Nellie Mae Rowe

Nellie Mae Rowe was born in 1900 in Fayetteville, Georgia, the ninth of 10 children. Her early life was spent in a rural farming community, where she and her siblings helped the family make a living through cotton harvesting and other farm work. Despite her busy life at the farm, Rowe developed an early love for drawing and doll-making, and her mother taught her how to make dresses and quilts. She would find time between chores, and even find places to hide, in order to continue creating. At age 16, Rowe married her first husband, who was also a rural farm worker. During this period she found little time to make art. Her first husband passed away in 1936, but that same year she remarried. Her second husband, however, also passed away by 1948. Following these hardships, Rowe found work as a maid to support herself, and finally had amply time to explore her own artistry. Rowe became incredibly prolific, producing drawings, dolls, sculptures made of chewing gum, and assemblages made of discarded objects including egg cartons, marbles, and other trinkets. She produced so much work that it began to fill her house and her yard, and her neighbors deemed her an eccentric and a “fortune teller”. Some locals tormented Rowe, throwing rocks, firecrackers, and rotten eggs at her house. However, over time she became a staple in her local community, dubbing her home the “playhouse”. People started to bring Rowe dolls, toys, beads, and other materials for her to use in her artwork. Although Rowe became well-known in her community, it was not until the mid-1970s that art collectors and curators began to take notice of her vast body of work. In 1978, she had her first solo exhibition at the Alexander Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1979, she left Georgia for the only time in her life to attend an exhibition of her work at the Parsons/Dreyfus Gallery in New York City. Her work attracted audiences with its striking and fantastical imagery, as well as its fixation with religious symbolism, social commentary, and the natural world. By the 1980s, Rowe had begun her battle with cancer. Unfortunately, due to her illness, she was unable to view her work in “Black Folk in America, 1900-1980,” a 1982 exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Rowe passed away that same year. Nellie Mae Rowe leaves behind countless artworks completely unlike those of the trained, mainstream artists of her day. Rowe experimented with countless media, color palettes, and visual motifs, giving her work a longevity that continues to connect with new generations of collectors and curators. Rowe’s works may be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.