Dolls were a fixture in Nellie Mae Rowe’s creative life from her youth."I bet I wasn't 10 years old when I made my first doll. Sometimes when I ought to have been in the fields, I'd hide and go make dolls. I'd take up all the dirty clothes, tie them up, pack their heads full of soft stockings, and make eyes for them. I made some to look like people,” she said. Later in life, Rowe made this self-portrait of herself as a young girl, as well as many others which she sometimes affectionately called her children.