A legacy woven by hand, the quilts have been embraced by the modern art world and featured in museums across the country, but little is known about the women who make them and the challenges they have faced.

The film reveals the varying opinions on the women’s growing status as leaders in the textile art world and canon of American art history. Most of the women base their celebrated works of art on the traditions passed down by their foremothers, which, for many, is their earliest memory. The simplicity of life in Gee’s Bend is what makes it the perfect backdrop for cultivating artists, as the women use the land and people of the community as their muse.

The majority of the residents of Gee’s Bend are African American; a large portion are direct descendants of formerly enslaved people who once worked the plantations of the surrounding area. “One of the things that is so amazing and unique about Gee’s Bend is that the people have stayed on the land (since enslavement), which allowed for the continuity of their aesthetic practice and transference of skills from mother to daughter. It was a community that was bound together historically through being able to purchase and retain their land,” said Raina Lampkins-Fielder, curator of Souls Grown Deep, an artists’ advocacy organization representing the Gee’s Bend artists.

THE QUILTING WOMEN OF GEE’S BEND also delves into the highs and lows experienced in the rural Black Belt community. The guiding voices of the film, Caster Pettway, Stella-Mae Pettway, and Loretta Pettway Bennett, recount the unincorporated town’s own involvement with the Civil Rights Movement and the rise and fall of industry in Gee’s Bend. The film is a story that goes beyond the beauty of the quilts, as it highlights the beauty of the land, the warmth of the people, and their collective spirit of tenacity.