister-in-law's daughter sent those clothes down here and told me to give them away, but didn't nobody want them. That knit stuff, clothes from way back yonder, don't nobody wear no more, and the pants was all bell-bottom. We ain't that out-of-style down here. I was going to take them to the Salvation Army but didn't have to way to get there, so I just made quilts out of them.” This is one of ten Gee's Bend quilts to appear on a U.S. postage stamp in 2006.
Here the focus is on the inherent design elements and abstract imagery in the quilts rather than as finished objects.
