Gee’s Bend Quilts — Doing Itself Proud

A tiny community preserves its heritage and leverages artistic brilliance

Mary Lee Bendolph, Loretta Pettway, Lucy Mingo, 2015.Photo by Tom Pich, Wikimedia Commons

My hike was magical. A patch of primeval prairie had survived in western Ohio, untouched and pristine. I walked on the protective boardwalk along the Stillwater River. Rare wildflowers nodded in the sun, scattered among the grasses. Land in my part of Ohio has been divvied up along straight lines since the first European…