January 12, 2007
I tried to take off the last week of the year. The intent was to do some of things I have had on my list for a while and never found the time (read: made the time) to do. These things were not chores, or unwanted tasks. Well, some of them were – like cleaning out my email inbox. But even in that project was really about taking the time to read the many interesting things I receive, but keep filing away in favor of the more immediate items.
In fact, most of what I had on the list would take large chunks of time – finishing the many books I have started, doing numerous sewing projects, taking a trip down south, antique Fenton glass hunting. As Dec 31st drew closer and the list remained long, I went into deadline mode and decided to prioritize. What was the most valuable outcome of each and which had the best ROI? I can tell I am really in need of a break when I start ranking my leisure time in terms of return on investment.
Yet there it was. Which of the many things should I pick to do and why? I was determined to do at least one item. And decided what I really needed was re-generation. Creative things and new perspectives re-generate me. These I can usually find in art and travel. So on the 2nd to the last day of the year I took a trip to the De Young Museum in San Francisco. Renovated in 2005, I had not seen the new structure. I give it high marks. My number one criteria being that the architecture support, or the very least does not get in the way of, the art and people viewing it, ala the Getty in LA. The De Young was a very pleasant experience. Thought I still don’t get the Tower.
Luck was with me even more. This was also the 2nd to the last day of a traveling exhibit – The Quilts of Gee’s Bend . So much more than a display of crafts, the Gee’s Bend quilt exhibit is a unique social commentary on life, people and history. Tastefully and subtly related on the plaques by each piece, through old photographs and the quilts themselves - a beautiful story of survival, perseverance and the importance of both individuality and collaboration evolved.
And there, amongst the hangings made of old blue jeans and work shirts, my regeneration was found. The story of Gee’s Bend, Alabama is the story of slavery, share cropping, power, discrimination, neglect, indifference, salvation and self-empowerment. It is a truly universal, yet uniquely American, story of survival and success against all odds and of finding and maintaining personal dignity and purpose in life, even as the entire world has forgotten you.
Gee’s Bend is a town on little bit of land at the crook of a river in Alabama whose community has alternately, by nature or malicious intent, been isolated from the world. And the quilts, made entirely for necessity, have become the punctuation mark for the tale. Most American quilts are made up of small pieces of fabric, sewn together in multiples of the same repetitive patterns, conforming to specific stylization. Not the Gee’s Bend quilts. Like modern art paintings, they contain big swathes of cloth and bold colors. But most importantly, each is the personal expression of the sewer.
As related by one of Gee’s Bend’s “memory keepers”, Mary Lee Bendolph (b. 1935), the philosophy of the community is “Piece by yourself; Quilt together.” During those cold winter nights and times between planting and harvesting the crops, each quilter, on their own, in their own home, created their own individual designs, the top pattern layer. They would then come together and, as a group, all sew together the top, middle and back layers to make the finished quilt.
Most quilting is created of traditional, prescribed patterns and must conform to certain rules of design that developed over generations. Isolated from the outside, Gee’s Bend felt no such demands, and in fact, seems to have consciously resisted the formation of such artificial boundaries. Time and again, the plaques stressed the desire of the community to support individual creativity. Yet collaboration also occurred, driven not by any imposed rules, but solely by the reasonable rationality that many hands working together can accomplish a part of the process better.
“Piece by yourself; Quilt together.” Value, encourage and support the creativity and uniqueness of the individual work; gather together to help complete the individual’s work by utilizing the collective energy of the group for the benefit of the individual and the whole. What a metaphor!
Here is my Aha!
I hear so many companies afraid to let their employees work out of their sight. It appears that they don’t truly value the work of the individual. Nor do they understand that some work, perhaps even most work, has a component of it that needs to be done alone, without the overseer eyes of peers or bosses. And that left alone and supported in their individual expression, the creativity and innovation that is so sorely needed and lacking, as heard in the roaring hue and cry coming from said same companies, evolves.
Alternately, I hear companies wailing for collaboration. Unfortunately, I also see them try to force feed the result through artificial means of space reconfiguration or required usage of collaboration software, usually with no evaluation of the relationship between task, process and outcome. The one way fits all, all of the time, philosophy which sets everyone and the organization as a whole up to fail. Gee’s Bend’s collaboration was not a management philosophy applied in a social context. It was a real result of happenstance and need. In fact, a better social experiment probably couldn’t be devised, let alone implemented. As the variables of time, place, historic incidents and lack of outside influences are impossible to control. Yet there it is. Let us learn from it.
So I have my regeneration. I was given, by way of a powerful yet unrelated example, the substantiation and revitalization, that remote work has an important role to play in the success of companies and society. That implemented with purposeful intent, and supported alike, it can become a valuable tool for corporate survival to let people do work on their own, without constant oversight. For through the years, the self-empowerment given to the individual quilters to express themselves, coupled with the welcoming validation each received by having others accept and take their work and transform it into a finished product, helped them to survive as a community for generations. All of our organizations should be so lucky.
Happy New Year! May you each find ways for individual expression and places that will welcome it into the whole.