Untitled (Nellie Riding Chicken)
Nellie Mae Rowe
American, 1900–1982

Details
Title
Untitled (Nellie Riding Chicken)
Artist/Maker
Nellie Mae Rowe (American, 1900–1982)
Date
1980
Medium
Crayon and pencil on paper
Dimensions
18 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches
Credit
Gift of Judith Alexander
Accession #
2003.211
On View
Currently not on view
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.
Image Copyright
© Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
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