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Gee’s Bend artist Marlene Bennet Jones was scheduled to be honored with an artist’s reception this week at the Johnson Center for the Arts. However, due to weather conditions, the artist’s reception has been postponed. The date will be announced.

Although, the artist’s reception has been postponed Marlene Bennett Jones/ GEES show is up and open to the public between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admission is free.

JCA executive director, Andrea Pack said Marlene Bennet Jones was raised on a farm in Gee’s Bend Alabama,

She was the eighth oldest of 14 children. She grew up farming and working the field with her family. Despite her difficult childhood, Marlene went on to study electronics, and became an aeronautical electrician, first at Beechcraft, and eventually at Lockheed Martin.

After her retirement, she returned to Gee’s Bend to assist her mother who was ill with Alzheimer’s.  It was then, twenty years ago that she returned to quilting.

As she sat by her mother’s bedside, Marlene would layout swatches of fabric and sew them based on her intuitive reactions and those of her mother.

In the years since, the work of Marlene Bennett Jones has been featured in the Alabama Bicentennial, the Kentucky Art Center, the Pearl Academy, Parts and Labor in New York, and the Royal Academy in London.

Pack invites everyone to visit Marlene Bennet Jones’ exhibition. Even though quilters will have a “working understanding of Jones’ artistry, everyone who views her work, will be appreciative of her talent and her dedication to continuing the tradition by the original Gee’s Bend Quilters.