"Stacked Bricks" in columns with borders on two sides (Primary Title)

I got into quilting ‘cause my mama used to be piecing quilts . . . and I started to helping her, sometime up to nine or ten at night.

—Nell Hall Williams

 Nell Hall Williams was born near Gee’s Bend, where her mother, Pearlie Hall, was raised. Before she reached her teenage years, Williams was making her quilts from cast-off clothing and bleached flour sacks. After amassing a number of quilts as an adult, Williams lost most of them in a house fire. This quilt is one of the few remaining from this early period of the artist’s life. In her use of the “Stacked Bricks” pattern, Williams plays upon the silk’s lush texture to generate maximum visual effect. The composition of this work clearly displays her knowledge of color dynamics. Williams’s bold use of geometric forms brings a sense of improvisational movement to the work and offers a great visual exchange with Donald Judd’s Meter Boxes, seen to the left of this quilt.

Gee’s Bend, later named Boykin, is located southwest of Selma, in a rural region of the state. Bound on three sides by the Alabama River, Gee’s Bend was once home to numerous cotton plantations named after their owners, including Gee, Bennett, Pettway, and Irby. Many of the quilters were and are direct descendants of enslaved Africans who took the surname of these plantation owners. Living in unheated shacks, Gee’s Bend women made quilts for warmth and utility. Drawing upon aesthetic legacies, creative vision, and patterns from the world around them, these quilters have constructed some of the most iconic textiles of the African American South.