Cuesta Benberry - The Anyone Can Fly Foundation, Inc.

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Faith: The first quilt I made was like that. My mother, The Artist and the Quilt show? Ipainted the squares and my mother created the sashing by sewing together triangleswhich she originally wanted to just free cut.Cuesta: By eye.Faith: And I said, oh my what is she going to do? I didn’t understand that free cutting.So she said, Ms. Ringgold you make it. You do what you want to do and when you getready I’ll sew it together for you. And so I got a template of this triangle and I cut it andshe sewed them together and created the sashes in between the paintings, the portraitsthat I did. But I always say that I wish I had kept my mouth shut and just let her do it. Itwould have been wonderful.Cuesta: Your mother was a designer anyway.Faith: Yes. But my mother had been taught quilt making from her grandmother whosemother had been a quilt maker during slavery. So she was the family quilt maker and shehad taught her daughter. Her daughter taught her daughter. And her daughter taughtmy mother. So there’s all this history. And so when I said, I intimated that she didn’treally know what she was talking about, she just said, look, you do it your way. And Iguess she didn’t want to try to explain it to me.Cuesta: You know I first read about you in connection with quilts in Patricia Manardi’s, Ithink it was called, FEMINIST JOURNAL ARTICLE. She tore Jonathan Holstein’s theoriesup! He was saying that women really didn’t make art. She mentioned you in that article.[Editor’s Note, cf. Patricia Mainardi, "Quilts: The Great American Art," Feminist ArtHistory: Questioning the Litany, edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (N.Y.:Harper and Row, 1982)]Now here’s another one. This is a Broderie Perse where they take a piece of chintz andcut it out very intricately and then appliqué it onto there. That’s an early style. That islate 18 th century early 19 th century technique. Nowadays they’re doing what you callretro-work and so they’re kind of going back to some of those. But …And here’s that wonderful Elizabeth Keckley, the one I said was here in St. Louis andtook care of 17 people. And was Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker. And these pieceswere supposed to have been from scraps left over from Mary Todd Lincoln’sdressmaking. Elizabeth Keckley was a leader in … When she was living in Washington,D.C. they had an organization that would bring the slaves in and care for them. She wasa part of that. And also it was the idea of really -- of helping the slaves to gain theirliberty. And so right in the center of this block she had written in embroidery the word‘liberty.’ And this is silk. And you know silk shreds over time, because as it dries out itshreds. So this quilt is very fragile.But I knew the man who at that time owned it. He was a dealer in Ohio. Ross Trump. Hesaid that he was not going to let it go out anymore because it’s too fragile. But he wasvery nice and he said yes it could be in my show if they would not hang it. Just lay itpage 18
flat, under glass, so nobody could touch it. But it couldn’t travel, because this show didtravel. So when he got it back he gave it to the University Ohio, at Akron, I think, inhonor of his mother. I don’t know whether she went to school there or not. And so heknew that they would preserve it and take care of it in their Textiles Department.http://dept.kent.edu/museum/collection/keckley.htmThis is a wonderful quilt.BARBARA: That looks like a story quilt.CUESTA: It is. The crucifixion and the Garden of Eden. Now this came from Georgia.The quilt, at that time belonged to Shelley Zegert, but it’s now at the High Museum. Ithink they bought it because it is a Georgia quilt.FAITH: We didn’t see any quilts when we were there. Did we?BARBARA: No, we saw Kente cloth and Ghanaian gold.CUESTA: At the High? Now here’s Georgia’s famous Lady’s Shoe Quilt.http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?pbd=kentuckytest-a0a2n6-aFAITH: That’s amazing.CUESTA: Now when you look at it closer, even in the picture, you can see that some ofthe shoes are different. Some are bigger. Cut by eye.FAITH: I notice when I was at the show, “Quilts for Change,” with Carolyn, she lookedcarefully to see things that you can miss if you’re looking from a distance. You have togo up and look at every aspect. And then it’s just amazing. The amount of work thatgoes into some of these.CUESTA: This was a family of quilters. This is really nice. Because in African-Americanfamilies the quilts that are handed down usually from one generation to another usuallyare used. And so it’s very difficult to find an African-American family that had quiltsfrom different generations still in existent.FAITH: Intact.CUESTA: So this would be it. This was a buggy quilt. They used to ride and you canstill see oil stains where this buggy quilt touched the wheels and the dirt of the wheelsand oil… There we go. She didn’t put…She just… That’s a buggy quilt. That was justgoing to be thrown over them as they rode around. You got the big pieces. Probablylarge stitches…BARBARA: Leftover scraps stuck in the middle…FAITH: Is that a combination of piecing and appliqué?page 19
Page 3 and 4: the time I think when … because Q
Page 5 and 6: CUESTA: Yeah. Right. That was when
Page 7 and 8: CUESTA: Well, that too is a problem
Page 9 and 10: FAITH: Is that the same thing? Impr
Page 11 and 12: FAITH: And I’m sure a whole lot o
Page 13 and 14: CUESTA: No. They were pretty old. M
Page 15 and 16: CUESTA: I heard Phillip Simmons, th
Page 17: Cuesta: The buds have embroidery.Ba
Page 21 and 22: Figure 15: Who’s Afraid of Aunt J
Page 23 and 24: x 53 inches. Collection of the Arti
Page 25 and 26: ---. “Sharing the Past… Creatin
Page 27 and 28: http://www.oldstatehouse.com/piece-

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