Loretta Pettway Bennett
she/her Gee’s Bend Quilter Huntsville, Ala.
About The Artist
Loretta Pettway Bennett is a direct descendent of Dinah Miller, the earliest quilter from Gee's Bend, Ala., whose name is known today. Bennett continues to create handstitched quilts in the tradition taught to her by her mother, Qunnie Pettway, and passed down through her family for many generations. Since 2006, her quilts have featured in dozens of major museum exhibitions nationwide and in nineteen US Embassies worldwide. In 2007, she collaborated with Paulson Fontaine Press in Berkeley, Calif., to create a suite of limited-edition prints based on her quilt designs. In addition to her residency with Paulson Fontaine Press, she was an artist in residence at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, in 2013 and received Visual Arts Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 2001 and 2009. Today, her quilts and prints are in numerous museum and corporate collections, as well as the US State Department, and have been published in books including Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, which accompanied a group exhibition of the same name that toured six museums across the United States. The most recent catalog to publish her work was Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South, from a 2023 group show at the Royal Academy of Art in London, England. In 2025, she received the Alabama Fellowship for the Southern Prize by South Arts. In addition to gallery and museum exhibitions, Bennett shares the tradition of making quilts by hand by teaching regular workshops in Gee's Bend and at special events nationwide.
About The Work
My earliest memory of quilting was when I was five or six years old, and any time we were not in school we would be underneath a quilt threading needles for our mom, grandma, great-grandma or aunties, and they would be quilting. We would be piecing, and I would try to sew with the needle when I didn't have to stop and thread their needles, and so I guess I got a love for it because I always admired my mom.
Loretta Pettway Bennett, Returning to Gee’s Bend 1, 2021. Hand and machine piece and hand quilted from the artist’s mother’s (Qunnie Pettway) fabrics including vintage corduroy made by Sears Roebuck, 80 x 64 inches. Photo by Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio.
Loretta Pettway Bennett, All Red Pops, 2024. Hand and machine pieced and quilted from fabric leftover from a Vacation with an Artist workshop in Gee’s Bend and with pops of red representing the artist’s three sons and granddaughter, 28 x 22 inches. Photo by Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio.
