SIGHTSEERS
Art From Everyday Life - Stitching Something Pretty Out Of Nothing
by Randy Karr

The Henry Ford is presenting Quilting Genius 2, The Improvisational Quilts of Susana Hunter. This limited-engagement exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum features 30 striking quilts made by Susana Hunter, an African-American quilter from rural Wilcox County, Alabama. It runs through April 27, 2008, and is free with museum admission or membership.

Visitors will be amazed by Susana’s creativity in turning the “fabric” of everyday life into eye-catching quilts as colorful as a painter’s palette. Because she had little access to printed quilt patterns, her quilts were pieced in a design-as-you-go approach. This improvisational style was commonly used by poor people living in rural American South.

Like most African-American tenant farmers in the South, Susana and her husband Julius did not own the land that they plowed, planted and harvested. They raised their own food and made a living growing cotton, corn and potatoes.

The two-room house they lived in had no telephone, running water, electricity or central heat. The only thing keeping their house warm was a fireplace and the newspaper and magazine pages plastered on the walls that served as insulation. This practice of plastering walls with collages in the rural South significantly influenced the artistic design of quilts, including those Susana made to keep her family from freezing during the wintertime.

Improvisational quilters like Susana design their quilts as they sew. Susana turned the “fabric” of her everyday life into something extraordinary. She took a great deal of satisfaction in being able “to make something pretty out of nothing.”

Susana expressed her artistic inclination by working with tools familiar to her—fabric, needle and thread. She quilted, not with the finest fabrics available, but with fabrics her life provided, fabrics that included cloth scraps left over from the clothes she made for her family, worn out clothing, old bedspreads and whatever seed, cornmeal, flour, sugar or fertilizer sacks were at hand.

“Susana could cast her artistic eye over her pile of worn clothing, dress scraps and leftover feed and fertilizer sacks, and envision her next quilt,” said Jeanine Head Miller, curator of the Quilting Genius 2. Creative fabric recycling and a continuing flow of creativity determined her quilt’s final design, size and shape.

Susana’s quilts, made to be used, not for show, reflect her life in rural Wilcox County, Alabama, one of the poorest counties in the United States. Also located near Susana’s Alabama home is Gee’s Bend, a community of African American quilters renowned for their improvisational quilt.

Quilting Genius 2, The Improvisational Quilts of Susana Hunter, is about the artistic flair of African-American quilters, most of them women. By presenting this exhibit, The Henry Ford preserves the work of an ordinary quilter and tells about her incredible ingenuity. “Susana Hunter had few resources,” said Patricia Mooradian, president of The Henry Ford, “but she was determined to provide for her family and did so through her creativity."

Henry Ford Museum is open seven days a week, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admissions are $14 for adults, $13 for seniors and $10 for youth; members and children four and under are free. For more information, please call (313) 982-6001 or visit www.TheHenryFord.org.

© 2008 Randy Karr