Celebrated textile artist Gwendolyn Magee died Wednesday night following an illness.
Magee,67, of Jackson turned a traditional art form into profound contemporary art centered around African-American life and history
She was honored for artistic achievement with a 2011 Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in February.
She started quilting for her daughters and rode her passion right into museum collections.
"Little did I realize I had grabbed a tiger by the tail, and it has yet to let me go," she said at the governor's awards ceremony.
The Smithsonian Institution, the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African-American History are among the institutions that have collected and/or exhibited her works.
Magee was among 15 artists selected to create works commemorating the Freedom Riders for the May 19 opening of a museum in the historic Montgomery Greyhound bus station.
"Her proposal was fascinating - a multi-layered quilt with the names of the riders and the paths the buses took from Washington, D.C.," said Georgine Clarke with the Alabama State Council on the Arts.
Magee was working feverishly on it but didn't finish the quilt, her longtime friend Geraldine Brookins said.
Clarke said it would be a "a great honor to her and to us to try to obtain it and include it."
Magee's death sent shock waves and grief through an artistic community that warmed to her radiant spirit as well as her inspiring fabric creations.
"It's just a tremendous loss for the artistic community and our country, really," Mississippi Museum of Art director Betsy Bradley said. "She created profound statements in a very traditional medium, but in an innovative and tremendously beautiful manner."
Mississippi Arts Commission Executive Director Malcolm White said Magee "artistically came alive at a mature age and really achieved amazing things," telling powerful historical stories through an old art form that she took to a contemporary level.
Magee joined the Craftsmen's Guild of Mississippi in 1998, became a fellow in 2007 and was a committed board member for the guild.
She was "Miss November" in the guild's inaugural Expose Yourself to Crafts calendar, posing in a full body wrap of her sunburst quilt. She was "tickled" about the project, guild executive director Julia Daily recalled, keeping it a secret even from her husband until the unveiling, when she sashayed down the Mississippi Craft Center stairs in a trench coat to theme music.
A memorial service for Magee is set for 5 p.m. May 6 at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Magee's wish was that in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Mississippi Museum of Art or to the Craftsmen's Guild of Mississippi.
