Nellie Mae Rowe

Nellie Mae Rowe (July 4, 1900 – October 18, 1982) was an African-American player from Fayette County, Georgia. Although she is best known today for her radiant works upon paper, Rowe worked across mediums, creating drawings, collages, altered photographs, hand-sewn dolls, home installations and sculptural environments. She was said to have an "instinctive union of the tab between color and form." Her con focuses upon race, gender, domesticity, African-American folklore, and spiritual traditions.

Rowe is now endorsed as one of the most important American folk artists. Her play is held in numerous collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library and Museum, the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.