Pieced together: Art collector spends 20 years assembling African-American quilter’s amazing work
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- Published 05/22/2007
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View all articles by News HoundPieced together: Art collector spends 20 years assembling African-American quilter’s amazing work
By Sally Pollak
Free Press Staff Writer
Effie Mae Howard was selling household goods at a Marin County flea market, back in 1985, when a customer asked her if she knew any African-American quilt makers.
Howard, who was black, mentioned that she did a little quilting herself. She gave the man, an Oakland, Calif., resident named Eli Leon, her phone number. He called and arranged to come to see her work.
She lived in a cottage in Richmond, Calif., about half an hour from Leon’s home. When he arrived, he found her cottage piled with stacks and stacks and stacks of fabric and partially pieced quilts — so stuffed with material a person could barely turn around.
Leon found, also, works of improvisational quilts that left him, simply, “flabbergasted.”
“The first time I went there, I saw three of her greatest masterpieces,” said Leon, a collector of African-American quilts, by telephone from his Oakland home. “I was completely blown away by their artistic merits.”
Those pieces, stunning in their color and composition, breathtaking in their originality, which Leon saw some 20 years ago lying around the cottage of a retired practical nurse, are hanging now on the walls of the Shelburne Museum.
Howard, who died in December, exhibits her work under the pseudonym Rosie Lee Tompkins. Her pieces are on display at the Shelburne, which opens today, in an exhibit called, “Something Pertaining to God: The Patchwork Art of Rosie Lee Tompkins.” It is her first solo show at an East Coast museum.
“The work has a quality of dynamism, vitality and urgency,” said Larry Rinder, a former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. “It feels like it expresses — God knows what — about what it means to be alive. It’s just got a very powerful presence to it.”
The Whitney, a New York museum, purchased a work by Tompkins for its permanent collection during Rinder’s tenure. He called the acquisition “the most extraordinary work” the museum could get at the time.
“Art is a mysterious thing, and it’s hard to explain why one thing does it and another doesn’t,” said Rinder, now dean of graduate studies at California College of the Arts. “It’s not like it’s one quilt that works by accident. It’s over and over again in different scales and different materials. It’s remarkable, really.”
Inspired improvisation
Tompkins, who was 70 when she died at her Richmond home, made what are known as “improvisational” quilts, a form of quilt-making that exists outside the aesthetic of traditional quilts.
Improvisational quilts might play off a standard pattern, but are more experimental in their design. Tompkins was “extremely improvisational,” according to Leon. She was an artist who sought out fabrics and textures to use in her pieces. Many improvisational quilters, by contrast, use whatever material is at hand.
“She had a passion for color,” Leon said. “Her improvisational structures were extreme and very wonderful. She was extreme in every direction.”
She often took years to complete a piece, and worked on hundreds at a time, Leon said.
She showed them to family members, but was unknown in the art world until Leon took an interest in her work and started to exhibit her pieces.
Tompkins was a private woman who sought to remain anonymous as an artist in her lifetime. The Shelburne show, curated by Leon, is the first exhibition of Tompkins’ work since her death.
“She made it clear that I can do whatever I wanted with her stuff after she died,” said Leon, 71, who will talk about her work June 21 at the Shelburne Museum.
Leon loaned all 43 pieces — 30 of which have never before been exhibited — that make up the Shelburne show. The exhibit includes, for the first time, work that reveals Tompkins’ name embroidered on the pieces. It shows her quilts, hangings, pillows, dresses made of neckties sewn together, and chairs covered in her creations.
“It fits very nicely with the Shelburne,” said museum director Stephan Jost. “The idea of somebody who is relatively unknown doing great art in the confines of their home is relevant to the museum.”
Private woman, vital artist
Based on the stories, recollections and observations of Leon, Tompkins emerges as a fascinating person: a phenomenal artist and deeply religious woman who spent the last decades of her life living alone, making patchwork art.
She credited God with her creations, believing she was simply his “instrument.”
“I think it’s because I love them so much, that God lets me see all these colors,” she told Leon.
Once, when the two were looking at a quilt together, Tompkins wondered aloud how she had made it. “God made me do that,” she decided.
“I’m an atheist, but I definitely think that she brought something extraordinary to it,” Leon said. “And God knows where it came from.”
The two developed a friendship over the last two decades, as Leon brought her work to the public’s attention, mindful of her need for privacy and certain self-imposed restrictions.
“I think maybe at first she was nervous that she would be exposed,” he said. “And over the years she must’ve gained confidence that I wasn’t going to expose her.”
She announced before her first pieces were shown that she didn’t want to use her real name. Leon said he had five minutes to come up with a pseudonym, at her insistence, and chose Rosie Lee Tompkins.
Though Tompkins appeared to have little interest or no interest in exhibiting her work, Leon sensed it somehow pleased her. She was thrilled by publications that included her pieces, and plastered her walls with a museum poster of one of her quilts, he said.
If she had rigorous rules for maintaining her privacy, she was good-humored, also, about working around them: To solve the dilemma of her prohibition on photographs of herself, Tompkins agreed to a series of images of her clothes, “gleefully arranging” the clothing on a chair as she would wear it, missing only her person. (That image is on exhibit at the Shelburne, beside a quilt whose color scheme echoes the colors of her clothes.)
Even before she become known in the art world, Tompkins guarded her privacy. She heard voices and thought her phone was being tapped, she told Leon. She felt like she lived in a glass house with people looking in. She covered her wall in the applique crosses she made, hoping they would quiet the voices she heard.
Tompkins was one of 15 siblings raised in rural Arkansas, where she picked cotton and picked up quilting from her mother. She moved to California in the late 1950s, where she became a practical nurse. She was married twice and divorced twice and had two children and three stepchildren.
By the time Leon met her, Tompkins was retired and working full-time on her art. He estimates she left behind more than 100 unfinished pieces.
“She just kept going with the quilting and other sewing,” he said. “Making little wall hangings, mostly embroidered Scriptures and appliqued crosses on patchwork. These things kind of kept her spirits up.”
Rinder, who emphasized that he didn’t know Tompkins well, said he sensed that she was interested in two things: her pieces and her relationship to God.
A treasure hunt
Leon, a collector and scholar of quilts, decided he wanted to see as much of her work as he could find. He traveled to Arkansas to meet her mother, to learn what he could about the quilt-making tradition in her family and community — and how it might connect to the larger tradition of Southern black quilt making.
At her mother’s home, Leon said he spent four hours trying to convince her to let him see a raggedly old quilt of hers that she had stuffed into the sofa 20 or 25 years earlier, to pad a broken spring.
“I not only saw it,” Leon said. “I bought it.”
He saw in the piece, which he said showed no particular talent, a “hit-and-miss” approach to piecing that he says is fundamental to improvisational African-American quilting.
He saw in it, too, a very large medallion that Tompkins would later use in her work, including one on display at the Shelburne.
In Leon’s hunt for her pieces, he learned from Tompkins that she had sold some pieces to a brother-in-law who admired her work.
He had since died, and Leon called his widow to inquire about the pieces. She said didn’t know where the quilts were; she must’ve given them to Goodwill.
More than a year passed, and Tompkins’ sister found the quilts in her attic. “She sold them to me,” he said. “We were just lucky she hadn’t discarded them.”
In 1988, Leon arranged to exhibit pieces by Tompkins in a group show in San Francisco — her first museum show.
He tried many times to get her to the exhibit, and time was running out as the show was set to close.
Leon said he became quiet pushy about getting Tompkins to attend the exhibit. On the day she was set to go he arrived to pick her up, only to find she had changed her mind. A prolonged drama ensued, a back-and-forth about whether she’d go. The two became angry and annoyed with each other, Leon said.
Eventually she agreed to go, but remained angry at Leon for dragging her to the show on a day she didn’t feel well.
Driving to San Francisco, she wondered about arriving with him, concerned that somebody might figure out who she was. Leon suggested they go in separately.
He waited five minutes to enter the museum. They walked around the gallery apart, not speaking to each other. On the way home, Tompkins was sullen and silent.
“Ten or 15 years later,” Leon recalled, “during a conversation in which we were giggling, she said, ‘Oh, by the way, I never did thank you for taking me to that show, did I?’”
Contact Sally Pollak at spollak@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com or 660-1859.
Free Press Staff Writer
Effie Mae Howard was selling household goods at a Marin County flea market, back in 1985, when a customer asked her if she knew any African-American quilt makers.
Howard, who was black, mentioned that she did a little quilting herself. She gave the man, an Oakland, Calif., resident named Eli Leon, her phone number. He called and arranged to come to see her work.
She lived in a cottage in Richmond, Calif., about half an hour from Leon’s home. When he arrived, he found her cottage piled with stacks and stacks and stacks of fabric and partially pieced quilts — so stuffed with material a person could barely turn around.
Leon found, also, works of improvisational quilts that left him, simply, “flabbergasted.”
“The first time I went there, I saw three of her greatest masterpieces,” said Leon, a collector of African-American quilts, by telephone from his Oakland home. “I was completely blown away by their artistic merits.”
Those pieces, stunning in their color and composition, breathtaking in their originality, which Leon saw some 20 years ago lying around the cottage of a retired practical nurse, are hanging now on the walls of the Shelburne Museum.
Howard, who died in December, exhibits her work under the pseudonym Rosie Lee Tompkins. Her pieces are on display at the Shelburne, which opens today, in an exhibit called, “Something Pertaining to God: The Patchwork Art of Rosie Lee Tompkins.” It is her first solo show at an East Coast museum.
“The work has a quality of dynamism, vitality and urgency,” said Larry Rinder, a former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. “It feels like it expresses — God knows what — about what it means to be alive. It’s just got a very powerful presence to it.”
The Whitney, a New York museum, purchased a work by Tompkins for its permanent collection during Rinder’s tenure. He called the acquisition “the most extraordinary work” the museum could get at the time.
“Art is a mysterious thing, and it’s hard to explain why one thing does it and another doesn’t,” said Rinder, now dean of graduate studies at California College of the Arts. “It’s not like it’s one quilt that works by accident. It’s over and over again in different scales and different materials. It’s remarkable, really.”
Inspired improvisation
Tompkins, who was 70 when she died at her Richmond home, made what are known as “improvisational” quilts, a form of quilt-making that exists outside the aesthetic of traditional quilts.
Improvisational quilts might play off a standard pattern, but are more experimental in their design. Tompkins was “extremely improvisational,” according to Leon. She was an artist who sought out fabrics and textures to use in her pieces. Many improvisational quilters, by contrast, use whatever material is at hand.
“She had a passion for color,” Leon said. “Her improvisational structures were extreme and very wonderful. She was extreme in every direction.”
She often took years to complete a piece, and worked on hundreds at a time, Leon said.
She showed them to family members, but was unknown in the art world until Leon took an interest in her work and started to exhibit her pieces.
Tompkins was a private woman who sought to remain anonymous as an artist in her lifetime. The Shelburne show, curated by Leon, is the first exhibition of Tompkins’ work since her death.
“She made it clear that I can do whatever I wanted with her stuff after she died,” said Leon, 71, who will talk about her work June 21 at the Shelburne Museum.
Leon loaned all 43 pieces — 30 of which have never before been exhibited — that make up the Shelburne show. The exhibit includes, for the first time, work that reveals Tompkins’ name embroidered on the pieces. It shows her quilts, hangings, pillows, dresses made of neckties sewn together, and chairs covered in her creations.
“It fits very nicely with the Shelburne,” said museum director Stephan Jost. “The idea of somebody who is relatively unknown doing great art in the confines of their home is relevant to the museum.”
Private woman, vital artist
Based on the stories, recollections and observations of Leon, Tompkins emerges as a fascinating person: a phenomenal artist and deeply religious woman who spent the last decades of her life living alone, making patchwork art.
She credited God with her creations, believing she was simply his “instrument.”
“I think it’s because I love them so much, that God lets me see all these colors,” she told Leon.
Once, when the two were looking at a quilt together, Tompkins wondered aloud how she had made it. “God made me do that,” she decided.
“I’m an atheist, but I definitely think that she brought something extraordinary to it,” Leon said. “And God knows where it came from.”
The two developed a friendship over the last two decades, as Leon brought her work to the public’s attention, mindful of her need for privacy and certain self-imposed restrictions.
“I think maybe at first she was nervous that she would be exposed,” he said. “And over the years she must’ve gained confidence that I wasn’t going to expose her.”
She announced before her first pieces were shown that she didn’t want to use her real name. Leon said he had five minutes to come up with a pseudonym, at her insistence, and chose Rosie Lee Tompkins.
Though Tompkins appeared to have little interest or no interest in exhibiting her work, Leon sensed it somehow pleased her. She was thrilled by publications that included her pieces, and plastered her walls with a museum poster of one of her quilts, he said.
If she had rigorous rules for maintaining her privacy, she was good-humored, also, about working around them: To solve the dilemma of her prohibition on photographs of herself, Tompkins agreed to a series of images of her clothes, “gleefully arranging” the clothing on a chair as she would wear it, missing only her person. (That image is on exhibit at the Shelburne, beside a quilt whose color scheme echoes the colors of her clothes.)
Even before she become known in the art world, Tompkins guarded her privacy. She heard voices and thought her phone was being tapped, she told Leon. She felt like she lived in a glass house with people looking in. She covered her wall in the applique crosses she made, hoping they would quiet the voices she heard.
Tompkins was one of 15 siblings raised in rural Arkansas, where she picked cotton and picked up quilting from her mother. She moved to California in the late 1950s, where she became a practical nurse. She was married twice and divorced twice and had two children and three stepchildren.
By the time Leon met her, Tompkins was retired and working full-time on her art. He estimates she left behind more than 100 unfinished pieces.
“She just kept going with the quilting and other sewing,” he said. “Making little wall hangings, mostly embroidered Scriptures and appliqued crosses on patchwork. These things kind of kept her spirits up.”
Rinder, who emphasized that he didn’t know Tompkins well, said he sensed that she was interested in two things: her pieces and her relationship to God.
A treasure hunt
Leon, a collector and scholar of quilts, decided he wanted to see as much of her work as he could find. He traveled to Arkansas to meet her mother, to learn what he could about the quilt-making tradition in her family and community — and how it might connect to the larger tradition of Southern black quilt making.
At her mother’s home, Leon said he spent four hours trying to convince her to let him see a raggedly old quilt of hers that she had stuffed into the sofa 20 or 25 years earlier, to pad a broken spring.
“I not only saw it,” Leon said. “I bought it.”
He saw in the piece, which he said showed no particular talent, a “hit-and-miss” approach to piecing that he says is fundamental to improvisational African-American quilting.
He saw in it, too, a very large medallion that Tompkins would later use in her work, including one on display at the Shelburne.
In Leon’s hunt for her pieces, he learned from Tompkins that she had sold some pieces to a brother-in-law who admired her work.
He had since died, and Leon called his widow to inquire about the pieces. She said didn’t know where the quilts were; she must’ve given them to Goodwill.
More than a year passed, and Tompkins’ sister found the quilts in her attic. “She sold them to me,” he said. “We were just lucky she hadn’t discarded them.”
In 1988, Leon arranged to exhibit pieces by Tompkins in a group show in San Francisco — her first museum show.
He tried many times to get her to the exhibit, and time was running out as the show was set to close.
Leon said he became quiet pushy about getting Tompkins to attend the exhibit. On the day she was set to go he arrived to pick her up, only to find she had changed her mind. A prolonged drama ensued, a back-and-forth about whether she’d go. The two became angry and annoyed with each other, Leon said.
Eventually she agreed to go, but remained angry at Leon for dragging her to the show on a day she didn’t feel well.
Driving to San Francisco, she wondered about arriving with him, concerned that somebody might figure out who she was. Leon suggested they go in separately.
He waited five minutes to enter the museum. They walked around the gallery apart, not speaking to each other. On the way home, Tompkins was sullen and silent.
“Ten or 15 years later,” Leon recalled, “during a conversation in which we were giggling, she said, ‘Oh, by the way, I never did thank you for taking me to that show, did I?’”
Contact Sally Pollak at spollak@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com or 660-1859.
