The quilters of Gee\u2019s Bend, Alabama practice a brand of handcraft passed down through generations. Theirs is an art shaped by ancestry and intuition, not markets and institutions.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s for this reason that the community\u2019s newest project\u00a0is sure to draw some double takes. For <\/span>Arsnl<\/span><\/a>, Artists Rights Society\u2019s (ARS)<\/span>\u00a0NFT platform,<\/span><\/a> four Gee\u2019s Bend quilters have collaborated with the generative artist Anna Lucia on a series of works that blend the digital and physical, the old-fashioned and the neoteric. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Generations<\/span><\/a>\u201d is the name of their joint effort, which comprises 500 NFTs created from an algorithm<\/span> Anna Lucia developed based on the quilters\u2019 work, as well as the actual quilts that inspired the code. On offer, in other words, are the products of artists from wildly different backgrounds responding to each other\u2019s creations\u2014and finding a surprising amount of overlap in the process.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A generative NFT by Anna Lucia based on a quilt by Loretta Pettway. Courtesy of Arsnl.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That Anna Lucia would be interested in the Gee\u2019s Bend quilters makes sense. The self-taught 31-year-old artist, who was born in the Netherlands and is now based in Cairo, Egypt, has made a habit of drawing thematic ties between computer code and textile art. Her last project, for instance,\u00a0<\/span>drew on the Bauhaus movement\u2019s unheralded women designers<\/span><\/a> for influence.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first saw images from quilts from the Gee\u2019s Bend, I was immediately captivated by\u2026 their vibrant colors, bold patterns, and expressive compositions,\u201d Anna Lucia told Artnet News in an email. \u201cI saw a connection to generative art in a completely different setting. Each quilt is unique, yet all share familiarity.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAt first glance,\u201d she continued,\u00a0\u201cthe quilts may seem simple geometric compositions. But I found great complexity in the patterns when describing them in logic and code.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For their part, the participating quilters\u2014Loretta Pettway Bennett, Louisiana P. Bendolph, Essie Bendolph Pettway, and Mary Margaret Pettway\u2014brought an entirely different perspective to the project. All four are direct descendants of the enslaved people brought to the region in the early 1800s by the plantation owner Joseph Gee. (The quilts of Lucy T. Pettway, who passed away in 2004, also informed Lucia\u2019s code.)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The women are in their 60s now and had knowledge of, but little interest in, NFTs, according to Katarina Feder, ARS\u2019s Director of Business Development and a co-founder of Arsnl. But it wasn\u2019t long into a <\/span>Zoom meeting<\/span><\/a> earlier this year that the four quilters found common ground with the generative artist.<\/span><\/p>\n A quilt by Mary Margeret Pettway inspired by an NFT by Anna Lucia. Courtesy of Arsnl.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhat I found remarkable, being a fly on the wall for [those discussions], was just how similar they can become when they\u2019re speaking the language of creators,\u201d said Feder. \u201cThere\u2019s a real symbiosis.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Indeed, flit your eyes between a Gee\u2019s Bend quilt and its digital counterpart and you\u2019ll see both exude a command of color and pattern, despite the processes that went into their making.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Each of Anna Lucia\u2019s NFTs is an <\/span>output from the same algorithm. The examples for sale were chosen by the quilters themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt was fascinating to see the final choices,\u201d Anna Lucia said. \u201cSometimes, they were just like what I would have picked; other times they were completely different.\u201d Embedded in the metadata of each NFT is information about who chose that particular design and which artist\u2019s work it was based on. \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A generative NFT by Anna Lucia based on a quilt by Lucy T. Pettway. Courtesy of Arsnl.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Set to launch May 17, the NFTs will be priced at .15 ETH each (currently around $300). Thirty percent of profits will go back to the quilters, with an additional five percent of each sale earmarked for Alabama\u2019s Freedom Quilting Bee Cooperative. Anna Lucia and Arsnl will each take 25 percent, while the remaining proceeds will be split between <\/span>Refraction<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Seed Club<\/span><\/a>, two DAOs that helped organized the project.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Also for sale are six Gee\u2019s Bend quilts, which are priced between $8,000 and $20,000. (The quilters will receive up to 80 percent of these sales. <\/span><\/p>\n Greg Liburd, one of\u00a0Refraction\u2019s co-founders, framed the scope of the project nicely in his <\/span>curatorial statement<\/span><\/a>: \u201c\u2019Generations,\u2019\u201d he wrote, \u201cis an expression of the \u201cheritage algorithms\u201d so alive in Gee\u2019s Bend\u2019s hand-stitched masterworks, remixed artistically through digital code.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2023\/05\/Generations-Hero-NFT-Hanging-on-a-clothesline-Gees-Bend-Alabama-1024x576.jpeg\")
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