Nellie Mae Rowe (American, 1900–1982), Untitled (Pig on Expressway), 1980, crayon and colored pencil on paper, gift of Judith Alexander, 2003.227.
Not all great artists attended art schools.
The artists featured in the High’s Folk and Self-Taught Art collection instead were shaped primarily by lessons learned from family, community, work, and spiritual experiences. Some painted on canvas, while others depended on more readily available materials: stone from local quarries, decommissioned doors, scrapyard metal, leftover fabric, and even chewing gum. The High began collecting the work of living self-taught artists in 1975 and was the first general interest museum to establish a dedicated department in 1994. This collection of more than 1,200 objects primarily comprises work made in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries, with growing holdings of more historic folk sculpture.
Senior Curator of American Art and
Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art
Explore the Folk and Self-Taught Art Collection
Folk and Self-Taught Art HIGHlights
The High’s holdings of Folk and Self-Taught Art include iconic and characteristic works by some of the most celebrated artists in this field, such as William Edmondson, Howard Finster, Mattie Lou O’Kelley, Herbert Singleton, Nellie Mae Rowe, Henry Church, Mary Lee Bendolph, Thornton Dial, and Bill Traylor.
Southern Art
Since the 1980s, the American South has been recognized as a region with an abundance of self-taught artists, including Thornton Dial, Sam Doyle, and Clementine Hunter. Thanks in large part to major gifts from T. Marshall Hahn, Judith Alexander, and the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, the core of this collection comprises works by Southern artists with roots in states like Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
African American Artists
The High has collected many works by self-taught artists of African descent. Their art frequently speaks to the struggles, triumphs, and traditions unique to their experience of the United States and its history. The Museum’s collection includes pieces that address slavery, the ongoing struggle for equal rights, and African American leaders and innovators.
Spiritual Art
Biblical scenes and verses abound in the work of artists such as Howard Finster, Elijah Pierce, and Sister Gertrude Morgan, who used their work to preach the Christian gospel. Other artists, including William Edmondson and Minnie Evans, did not always include obvious religious imagery in their work, but they nonetheless created spiritual art that embodied their visionary encounters with a higher power.
Art Environments
Many self-taught artists displayed their work in a dynamic fashion that is difficult to replicate in a museum. They made all-encompassing “environments” by presenting their work densely and intentionally in their homes and yards, creating installations that powerfully expressed their worldviews. The High has many objects that were once a part of these larger immersive experiences.
Wood Sculpture
As a material available in many forms, from driftwood found in a creek to lumber scraps left over in carpentry workshops, wood is a fundamentally democratic medium. The wide range of artistic mastery it has inspired among self-taught artists such as Bessie Harvey and Sulton Rogers is beautifully evident in this collection, thanks to major gifts from T. Marshall Hahn, Gordon W. Bailey, and Anne and Robert Levine.
Quilts
Quilts and other textiles appear in departments across the High, including Decorative Arts and Design and Modern and Contemporary Art, and are increasingly represented in the Folk and Self-Taught Art collection. Black quilting traditions, including those that flourished in the remote community of Boykin, Alabama, also known as Gee’s Bend, are a focus of the Folk and Self-Taught Art department’s ongoing research and collecting initiatives.
Nellie Mae Rowe
Nellie Mae Rowe (American, 1900–1982) lived on Paces Ferry Road in Vinings, Georgia, and welcomed visitors to “Nellie’s Playhouse,” which one guest called a “wonder of the land.” Rowe decorated her house with found-object installations, handmade dolls, chewing-gum sculptures, and hundreds of drawings, which she displayed in books, lined up on ledges, and hung cheek to jowl on walls. Thanks to a major gift from Judith Alexander, the High offers the largest public collection of Rowe’s artwork.
Howard Finster
A preacher, bicycle repairman, inventor, and devoted family man, Howard Finster (American, 1916–2001) had a vision from God in 1976 commanding him to begin preaching in paint. He created more than 46,000 works of art and transformed his property in Summerville, Georgia, into Paradise Garden, an extraordinary art environment that is still open to the public.
Bill Traylor
Like thousands of African Americans born in the middle of the nineteenth century, Bill Traylor (American, 1853–1949) was born enslaved on a rural plantation and died a free man in an urban center. In the late years of his long life, he drew the people and animals he encountered in the bustling Court Square of Montgomery, Alabama.
In 1982, the High became the first museum outside of Alabama to acquire Traylor’s work, and today it holds the largest public collection of drawings by this “Old Master” of self-taught art.
Thornton Dial
Thornton Dial spent thirty years working in the Pullman Steel Plant in Bessemer, Alabama, an experience that influenced his methods and materials as an artist. In the 1980s, he embarked upon a period of profound artistic creation that lasted nearly three decades. He depended on discarded objects and their stories to create grand narratives about oppression, resilience, and rebirth in the United States. The High has been collecting Dial’s work since the 1990s, and in 2017, a major acquisition from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation made these holdings the largest and most significant collection of the artist’s work.
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