Quilters Display Talents at Mississippi College

Award-winning quilters from rural Claiborne County are displaying some of their finest creations at Mississippi College this summer.

Quilts that depict Noah’s Ark, the Lord’s Prayer, a flower garden and much more are the featured show at the Gore Galleries through August 5.

A number of the artists from the Crossroads Quilters in Port Gibson will travel to the Clinton campus for a demonstration of their craft and brown bag lunch on July 14. The program runs from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. and the public is invited to the Gore galleries at 199 Monroe Street.

The summer quilt show at the Lynn Scarborough Spaugh Gallery is one that Mississippi art patrons shouldn’t miss.

“They’re beautiful quilts and we are excited to have them,” said Randy Jolly, director of the Gore Galleries behind the Leland Speed Library.

The craft of quilting goes back well over a century in Southwest Mississippi. The women of Claiborne County have been creating quilts since before the Civil War, says author David Crosby in a booklet for Mississippi Cultural Crossroads. It’s a group that supports and celebrates the arts in the historic Port Gibson area.

A quilt, writes Crosby, a retired Alcorn State University professor, is “a bed cover made of two pieces of fabric sewn together with some soft material like cotton, wool or feathers between them. To keep the filling from shifting, the layers are stitched through in a pattern. People have slept on or under such bed covers for hundreds of years.”

One of the artists with her work on display at Mississippi College is Hystercine Rankin. Some of her African-American string quilts are on permanent display at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.

Rankin is also a quilting teacher. In 1988 when the Mississippi Cultural Crossroads received a grant from the Governor’s Office of State and Federal Programs to start a quilting instruction program, Rankin became a paid instructor. The MCC arts programming led to the launching of Crossroads Quilters with its superb lineup of female artists who have gained state and national recognition.

Others with their work on display at Mississippi College include quilters Essie Buck, Geraldine Nash, and Tammy McGrew. McGrew’s colorful “Noah’s Ark” is loaded with pairs of animals, including zebras, giraffes and turtles. Many of the artists also have a display of their craft at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson this summer.

“This is the first time we’ve had quilts,” Jolly said. He encourages patrons to take time to see all 16 quilts hanging in the building. Some of the quilts stand more than six-feet tall.

Summer hours at the Gore Galleries are from 9 a.m. through 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. through 1 p.m. on Friday. Admission is free.

For more information, contact Randy Jolly at 601.925.7770 or rjolly@mc.edu.