Quilts

This is the first installment of a monthly feature exploring the stores, restaurants and sights of Maryland neighborhoods. Here's an open invitation to city dwellers and suburbanites alike to get in on one of Baltimore's latest makeovers. Sprung from neglected waterfront property, Baltimore's glossy new Harbor East neighborhood boasts luxury hotels, office towers, fine restaurants and a melange of boutiques and stores. The burgeoning district is not yet complete and begs for more pedestrians to fill its streets and stores.

Mary Matton was so touched by the traveling exhibit of 52 art quilts interpreting Alzheimer's disease that she decided she wanted to help. Besides, the project involved two of her favorite things, charity and quilting, she said. "I am always looking for a good cause to which I can donate quilts," said Matton, 61, of Davidsonville. "And I find Alzheimer's to be a very scary disease. It's scarier than cancer. You're here, but not mentally." Matton and about 20 other members of the Annapolis Quilting Guild are participating in the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative, a grass-roots effort begun in January 2006 to increase awareness and fund research to help find a cure for Alzheimer's.

Kathryn W. Sieverts, a former grocery store owner who was active in Lutheran ministries, died in her sleep Tuesday at College Manor nursing home in Lutherville. The former longtime Hampstead resident was 92. The former Kathryn Wentz was born and raised in Lineboro. She was a Manchester High School graduate and earned a bachelor's degree in 1936 from Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College. She taught home economics, biology and physical education at Sykesville High School from 1936 to 1942.

Marie Mitchell Bennett, who modeled for Baltimore department stores before becoming an executive secretary and a store owner, died Monday of leukemia at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson. She was 72. Mrs. Bennett was born in Baltimore and raised in Roland Park. She graduated in 1953 from Eastern High School, where she was a member of Phi Omega sorority. She completed a one-year program at Bard Avon business school in Baltimore and then married Raymond Edward Adolph of Timonium.

The Atlanta art dealers accused in a lawsuit of taking and not returning three heirloom quilts from a woman in Gee's Bend, Ala., have handed the quilts over to her attorney. After calling a news conference late Wednesday to dispute the charges, attorneys for art dealer William Arnett and his son Matt delivered the quilts to the Birmingham law office of Peter Burke. He represents Lucinda Pettway Franklin, one of the three plaintiffs in the dispute; she says the Arnetts took and held her quilts for two years.

The quilts of Gee's Bend, Ala., now on view at the Walters Art Museum, have brought national prominence and hope to an isolated rural community once thought of as an artistic backwater. The bold, improvisational quilts have been exhibited around the world, cataloged in books, celebrated in magazines and newspapers, reproduced in licensed merchandise and documented in films, turning the quilters into icons of American art. If You Go Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt runs through Aug. 26 at the Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St. Call 410-547-9000 or go to thewalters.

6th-graders donate quilts to neonatal unit Inspired by a teacher whose personal experience led to the project, eight classes of sixth-graders at Central Middle School donated 100 quilts Wednesday to Anne Arundel Medical Center's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Erin Szachnowicz created the project after her nephew spent time in the unit three years ago. She saw the quilts that brightened the unit and thought that with the use of the school's sewing lab, students could help ailing babies.

You don't have to be an connoisseur to be bowled over by the quilts from Gee's Bend, Ala., which go on display tomorrow at the Walters Art Museum. With their bold patterns and vivid colors, it's the kind of contemporary art anyone can enjoy. In a remote, geographically isolated corner of the rural South, dozens of African-American women created the beautiful bed-coverings out of a practical necessity to warm body and soul. Yet the quilts of Gee's Bend have been hailed as some of the most significant works of 20th-century American art - and it's easy to see why. If You Go Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt opens tomorrow and runs through Aug. 26 at the Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St. Call 410-547-9000 or go to thewalters.

Baltimore photographer celebrates the quilting women of Gee's Bend The quickest way to get from Baltimore to Gee's Bend, Ala., is to fly into Montgomery, then rent a car and drive south a couple of hours until the two-lane blacktop of the county highway dead-ends in front of the single dirt road that serves the community. GEE'S BEND: THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE QUILT / / Friday through Aug. 26 / / Walters Art Museum / / 410-547-9000 or thewalters.org

Julia L. Blackwood, a fabric artist and designer for more than 30 years, died of pneumonia April 4 at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. The Davidsonville resident was 56. The former Julia Lampson was born into an artistic family and raised in Hartford, Conn. She was a graduate of the Oxford School in Connecticut and studied art history at Smith College. "As a young person, she was drawn to fabric and made her own clothes," said her husband of 36 years, J. Temple Blackwood, headmaster of Queen Anne School in Upper Marlboro.