Quilt, Housetop Pattern with Center Medallion

ca. 1975

 Since the mid-1970s, quilting has been heralded as a unique vernacular art form, and the quilts of Gee’s Bend, with their bold abstraction, complex colors, and resonant materials, have been readily absorbed into the fine-art world. Representing a younger generation of the extended Pettway family, Gloria Hoppins continues to adapt time-honored patterns, such as the Housetop, within the formal traditions of the Gee’s Bend quilters.

While historically quilt-making was the dominant art form available to women during an era when their lives were circumscribed by difficult domestic labor, including farming, child rearing, and homemaking, Hoppins’s work emerged in a more recent era in which quilt-making is highly valued and collected.