Maria can write about these quilts herself, on her own blog, but I was grateful to capture this image at the Lehman College Museum Of Art. Maria was looking closely at the quilts when she was joined by an African-American women wearing an apron, I thought she must be an employee of the college who had come to see the work of the Gee’s Bend quilters. The image of these two women, different from one another yet closely connected in this way, touched me, and spoke to me of the power of art to reach across great spaces and connect us to one another.

The two of them circled the room in tandem, each absorbing the quilts in their own way, feeling their great power.

The quilts struck me in a way as memoirs, each so different from one another and so much an expression of the creativity of the individual and the power of art. More later.