By Associated Press
Tuscaloosa AL – Nora Ezell, a widely recognized quilter who once won a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, has died. She was 88.
Ezell had lived in Tuscaloosa and Greene County for the past few decades and was a fixture for many years at the Kentuck Festival of the Arts. The Tuscaloosa News reported Thursday that she died on Sept. 6.
"Long before anyone had heard about the Gee's Bend quilters, Nora Ezell had a national reputation as an outstanding practitioner of African-American quilt-making," said Joey Brackner, folklorist with the Alabama State Council on the Arts.
Her quilts are featured in collections around the world, from Japan to the American Folk Art Museum in New York City to the Birmingham Museum of Art.
Ezell received a Folk Heritage Award from the state arts council in 1990 and the National Heritage Fellowship in 1992.
Black Belt Press in 1998 published her "My Quilts and Me: The Diary of an American Quilter," which detailed the painstaking effort involved in quilting as well as the ups and downs of family life.
Services for Ezell will be at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Lavender Funeral Services Chapel in Aliceville located at 11233 Hwy 17South ... 205-373-2420.
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Information from: The Tuscaloosa News, http://www.tuscaloosanews.com