Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

 

Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

 

What it is


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Object Details


Artist/Maker

Nellie Mae Rowe, American, 1900–1982

Date

1978–1982

Medium

Crayon, colored pencil, and pencil on paper

Dimensions

21 x 21 1/4 inches

Credit

Gift of Judith Alexander

Accession #

2003.215

Image Copyright

© Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Description

Rowe visualizes herself as a child, confidently walking down Paces Ferry Road, her ribbons forming a kind of halo as she goes. “What it is” is a popular greeting—akin to “What’s up?”—but Rowe also used it as an artistic statement that reflected the mysteries she was content to let remain unsolved in her work. “Most of the things that I draw, I don’t know what they are by name. People say, ‘Nellie, what is that?’ I say I don’t know, it is what it is. That is all I know. But I know one thing, I draw what is in my mind.”