Southern Lit 101 exhibit at Museum combines history, literature, geography & quilting

On Thursday, July 11, the Union County Heritage Museum brought yet another outstanding exhibit to our area.

NEMiss.News Fiber artist Cathy Fussell at the museum

Cathy Fussell speaking about her quilted art

Fiber artist Cathy Fussell’s Southern Lit 101 Exhibit springs from her love of Southern Literature and her interest in local history combined with her extraordinary quilting talents. She and her husband Fred, work together to produce truly unique works of art that celebrate both the southern literature landscape and the physical landscapes around us. Fred does most of the actual drawing of scenes. Once they both agree that they have exactly what they want, Cathy begins the quilting.

The exhibit currently in the museum comprises quilted art drawn from the fictional stories of William Faulkner, Harper Lee, Alice Walker and Flannery O’Connor.

Dee and Maggie, from Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”.

The Misfit, the Grandmother & Pitty Sing from Flannery O’Connnor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”.

Into the Secret Shade, from Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying”.

Elvis Presley Lake, near Tupelo, MS

Lake Martin in Alabama

Hey, Boo, from Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

In additional to the “fictional” pieces, there are several landscape maps, often depicting geography with a connection to history.

The Margravite of Azilia

A stunning piece of landscape work, measuring 8 feet by 8 feet and nine months in the making, depicts the 1717 Margravate of Azilia map. Sir Robert Montgomery proposed a colony of some 400 square miles near the current vicinity of Savannah, 16 years before Georgia was founded. For many reasons, the colony never came to fruition. The proposal is believed to be the earliest example of American art created by western land speculation.

Another historic landscape “Genocide at Horseshoe Bend” centers upon the area where soon-to-be-President General Andrew Jackson massacred 800-2000 members of a Muscogee Creek settlement in the bend of the Tallapoosa River, in what is now Alabama. This March of 1814 event was the the decisive battle in the Creek War (1813- 1814).

Southern Lit 101 is presented as part of New Albany’s Literary Festival that runs from July through September annually. This unique and extremely interesting exhibit will be at the museum until September 28, 2024. Union County Heritage Museum is located at 114 Cleveland Street, in New Albany, MS.

More about Cathy Fussell

Cathy Fussell Artist Statement: “Quilts are about history and art and politics and stories and patience and beauty and community and economics and place and expression and freedom and transition and family and warmth – and love. And they’re feminized and devalued. All that is why I’m so into quilts and quiltmaking.”

Link to Blog on the making of the Margravate of Azilia quilt.