Mary Lee Bendolph
Mary Lee Bendolph (born 1935) is an American quilt maker of the Gee's Bend Collective from Gee's Bend (Boykin), Alabama. Her work has been influential on subsequent quilters and artists and her quilts have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the country. Bendolph uses fabric from used clothing for quilting in appreciation of the "love and spirit" with old cloth. Bendolph has spent her life in Gee's Bend and has had work featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota. In 1999 the Los Angeles Times featured Bendolph in the Pulitzer Prize-winning article "Crossing Over", about the effort to reestablish ferry service across the Alabama River. Biography Bendolph grew up in Gee's Bend, Alabama. She was raised in the quilting tradition, first taught by her mother at the age of 12, just two years before she began having children. She gave birth to her first child at age 14 which prevented her from going to school after the sixth grade. She married Rubin Bendolph in 1955 and they have eight children. In 1965, Bendolph participated in a march led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in Camden, Alabama. After retiring in