B. B. King Concert in the Garden by Yvonne Wells

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Yvonne Wells does not piece her quilts, preferring appliqué, which allows for more freedom as she adds details to her compositions. Pieced blocks like this one were given to her by family and community who know she is always looking for interesting fabrics.

Wells’s inclusion of improvised quilt blocks in this piece about blues singer B.B. King underscores an important connection between improvisational quilting and Black musical traditions like blues and jazz, where emphasis is placed on riffs and rhythm rather than repetition and symmetry.

Wells’s use of a floral printed fabric as the foreground of this scene and in other moments suggests the lush and blooming landscape of the park where this concert took place.

The white fabric printed with interlocking blue features that frames part of the scene, meanwhile, evokes a pleasant breeze moving clouds through the sky and cooling the dancing revelers at this outdoor concert.

The large scale and careful decoration of King’s guitar, which is fretted with rickrack and buttons, are an homage to his commanding and iconic sound. For more than a century, this kind of “expressionistic” style, in which a premium is placed on the ability to convey feeling, has been praised as an alternative to the mastery of realism.

Many of Wells’s quilts take Christian imagery as their primary subjects, which led the trailblazing quilt scholar and curator Cuesta Benberry to offer Wells as one contemporary heir to Harriett Powers and the nineteenth-century tradition of Bible quilting. Even in quilts focused on popular culture like this one, Wells includes an arrangement of three triangles to represent the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost and to act as a signature of her enduring faith.

Yvonne Wells (American, born 1939), B. B. King Concert in the Garden, 2019, assorted fabrics, 78 1/2 x 64 inches, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Black Quilts and Contemporary Art Centennial Initiative, 2023.143. © Yvonne Wells.