Rita Mae Pettway

Rita Mae Pettway was born in 1947, Gee’s Bend, Alabama to her mother Louisiana Pettway. When Rita Mae was three years old, her mother passed away and she was raised by her grandmother Annie E. Pettway. She attributes all of what she learned in cooking, cleaning, farming, and quilt making to her grandmother. When she was seven years old, she began working in the field with her family - picking, chopping, and hoeing cotton. In the winters, Rita Mae and her grandmother would quilt by the light of a kerosene lamp. She made her first quilt on her own, a “Nine Patch” quilt,  when she was fourteen and hasn’t stopped since.

Rita Mae’s work work was included in the first major museum exhibition introducing Gee’s Bend to the art world in 2002, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, originating at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Additional museum venues for this exhibition include the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, The Walters Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, the Speed Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum and the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Work by Rita Mae Pettway is in the permanent collections of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Toledo Museum of Art.

 

Rita Mae Pettway was featured in the following gallery exhibition:

My Way: Gee's Bend Today, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, 2025.

 

Click Here to view available work by Rita Mae Pettway

 

Rita Mae Pettway is featured in the Following Video: