Month: June 2007

This coming weekend is the Folk Life Festival at Black Belt Treasures in Camden, Alabama. They’re going to have carvers, potters, basket makers, quilters, other artists, and Kathryn Tucker Windham there to tell stories (more about it here)! I would do just about anything to be able to go…

One of the other nice things about the festival is that the ferry is operating between Camden and Boykin/Gee’s Bend now, so if you like, you can take it over and visit the quilters (and their shop)!

Seeing that Kathryn Tucker Windham is going to be at the festival got me looking to see if she has released any new books – so I went to Amazon and noticed that she has a set of audio recordings. I don’t think they’re new recordings, but they’re **wonderful** – they’re available here at audible.com which is in some kind of partnership with Amazon. If you go to the link for audible.com, they have several minutes of each recording that can be listened to for free.

I’m downloading them to my iPod and will also burn them on CDs so I can play them in the nursery to the little one! They are all clean and simple stories, spoken by Kathryn, perfect for us to listen to in the rocking chair. Soooo nice.

Oh! And the print that we got at Black Belt Treasures is back from the framer – it looks great (better than in this pic) and is in the same shade mahogany wood as the rest of the furniture in the nursery.

It seems like every weekend there is a new story and a new case against Tinwood over the Gee’s Bend quilts. This weekend, there was another story in the Mobile paper (here) about how Lucinda Pettway Franklin charges that the Arnetts (Tinwood) took the two oldest quilts from the community and won’t give them back.

Here are some bits from the article:

The quilts, more than 100 years old, were made by Franklin’s great-grandmother, Sally Pettway, from worn-out slave clothes and bits of fine fabric cast off from Pettway’s masters while she was still a slave.

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Franklin said Matt Arnett came to her home in Mobile and asked to borrow the quilts for one month so they could be photographed and included in a book about quilts. She remembered he became very excited when he saw the quilts for the first time.

That was two years ago. Since that time, Franklin said, Arnett has told her the quilts were destroyed in a fire, accidentally thrown away, ruined in a flood, lost or on his desk ready to be mailed to her.

The quilts are thought to be worth as much as $100,000 apiece.

Franklin said the slave-era quilts were stitched together with a rough, crude thread, about the only thing available, even in the years after the slaves were freed. Silk and satin bits discarded by the slave owners served as stuffing because the expensive fabrics were warmer than cotton.

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“It was trash to the master, silk dresses and such. They’d have the slave-wear on top (of the quilt), you know, their old clothes, but then underneath, inside, where the stitches had broken out, you’d see this rich material in between the rags,” Franklin said. “It gives you chills.

“Here goes a person, who might have worked in a field for 15 hours, and then had to come and sit on that dirt floor and try to get those children to bed and work on that quilt to keep them warm. Stuff these pieces of underwear and other things into these little quilt pockets for warmth. … To see that beautiful piece of material peeking out of those old rags, that’s it right there. It’s like looking in a rusty old can and seeing some diamonds.”

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“This is us, rough and suffering and all this pain on the outside, but then inside, it’s this beautiful material,” Franklin said. “If I was missing my mama, I’d snuggle up in a chair with her, with her quilt. I was just loaning (Matt) some memories. I wasn’t selling anything. I just want my quilts back.”

………………….
All this time I have really been hoping this was a huge misunderstanding, but when you read something like “…Arnett has told her the quilts were destroyed in a fire, accidentally thrown away, ruined in a flood, lost or on his desk ready to be mailed to her“……

There’s a really great set of short videos on YouTube of some of the Gee’s Bend quilters (Revil Mosely, Loretta Pettway, Louisiana Bendolph, and Mary Lee Bendolph).

A video of Myrtice West (looove her – one of her paintings of Moses and the Ten Commandments is going in the nursery!) is here.

Av and I stayed the night at the Hilton in Baton Rouge so he could have some meetings in the city the next morning. The hotel is in a renovated building, and while our room was a little small, it was decorated nicely:

Our stay was just fine. I forgot to take a pic of the view of the river from our room, but we ate lunch at the Camelot Club, which is on the top floor of the Chase building downtown, and this is the view of the Mississippi from there. The white building closest to the river is the Hilton:

This is the interior at the Camelot Club – lunch there was nice:

The next time we’re in Baton Rouge, I’d love to go inside the capitol buildings and see more of LSU’s campus.

Av made us reservations for the jazz brunch at Commander’s Palace:

Ohmygoodness it was so fantastic! We had a really great time and it was so much fun to get dressed nicely and spend time together in the morning while listening to the jazz group!

I started with the blackberry pain perdue (soooo good), and Av had the demi cups of turtle, gumbo, and sweet potato soup:

Av’s entree was the pecan crusted fish which he loved:

…and I had the poached duck egg over duck and pecan griddle cakes (terrific!):

Dessert comes with the meal, so Av got the Creole cream cheesecake. I’ve made it (recipe and pics here) but honestly this one was even fluffier/lighter. Av’s mint julep is here too:

I had the bread pudding souffle – nice:

We were seated in the patio room – and this is the jazz group that performed. When they came to our table, we chatted for a bit and when they found out that we were expecting, they played “S’wonderful” for us (which was really great! We even chimed in with them a bit when the part of the song repeats s’wonderful, s’marvelous…)! So nice!!

One afternoon, Av took me to visit the Ogden Museum of Southern Art – we’ve been there before, but this time we were really interested in seeing the “Alabama Iron Sculptors” exhibit, which ends June 19th.

I remember the first time we went to the museum, I really-really wanted to be in love with it, but there is something about it that is just so odd…there is a sizable amount of folk/outsider art, but the museum building – the architecture, etc – is such that the museum feels like it could be located anywhere: Kansas City, Philadelphia, etc.

There’s just nothing about the interior space that reflects “you are in New Orleans, here is Southern art, and we’re doing it in a reflective aesthetic which is why you’re walking on reclaimed river-bottom wood flooring, the spaces are appropriately distressed (or in some spaces, appropriately grand), etc.”. There’s just nothing about that building that really wraps around you and conveys an authenticity of surroundings.

Or maybe the designers planned it that way, saying that all Southern art is on the same plane as art in every other city and that’s why it should be displayed in such a manner that you could really feel as if you’re anywhere else.

Which…I feel that way, but…oh, maybe it’s me and I just don’t “get” that building.

Now, the Alabama Iron Sculptor exhibit was in the Patrick F. Taylor Library (which is a part of the Ogden) and is in an old building that was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, a New Orleans native who lived from 1838-1886 (pictures of some of his other buildings can be seen here).

*That* is a beautiful building. The space didn’t at all detract from what was on display. There were pieces/assemblages by Charlie Lucas, Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Joe Minter (who I really like (see this post for pics from visiting him)), and Ronald Lockett – a relative of Thornton Dial. We’re familiar with all the artists in the show although we’ve never met Thornton or Ronald in person.

The museum doesn’t allow pictures to be taken, but here are a few I’ve taken in the past of the artists’ work:

Charlie Lucas’ space at Kentuck:

…a Lonnie Holley piece:

Lonnie at Kentuck:

at Joe Minter’s (I’ve got a set of 118 pics from Joe’s here):

There are some pics of Thornton Dial works on Flickr here, too.

Friday’s Mobile Press-Register has another story about the Gee’s Bend quilters. Last week I mentioned Annie Mae Young’s lawsuit against Tinwood and others (post here), and now it seems that some of the other quilters are coming around/thinking about filing their own lawsuits in addition to hers.

This is how the article begins:

For the last month, the people responsible for bringing the Gee’s Bend quilts to the attention of the nation have been circulating in the isolated community, gathering signatures on documents that some experts said appear to take copyright control away from each quilter.Those documents appeared just days after one of the rural quilters filed suit against the Arnett family, who promoted the handmade art via a whirlwind of museum openings, books and derivative products.

The Arnetts have insisted through their lawyers that these latest documents do not take control of anyone’s copyrights. Their contention is that they have had oral agreements with the quilters for years now.

Other bits include:

The second suit, filed Monday, alleges that Matt Arnett visited Pettway — who cannot read — and offered her a check for $2,000, but only if she would sign an “Alabama Bill of Sale of Personal Property” that her lawyers say may have conveyed to the Arnetts the copyrights to any quilts she sold to them.

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The Press-Register has learned that the Arnetts have obtained signatures from 20 quilters on such documents in the last month, all apparently since the first lawsuit was filed April 3.

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No written agreements had ever been drawn up between the quilters and the Arnetts, according to lawyers on both sides, until the Bill of Sale documents tendered in recent weeks. One obtained by the Press-Register is dated May 30.

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“(Matt Arnett) didn’t want my kids knowing when he came by. He said, ‘If you are going to let your kids get involved, you count me out,'” Young said, sitting in the shade beneath the tall pines outside her small brick house.

 

The entire article from Friday can be found here. Not all of the quilters agree with the lawsuits, but it sure is getting more and more…interesting.

I’ve been to Gee’s Bend – several years ago – and I can tell you that the building that the quilters had been working out of was rough. Rough. After all this time, the article says they are in that same building – a building that one of the sons says stinks (except he uses more descriptive terms) and the P-R says that the building’s air conditioning doesn’t keep up during the summer.

For all the money that’s undoubtedly been made off these women…ohmygoodness…the thought that these women may have been taken advantage of with oral contracts…

And as a business owner, can you imagine doing business on behalf of people, totaling no telling how much money, on the basis of an oral agreement, even if they are not literate? Wouldn’t you find some way to carry them to a lawyer (your lawyer, whoever’s lawyer) and make it crystal clear in front of ‘x’ number of people that they understand exactly what you’re proposing and have everybody sign that? Wouldn’t you do that just for your own piece of mind if nothing else??

I still really-really hope this is a big misunderstanding but the new article doesn’t make me feel any better. Argh!

Guess what? I got a surprise baby shower last night (complete with lots of giggles and lots of happy tears!)!

I’ve got all kinds of pictures to take of everything and I’m not done yet (!) but I love you girls!! Mwah!!

One evening, Av had reservations for us to have supper at Antoine’s. I have been wanting to go there *forever*! The restaurant has been open since 1840 and is the oldest family-run restaurant in the US.

I guess because I am so far along now, it’s easier for me to eat supper early in the evening (we joke that we eat like old people now). Before we got pregnant, we would make reservations at a place like this sometime around 8:30pm or so…but now, it’s more like 5:30pm! When we arrived, there were only a few other tables seated – it got much, much more crowded closer to 7:15pm, when we left.

Our waiter, James, encouraged us to get up and see the entire restaurant – just to roam around if we liked. He was *so* fabulous and really made a fuss over us. Soooo nice!

Av started with the gumbo – he loved it (I had the Huitres a la Foch (oysters on toast with foie gras, covered in Colbert sauce)). I had soft-shell crab. They served two of them, so I gave one to Av! Delish! He had the filet de truite aux ecrevisses (trout with crawfish).

One of the dishes Antoine’s is famous for is their pommes de terre soufflees (fried puffed potatoes). They are fried at two different temperatures. We also shared the creamed spinach.

We finished supper with the Omelette Alaska Antoine (baked Alaska):

It was just incredible! It’s sponge cake with ice cream, all covered in meringue. Antoine’s decorates it with their name on one side, some decorative meringue swans, and I think on the back, they piped “since 1840”. When James brought it to our table, we were so wowed – we haven’t had a baked Alaska in a few years! Isn’t it beautiful!?

We had such a fabulous time and enjoyed every minute of it. I can’t wait for us to go back!

Have you noticed how food-centric this trip has been? I still need to post a bunch more restaurants, too! What was going on was that Av was super-busy, having a lot of meetings, etc. but we wanted to make this a really memorable trip because it’s probably the last of the ‘big’ ones we will have before the little one gets here…so he made reservations at several different places before we left home so that we would have “us time” between what he was doing in the mornings and the afternoons. So sweet!

One place we didn’t need a reservation for was Hansen’s Sno-Bliz:

I took this pic when we were in line…and also in line with me were two other very-pregnant girls. Sno balls and pregnant girls on 95+* days just go together I guess!

Av got a $4 cup of grape and we shared it – it was soooo good:

NPR even did a story about Hansen’s coming back after Katrina – it’s here.