Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

 

Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

 

Untitled (Nellie Riding Chicken)


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Object Details


Artist/Maker

Nellie Mae Rowe, American, 1900–1982

Date

1980

Medium

Crayon and pencil on paper

Dimensions

Please contact the Museum for more information

Credit

Gift of Judith Alexander

Accession #

2003.211

Image Copyright

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

Description

Wearing green, a signature color in her wardrobe, Rowe rides a chicken toward a form that exemplifies how she married human, plant, and animal life in her work. Its facial features comprise the components of a tree: roots and low limbs form its beard and mustache, while budding branches create its eyes and hair. This peculiar face rests on a neck stacked with Star Trek–reminiscent chevrons, lending it an extraterrestrial air that befits Rowe’s belief in her drawings as emissaries of an unknown future—“things that ain’t been seen” or “something that ain’t been born yet,” as she put it.