Meet small business owners who are keeping up with the times.
From Gee’s Bend Quilters to a Self-Taught Jeweller, How Small Businesses Are Staying Creative
It goes without saying that the events of the past year have disrupted the creative output of many artists and designers. For Salt Lake City-based jeweler Sarah Safavi, “the pandemic halted almost everything.” School closures meant she was the primary caregiver to her two daughters, which left little time for her eponymous line. Meanwhile, in O’ahu, Sam Feyen—a purveyor of antiques and vintage home goods—was unable to frequent her favorite thrift shops and had to source wares online. “It really took the fun out of it all,” she says. Down south in Boykin, Alabama, home of the Gee’s Bend Quilting Collective, artisan Mary Margaret Pettway explains how COVID has brought socially-distanced space to her historically tight-knit community.
We caught up with all three small business owners and asked them how they’re weathering the storm of the current moment—despite the closures and isolation, it seems that it’s impossible to quell true creativity.
Gee’s Bend Quilting Collective, Alabama
Mary Margaret Pettway, manager of the quilting collective, is in good spirits when we speak—or, perhaps more likely, she’s just always this warm and inviting. Before her lies a long line of quiltmaking ancestors who have made dazzling blankets in their tiny hamlet off the Alabama River. After her are her children, a daughter, 26, and a son, 23, who have both followed suit and taken up the quilting craft.
“Usually they just learn at the house, from the grandma and mom,” says Pettway in a soothing Southern drawl, but as their grandmother passed away when they were too young to quilt, they only received a few lessons from her. “I had an aunt who also taught them, and my neighbor across the street—she taught them because they used to stay over there.” It’s a patchworked education that reflects the pieced-together, color-blocked quilts the area is so celebrated for.
It’s understood that Gee’s Bend distinctive quilting traditions date back to the 19th century, when enslaved Black women collected scrap fabrics and arranged them into sophisticated quilts. They may have been influenced by Native American and African textiles, but Gee’s Bend developed its own design vocabulary, featuring color-saturated, graphic works, all crafted by hand. They’re revered as a significant contribution to Black and American art and visual culture, and are considered collector’s items.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Lilah Ramzi
