Southern art

Americana artist Gillian Welch has always included southern Christian imagery in her work. Though not native to the South, her music is at its most comfortable when it explores the tragedy and violence of working-class survival in the region. Welch and partner David Rawlings write and record sparse songs unlike any others. In part, this has to do with Rawlings' masterful guitar work, but it also stems from Welch's unuusal singing voice. 

See "The Way it Goes" from new album, The Harrow and the Harvest (lyrics here): 

I first saw a selection of the Gee's Bend quilts at The Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco. I'd never had anything against quilts before that, they just never struck me all that much. I couldn't deny that socially, they can bring women and family together in making and sharing them, but the generally rigid/symmetrical patterns, and often pastel colors and mixed floral prints, didn't grab me. But when I laid eyes on a Gee's Bend quilt for the first time, I was truly moved by not just the story behind it, but moved on a gutteral level by the beauty of the object itself.