Beautiful new stamps commemmorating the Quilts of Gee's Bend are now available from the United States Postal Service.
The Quilts of Gee's Bend represent a bit of a Cinderella story in the art world. An art professional sees the free-form quilts made by a group of poor women of rural Alabama. He is blown away by their graphic impact. Long story short--the quilts are exhibited at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, receiving rave reviews. Since then, the quilts have received great acclaim in the United States and internationally.
As stamp images, they enter the iconography of the nation in a unique way. It's meaningful on so many levels--they celebrate art, they celebrate quilting and other home crafts often dismissed as lowly, they celebrate the women who made them, the worth of beautifying one's surroundings, and the unlimited possibilities of making beauty from whatever is available to you. All it takes is vision and imagination.
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