Gwen Magee's Page

      Recent Events:

1. One of 15 artists selected by the Alabama Historical Society to create artwork for Road to Equality: The 1961 Freedom Rides (a year long exhibit at the historic Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery), commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides.
2. One of 2010 Most Intriguing Jacksonians
3. From Jackson to the White House
4. News Video of Museum's White House Award Ceremony

Profile:

Gwendolyn Magee uses textiles, fibers and threads to construct narratives that dramatically articulate historical and present-day events affecting the lives and psyches of African Americans. Color is used to set the tone and establish the mood appropriate for the subject at hand thereby creating an energy that infuses the work either with somberness or vibrancy. Intricate patterning and dense threadwork subtly or explicitly reinforce each artwork's theme.

Quilting has deep roots for many people – but for African-Americans in particular, they are roots honed from necessity during slavery. Plantation owners were not very concerned about the warmth and comfort of their slaves. Nor were these masters any more compassionate when a more insidious type of bondage forced former slaves into continued servitude as sharecroppers, both during and after Reconstruction. So the making of quilts became one of the primary methods used by African American grandmothers and great-grandmothers to try and keep their families warm when "the hawk" came swooping through the cracks and crevices of the dilapidated shacks and shanties in which they were forced to live.

It is the tradition of quilts like those that ancestral "Big Mamas" and "Aunt Effies" so painstakingly made that forms the basis of Gwen’s work – this is the essence of the medium through which she endeavors to speak for them and for the countless others that had no voices, for those whose voices are silent, or whose voices have been silenced.

Each narrative artwork is designed as a forum for contemplation, dialogue and communication. Each is an open invitation for the viewer to embark with her on a "journey of the spirit."

Originally from High Point, North Carolina, Gwen has been a resident of Jackson, Mississippi since 1972. Exhibited widely, her art is featured in many books and publications, and her solo exhibit, "A Journey of the Spirit: The Art of Gwendolyn A. Magee" toured eleven venues accompanied by a monograph of the same title. In 2007 she was named a Ford Fellow, United States Artists as well as Fellow of the Craftsmen's Guild of Mississippi. Additionally, she has been honored as Visual Artist of the Year by the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters, adjudicated by the Southern Arts Federation, awarded a Fellowship by the Mississippi Arts Commission, and named “Honored Artist” by the Mississippi State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. It has recently been announced that she will be the recipient of the 2011 Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (Artistic Excellence catergory). Gwen's work is found in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Michigan State University Museum and the Mississippi Museum of Art.