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From the Editor's Desk
If you're unaware, the women of Gee's Been have been artfully producing beautiful, mezmerizing quilts since the slave days. Using the scraps from their own tattered clothes and the cast-offs from their masters, the women created a beautiful legacy for themselves that survives to this day. The Arnetts put the Gee's Bend quilters on the national stage to great acclaim with their quilts touring the nation and television specials popping up, to tell the story of these women. But the acclaim has come with a dark side. While some of the quilts were sold for tens of thousands of dollars, and lucrative museum and licensing deals have been signed over the quilts, the women of Gee's Bend, have seen mere pennies of that money. One of the women filing suit is saying the Arnett's won't give back the quilts she loaned them and is being given the runaround every time she asks for them. And now, according to the stories in the Press-Register, the family has allegedly been going on a rights grab, getting these women, many of whom are illiterate, to sign away their rights to the quilts and designs. Given this isn't the first time that the Arnett's have been accused of shady dealings when it comes to rural artists, I'd almost like to see the court freeze their assets and search their properties for the missing quilts. They could at least do a search for the missing quilts. Of course, the women of Gee's Bend are black and poor, so you know that won't happen, and it's unlikely they'll see anything out of all of this. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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