Sistuhs: Four African American Self-Taught Artists

Press release:

Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art will present the exhibition, Sistuhs: Four African-American Self-Taught Artists through June 26, 2004 at Intuit, 756 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday; admission is free. Running concurrently in Intuit's front gallery through the end of May is the exhibit, Laura Craig McNellis: Inside Out 1970-2003.

Minnie Evans (1892-1987) was a folk artist inspired by an extremely creative imagination and vivid dreams. She began painting with scrap materials at age 43 but was not appreciated in the art world until the 1960s. Evans composed vibrantly colorful and detailed images derived from the Bible and mythology combined with ethereal floral motifs. She used ink, graphite, and wax crayon, and oil paint on canvas paper. Her visionary paintings range formally from naïve to psychedelic and depict giant birds, biblical figures, and other fantastic images.

Bessie Harvey (1929-1994) was born Bessie Ruth White in Dallas, Georgia as the seventh of 13 children to an alcoholic mother soon to be widowed. Despite adverse circumstances, or maybe because of them, Bessie drew strength from a strong Christian faith and the imagination to create something extraordinary out of everyday objects. A young Harvey had the proclivity of an artist. She crafted an "old-timey car" from old boxes and tin cans - the theme of escaping the mundane life was still a theme more than fifty years later in Harvey's artwork. The artist was also closely connected to her environment and nature served as spiritual source material for her sculptural works.

The artwork of Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980) served as a medium for her religious messages that she devoutly communicated to the public. The artist painted colorful figures and landscapes on absolutely anything that was handy - paper, wood, Styrofoam trays, window shades - mixing acrylics, poster paint, watercolors, crayons, and ball-point pen. Then she set up camp to show her work in the heart of the New Orleans French Quarter and performed creative and passionate public sermons in a deep chant-like voice, self-accompanied by guitar or tambourine, for local passers-by who grew to cherish her charismatic persona.

Nellie Mae Rowe (1900-1982) lived her entire life on the rural fringes of Atlanta in Vinings, Georgia. She was one of nine daughters of a former slave who worked as a farmer, a blacksmith, and a basket weaver. Her wildly inventive drawings, chewing gum sculptures, life-sized rag dolls and photographs of the artist filled her one-of-a-kind, Vinings, Georgia home and garden that she called Nellie's Playhouse.