Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

 

Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

 

Untitled (Nellie Sitting by the Window)


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Object Details


Artist/Maker

Nellie Mae Rowe, American, 1900–1982

Date

1981

Medium

Color photograph, crayon, and pencil on board

Dimensions

14 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches

Credit

Gift of Judith Alexander

Accession #

2003.143

Image Copyright

(c) Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Description

While Rowe was making her Playhouse, art environments attracted attention from scholars studying the African diaspora. Rowe’s use of “haint” blue on the exterior of her home, which she depicts here in a richer indigo tone, was among the practices that were thought to show the retention of African traditions. The Congolese belief that evil spirits, which became known in the American South as “haints,” could not cross sky or water is thought to have been the source of the many exteriors, roofs, and thresholds painted blue throughout the region.