Ruby Sisson Library

For Benni, the annual San Celina Mid-State Fair is a much anticipated break in her normal routine of overseeing museum exhibits, temperamental artists and stubborn cattle. Even her police chief husband, Gabe Ortiz, takes time from his busy schedule to enjoy the fair's activities and exotic fried foods.

Since the early nineteenth century, the women of Gee's Bend in southern Alabama have created stunning, vibrant quilts. In the only photo-essay book about the quilts of Gee's Bend for children, award-winning author Susan Goldman Rubin explores the history and culture of this fascinating group of women and their unique quilting traditions. Rubin uses meticulous research to offer an exclusive look at an important facet of African American art and culture. ...

Harriet Powers learned to sew and quilt as a young slave girl on a Georgia plantation. She lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and eventually owned a cotton farm with her family, all the while relying on her skills with the needle to clothe and feed her children. Later she began making pictorial quilts, using each square to illustrate Bible stories and local legends. She exhibited her quilts at local cotton fairs, and though she never...

The exhibition focuses on the quilts of Mary Lee Bendolph, and includes quilts by her mother Aolar Mosely, daughter Essie Bendolph Pettway, and daughter-in-law Louisiana P. Bendolph, found-object sculpture and assemblage by Thornton Dial and Lonnie Holley, and intaglio prints by Mary Lee and Louisiana Bendolph.