Artist

Bessie Harvey

born Dallas, GA 1929-died TN 1994
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Photo © Charles Russell
Also known as
  • Bessie Ruth White
Born
Dallas, Georgia, United States
Died
Tennessee, United States
Active in
  • Alcoa, Tennessee, United States
Biography

Bessie Harvey used branches, roots, and found objects in sculptures that embody personal spirituality and speak about life’s challenges. She was born in Georgia as the Great Depression dawned, but lived most of her life in rural Tennessee, where her family knew intense poverty. She explained that her art came out of struggle and became her tool for surviving it. As a girl, Harvey made toys and dolls from twigs. She became attuned to the twisted, humanlike shapes of branches and roots, and believed that it was God who allowed her to see their spiritual essence. Over time, Harvey’s dolls morphed into complex sculptures. By adding paint and found objects to organic forms, she awakened dormant characters from within.

Harvey experienced oppression on multiple frontiers, but abidingly belongs to an artistic sisterhood determined to articulate a powerful, personal vision. In the 1980s and 1990s, her art attracted attention, but it was not all positive. Her sculptures were emotive and unapologetically “peculiar,” as she described them. Harvey maintained that God was the artist, not her. Still, many viewed her work as animalistic and primitive, and positioned her creativity as something threatening, related to dark magic or folk religion. Harvey’s practice signified her creativity, spirituality, and survival skills in equal measure. She believed that perseverance was a Black woman’s test, and her vision never wavered.
(We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection, 2022)

Exhibitions

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We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection
July 1, 2022March 26, 2023
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and

Related Books

Cover for the catalogue "We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection"
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and bold self-definition became major forces in American art. The exhibition features recent gifts to the museum from two generations of collectors, Margaret Z. Robson and her son Douglas O. Robson, and will be on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum July 1, 2022 through March 26, 2023.