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Hazel Carter, Founder of The Quilters Hall of Fame and Bets Ramsey 2005 Inductee.
Photo courtesy of Sue Jones
"Meeting Bets Ramsey for the first time, you might not immediately grasp that this quiet gracious woman is a serious artist and scholar. Instead of engaging in self promotion, she lets her work speak for itself, and that work speaks volumes."
Laurel Horton in AQSG's Blanket Statements, Spring 2003
You have now met three early to mid-20th century quilt historians through this TQS Quilt Pioneer series. Unfortunately, none of the three are here any longer to answer our questions about their lives and work. Today we know them only through their quilts, or their books or through what others have written about them.
This time I would like to introduce you to a living Honoree of The Quilters Hall of Fame. Come to The Quilters Hall of Fame Celebration in July of this year and you will get a chance to meet her. Do take advantage of any opportunity you have to meet the living Quilt Pioneers of the 20th century while they are still with us!
Born Betty June Miller in 1928 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Bets Ramsey grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, but returned to Chattanooga in 1941 and has lived in Nashville since 1994. Her early life was filled with her love of sewing. She even began a dressmaking business with a friend while still in high school. In 1999 Ramsey commemorated her childhood and friends in the quilt "Oak Park: 1939".
"Oak Park: 1939," Bets Ramsey, 1999 (36x44)
Photo courtesy of Karen Alexander
As a founding member of the Tennessee Association of Craft Artists, a member of the American Crafts Council, the Southern Highland Craft Guild, and other art and craft organizations, Ramsey is perhaps best known in some circles for her career as a textile artist. She began her teaching career in the textile arts in 1958.
As a result of one of her teaching experiences at the University of Chattanooga in 1968, Ramsey decided to take on the challenge of a Master's Degree in Crafts. A few years later, when the opportunity offered itself, she founded the Southern Quilt Symposium in 1974 at the Hunte Museum of American Art, the first annual quilt gathering in the newly emerging revival of the latter half fo the 20th century.
Invitation to the 14th Southern Quilt Symposium, 1987
Ramsey directed SQS for 17 years and curated a major quilt exhibit drawn from nation-wide quilt artists, museums, and private collectors at that same event. Her annual exhibit at the Hunter Museum was the first continual art quilt series that drew from a wide audience and was placed in an art setting. In 1980 Ramsey began a weekly column, "The Quilter," that ran in the Chattanooga Times until 1998, producing close to 900 articles in eighteen years.
In 1980 Ramsey was in attendance at the first seminar of the American Quilt Study Group held in California, and presented one of the first seminar research papers that founding year. She presented 5 more papers over the years at the annual Seminar. All six of her papers are available in AQSG's annual Uncoverings.
Book Cover of "Quilts of Tennessee: Images of Domestic Life Prior to 1930"
From 1983-1987 Ramsey co-directed the Quilts of Tennessee documentation project with co-director Merikay Waldvogel, which resulted in a book and a traveling exhibition.
"Nine Patch/Shoo Fly#1" Bets Ramsey, 1998 (15 1/4 x 14 3/4)
Courtesy of the Quilters Hall of Fame
Florence Peto, whom I wrote about in the first installment of this series, corresponded widely with many quilters and researchers in her day. Although Ramsey never had the opportunity to meet or correspond with Peto, in 1994 she acquired copies of some of the correspondence between Peto and the late Elizabeth Richardson of Tennessee from the daughter, June Thomason. In addition, Thomason gave Ramsey a box of antique fabric pieces that Peto had shared with Richardson.
In time Ramsey would make a number of wall hangings from these fabrics, most no larger than a crib quilt, incorporating some of her own fabric at the same time. Fifteen of these quilts were on display in the historic Marie Webster House/TQHF in Marion, Indiana in July 2005 - "Florence Peto's Challenge: Little Quilts by Bets Ramsey". In the introduction to this exhibit, Ramsey wrote, "The nature of the Peto letters was that of a teacher to a student, encouraging historical study and use of the fabric in reproducing traditional block patterns." Following the exhibit, Ramsey donated all fifteen quilts to the hall of fame.
"Peto's Centennial Challenge" Bets Ramsey, 1994 (15 1/4 x 15)
Photo courtesy of the Quilters Hall of Fame
Ramsey wrote of "Peto's Centennial Challenge" quilt in the exhibit notes: "Florence Peto purchased a tied quilt made of Centennial [1876] prints and took it apart to share with Elizabeth Richardson and Bertha Stenge*. She suggested that they each make something and then compare results....Bertha eventually chose not to proceed with the project. Elizabeth, it is thought, gave her piece to her daughter. Florence, of course, completed a small quilt and kept it in her collection."
Exhibit catalog for "Stitched from the Heart: Fiber Art by Bets Ramsey" held at Carroll Reece Museum, East Tennessee University, Johnson City,TN, July 24-September 14, 2003
Throughout her long career Ramsey's fiber art and quilts have been shown in galleries and museums across the U.S. and abroad and at least 45 of these exhibits featured her as the solo artist. She has also curated some 60 exhibits herself, produced 5 exhibit catalogues, written countless essays, articles, book reviews and reviews of exhibitions too numerous to list here. She has also written four books, two of them with the 2009 TQHF Honoree Merikay Waldvogel. Ramsey continues to lecture, serve as a consultant to several museums, and exhibit her work.
"Bets Ramsey: A Retrospective 1972-2005" exhibit walk-thru July 15, 2003, Marion IN
Photo courtesy of Karen Alexander
It is important to salute our artists while they are still with us so that they can enjoy the honor and accolades they so richly deserve. On April 14, 2009, Bets Ramsey was one of three Tennesseans to receive Tennessee's highest honor, the Governor's Distinguished Artist Award.
Bets Ramsey receiving Governor's Distinguished Artist Award
Photo courtesy of Ramsey Family
On a personal note, I had the good fortune to become friends with Bets Ramsey in the early ‘80s and continue to see her at AQSG seminars most years. I venture to offer a guess that Ramsey's favorite undertaking throughout her distinguished career has been her teaching and the people and relationships that her career has brought to her door. And though you might not immediately grasp that this quiet gracious woman is a serious artist and scholar when you happen to run into her, be assured, she is.
Karen B. Alexander
Past President, The Quilters Hall of Fame
Member of AQSG since 1981
SOURCES:
1) Brewer, Nancy. "Quilt Expert Still Enjoys Basic Stitches," The Busy Bee Trader, April 2001, pp. 32-33.
2) Horton, Laurel. "Bets Ramsey: A Retrospective in Quilt Art and History", AQSG Blanket Statements, Issue 72, Spring 2003
3) Horton, Laurel. "Bets Ramsey", The Quilters Hall of Fame, ed. Merikay Waldvogel and Rosalind Webster Perry (2006 Supplement)
4) Ramsey, Bets, and Merikay Waldvogel. The Quilts of Tennessee: Images of Domestic Life Prior to 1930. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press (RHP), 1986.
5) Ramsey, Bets. Old and New Quilt Patterns in the Southern Tradition. RHP, 1987.
6) Ramsey, Bets, and Gail Trechsel. Southern Quilts: A New View. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, 1991.
7) Ramsey, Bets, and Merikay Waldvogel. Southern Quilts: Surviving Relics of the Civil War. RHP, 1996.
8) Bets Ramsey in Marsha MacDowell, Quilt Treasures Interview, (The Alliance for American Quilts: January 25, 2008); accessed: May 7, 2009. http://www.allianceforamericanquilts.org/treasures/interview.php?id=16,
9) Personal conversations and emails with Bets Ramsey
*Berthe Stenge was one of five inducted into The Quilters Hall of Fame in 1980.
We have the winners of our Free Novel Contest. Phyllis Johnson of Alaska and Allyson Rischbieter of South Africa.
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