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‘Migration Collage' by ransome
‘Square Quilting painting' by ransomeAlexander Wilburn
Map fragments of North Carolina feature heavily in a large collection of eight-by-eight collage and acrylic paintings, sold individually but together mounted on Geary’s wall resembling the stitched patterns on quilts, like the quilts by the late Black American artist Arlonzia Pettway. Along with artists like Annie Mae Young and Mary Lee Bendolph, Pettway was a renowned artist associated with the quilts of Gee’s Bend, generations of women in the town of Gee’s Bend, Alabama who preserved African American culture in beautiful and vibrant textile art with bold combinations of stripes, textures and colors. The influence is also wonderfully clear in ransome large-scale collages and acrylic paintings like “Square Quilt painting” on display at Geary. It’s a powerful symbol of Gee’s Bend’s legacy continuing on, even under a new artistic medium.
In the smaller works, called “Migration Collages,” painted portraits are combined with pieces of floral and pastel paper, evocative of the tradition of “Sunday Best” splendor worn in Black churches in the South. “The women elders at my Baptist church often greeted each other that way on Sunday mornings when one hat was more elaborate, colorful, or wider brimmed than another,” New York Times veteran Lena Williams wrote in her 1996 essay, “In Defense of the Church Hat.” “It was traditional to put on one’s newest finery for church, and in many historically black churches, the wearing of fancy hats by women carried both spiritual and cultural significance.”
“The Bitter and the Sweet” is on view at Geary through Sunday, June 2.
