''Blues'' is a 2007 print by Gee's Bend quilter

Loretta Pettway Bennett Loretta Pettway Bennett (born December 29, 1960) is an American artist. She is associated with the Freedom Quilting Bee, where her mother, Qunnie Pettway, worked, and with the Gee's Bend quilt-makers. Her quilts '' Sew Low'' and ''Vegetation'' a ...

located on the Eskenazi Health campus, near downtown

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

, and is part of the

Eskenazi Health Art Collection The Eskenazi Health Art Collection consists of a wide variety of artworks composed of fragments from the 1914 City Hospital mural and artwork project, artworks added over time, and newer pieces which include works created for the new Sidney & Lois ...

Description

''Blues'' is a 2007 print by Gee's Bend quilter Loretta Pettway Bennett. A quilter, Bennett begins her printmaking process by creating a sampler quilt in the style of the quilts of Gee's Bend, which uses recycled household and thrift store clothing. Collaborating with Paulson Press (Berkley), an innovative etching technique is used to transfer the quilt to an etching plate. The plate is coated with wax and treated with acid, which produces prints of great detail, rendering individual threads, seams, folds, and variation in color, and results in a softground spitbite aquatint etching on paper. Blues depicts a composition of blue, green, and cream colored squares and rectangles, and measures 48.25" x 37.75", framed.

Historical information

Acquisition

''Blues'' was commissioned by Eskenazi Health as part of a re-imagining of the organization's historical art collection and to support "the sense of optimism, vitality and energy" of its new

campus A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. Usually a college campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls, student centers or dining halls, and park-like se ...

in 2013. In response to its nationwide request for proposals, Eskenazi Health received more than 500 submissions from 39 states, which were then narrowed to 54 finalists by an independent jury. Each of the 54 proposals was assigned an area of the new hospital by Eskenazi Health's art committee and publicly displayed in the existing Wishard Hospital and online for public comment; more than 3,000 public comments on the final proposals were collected and analyzed in the final selection. ''Blues'', edition 3/50, is credited "in honor of Grandmother Mae, Lisa E. Harris, M.D."

Location

''Blues'' is currently displayed in the yellow elevator corridor on the 2nd floor of

Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital The Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital is a public hospital located in Indianapolis, Indiana. The hospital is the flagship medical center for Eskenazi Health, founded in 1859 as Indiana's oldest public healthcare system. The hospital is operated by H ...

Artist

Loretta Pettway Bennett is a fifth-generation quilter from

Gee's Bend, Alabama Boykin, also known as Gee's Bend, is an African American majority community and census-designated place in a large bend of the Alabama River in Wilcox County, Alabama, Wilcox County, Alabama. As of the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census, its ...

. She has exhibited her work in several museums, including the

Houston Museum of Fine Arts The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

, the

Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It i ...

, the

Orlando Museum of Art Orlando () is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and is the county seat of Orange County. In Central Florida, it is the center of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures rele ...

, the

Tacoma Art Museum The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) is an art museum in Tacoma, Washington, United States. It focuses primarily on the art and artists from the Pacific Northwest and broader western region of the U.S. Founded in 1935, the museum has strong roots in the c ...

, the

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between t ...

and the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

. Additionally, her work has appeared in numerous galleries, including the Greg Kucera Gallery in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

and the Paulson Press Gallery in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

. Selected by the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE), Bennett's work also hangs on the walls of

United States embassies The United States has the second most diplomatic missions of any country in the world after Mainland China, including 166 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations, as well as observer state Vatican City and non-member countries Kosovo a ...

worldwide.

References

External links

Eskenazi Health Art Installations (video)

The Quilts of Gee's Bend: Quilters Collective History
{{EskenaziHealthArtCollection Eskenazi Health Art Collection 2007 works

Description

Historical information

Acquisition

Location

Artist

See also

References

External links